Mayday!: Asking for Help in Times of Need

Asking for help is a universally dreaded prospect. We often choose instead to continue on alone, struggling valiantly and often unnecessarily with day-to-day burdens or even with crises, convinced that asking for help would exact an emotional price too high to bear. Nonetheless, in a world where people are living longer than ever before and may need ever more support over time, reliance on others has become increasingly necessary. It is time to send the universal signal: Mayday! Consider the statistics: There are 11.9 million single parents bringing up their children in the US today (including 2.1 million single fathers), many of whom work full-time. In addition, each year 50 million adults act as caregivers for chronically ill, disabled, or aged family members. Primary caregivers often do not get consistent help from other family members. One study indicates that at least 75% of these people are going it alone. Unfortunately, many parents and adult children feel unable to ask for help along the way. Meanwhile, the self-help industry continues its relentless growth. The tens of thousands of such books published each year owe their success to the abiding myth that helping oneself is preferable to the dreaded and potentially humiliating task of asking others for help. Mayday! Asking for Help in Times of Need shows readers how to make the intimidating process of asking for help far less daunting. Drawn from the author's twenty years of experience as both a personal and a Fortune-100 executive coach, Mayday! is the first book to fully integrate the body, mind, and emotions in a truly effective step-by-step approach to asking for assistance. Mayday! offers insightful observations about requesting help in a world where so many people feel stretched too thin, exhausted, and alone. Using an inviting and conversational narrative style, the author describes in three parts the reasons why we don't ask for help and the benefits that come to us when we do. She then offers a nine-part process that begins with clarifying the ne ed and ends with giving sincere thanks to those who lend us a helping hand.