Earlier this week I read an exceptional article by Tanmay Vora called Self-Expression Through Service. In the article he says “the only way to grow yourself, your teams, your organization is to think about what you have to offer from a service perspective… the truth is, real service is not about you, it is about purpose and people.”

“This is great,” I thought. “I love helping people. I am ready to start my “journey of self-expression.” So, I start saying “of course I will help you with that,” to everyone who asks. Then, somewhere along the way, I get so busy helping and saying yes to all the things, that I run out of time to actually do most of them. Not a great feeling when you are trying to help people but really you are letting them down.

We do this because “we all want to be that go-to person. We want to feel needed. We want to know that we’ve helped someone,” says Poornima Vijayashanker in the article How to Resist the Urge to Solve Every Problem That Comes Your Way.

But, when we try to do everything, we stop being helpful and become the bottleneck. We forget that helping others is not about us.

We need to take a minute to remember that we can’t “place our desire to feel needed above what someone actually needs.”

How do you resist the urge to help everyone that asks? Leave a comment and let me know.

Photo Credit – Ryan Tracey