Make use of what others have to offer
On receiving support and allowing others to contribute to your path
We have explored how the way someone lives can spark something in others. A person shares an idea, creates something, or simply expresses themselves honestly, and someone else feels moved to begin, continue, or pivot. That contribution can travel further than the person who first offered it may realize or will ever know.
But there is another side to this. Are we willing to receive what others have to offer us?
I almost want to say: make use of other people. We tend to hear that as something selfish. But recognizing what someone can offer, asking openly, and allowing them to contribute can be a valuable part of how we live together. You have strengths, knowledge, care, and experience that can become useful to others. So do they. Why would you need to carry everything yourself?
The default of doing it yourself
For some of us, like me, giving feels easier than receiving. We know how to be helpful, dependable, or the person who has an answer, but being the one who needs something can feel less comfortable.
It can be that we worry about being a burden, or perhaps we think we should already know how to do it, or we do not want to feel indebted. We may even dismiss an offer before considering it, saying we can manage ourselves.
We may also hesitate because we cannot see how we could help that person in return, as though we need to be able to reciprocate before we can accept. But we do not always know what helping us might mean to them. Being trusted or having something they know become useful to someone else can matter in itself. We do not need to arrange an equivalent return before allowing ourselves to receive.
And sometimes we can manage. But that does not answer whether doing everything ourselves is the best way to go about the situation. Someone might enjoy helping, understand something we do not, or offer a perspective we could never have reached alone. Our determination to remain independent can keep that contribution out.
This connects to what I wrote about the ego. An image of yourself as capable, generous, or always able to cope can become something you need to protect. Receiving may ask you to admit that there is something you need, or something someone else can do better. That can feel vulnerable. It can also be where something opens.
You are part of the common good
Throughout this series, I have written about a purpose and intentions that serve something beyond yourself. But serving the common good does not place you outside it. Your wellbeing belongs on both sides of that picture: caring for your foundation so you can contribute, and allowing yourself to benefit from what others offer.
You do not have to earn support by proving how much you have already given. There will be times when you have more to offer, and times when you need more from others. Illness, grief, money, responsibilities, and the course life takes can change that balance. Needing help does not make you less worthy of it. Here again, it helps to remember not to hold yourself to a standard you would not apply to others.
Nor does everything need to come back to the same person. Someone might help you understand a problem. What you learn might later help a friend. A contribution can keep moving without becoming an account that has to be settled between two people. Receiving does not oblige you to return the same thing to the person who gave it.
Others may welcome the chance to help
We can be mistaken about how someone will experience our request. Psychologists Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley studied this through imagined situations, recalled experiences, and actual interactions. People seeking help tended to underestimate others’ willingness to help and how positively helpers would feel afterward. They also overestimated how inconvenienced helpers would feel.
That finding offers another way to look at asking. Think of a time someone asked you about a subject you love, or turned to you because they trusted your judgment. Being able to offer something can feel good. Other people may welcome that opportunity as well.
Of course, they get to decide. Asking openly means being clear about what you need and leaving someone free to say no. Their time, energy, and circumstances obviously matter and should be valued.
A connection can open more than you can see
In the earlier piece on connection, I wrote about how much relationships can contribute to happiness, including encounters we might otherwise avoid. Here, there is another possibility to consider: a connection can also bring us into contact with something we did not know was available to us.
Someone you know a little may know a person who can answer your question. A conversation outside your usual circle may introduce a different way of thinking. An invitation may bring you somewhere you would never have thought to go.
Networks are essential to our success. Much of what we can bring into being depends on the people we can reach and the knowledge, experience, and resources available through those connections. The person we just described may be our way into a wider network. Through them, we can reach people and possibilities that would otherwise remain outside our view. One connection can open access to far more than that person alone has to offer.
Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz’s small world model helps explain why connections between different circles, shortcuts within a network, can matter. In their model, a relatively small number of links between distant parts of a network greatly shortened the paths between them, while closely connected groups remained.
The people close to you may know many of the same people and possibilities you do. Someone outside that circle may know something different, or connect you with a person you would otherwise be unlikely to meet. That is one reason to consider who you might ask beyond the people you usually turn to.
Research on employment offers a concrete example. Large randomized experiments on LinkedIn varied the strength of the connections recommended to users and found that weaker connections could increase job mobility.
People in our closest circle often know one another, so the people, information, and opportunities we have access to overlap. It’s sometimes our weaker connections, our acquaintances, let’s say, who connect us with a different circle. That one connection can become a shortcut to a whole network of people and possibilities we would otherwise be unlikely to reach.
That does not mean approaching every encounter as a search for something useful. It means remaining open to people without assuming you already know what a connection might make possible.
Letting your path involve other people
Knowing your strengths helps you recognize what you bring. That can also make it easier to receive: you understand that you have something to contribute too, even if what you offer is different from what someone offers you. Perhaps they help you turn an idea into a plan, while you help them see a possibility they had not considered. Recognizing your own contribution can help you feel more comfortable accepting theirs, without needing to repay it immediately or in equal measure.
Knowing yourself can also help you appreciate what someone else brings. You may see a possibility clearly but need help putting it into practice. You may have the dedication to continue but need guidance or practical support.
If a direction can be given through paying attention to what life brings, then other people can be part of how it reaches you. Sometimes the next thing to do becomes clearer through a conversation, an introduction, or an offer you had not expected.
Receiving with appreciation can be as simple as accepting an offer and letting someone know what it meant to you. There is no need to diminish the help, explain it away, or immediately offer something of equal value in return. You can allow their contribution to reach you. Being ready to contribute to life also means remaining open to being supported by it. You can let others drink from your well, and you can drink from theirs.
Rajkumar et al. (2022)
Watts & Strogatz (1998
Zhao & Epley (2022)