Knowing when to help and when to step back

Helping others is a noble pursuit. It can be incredibly rewarding for the individual offering help and beneficial for the individual receiving the support. In order to help virtuously, we need to know when and how to help others. Below are some points I find useful to consider in my decision-making process.

Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

1. Intentions: Start with asking yourself "Why do I want to help a person or cause?". What is the driving factor? Seeing our motivators clearly can help us to make informed decisions about whether we truly agree with our intentions or whether we are driven by feelings we would rather dissociate from.

2. Mindfulness and clarity of self: Helping requires being emotionally balanced and able to offer help. The opposite of mindful help is likely to lead to undesirable outcomes. An illuminating quote is "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." [1] While we cannot control the outcome of our actions, we can at least ensure that we are helping with the right intentions and with a measured approach. We can use self-reflection to gauge if we have the required skills to help another.

3. Non-attachment to outcomes: Given that we are not in control of the results, it is unwise to feel attachment to a specific result or outcome. It's more useful to concentrate on the process of helping and to cultivate feelings of kindness and generosity of heart rather than to meditate over specific achievable outcomes.

4. Self-knowledge: Knowing one's own limitations can be helpful when considering if you can help someone else. We all have specific emotional, physical and situational limitations which curtail our ability to help boundlessly. Hence, being realistic about situations where you can and cannot help and to what degree offers valuable insight. If you have the tendency to offer our energies easily, it is worth asking yourself the questions "Am I the right person to offer help in this situation?" and "Do I have the required emotional and physical resource to help?"

5. Clarity of situation: Before committing to helping a cause, especially when we are considering helping another individual, it is worth to ask the question. "Does my help aid or hinder their progress?" Let me give you an example. If a parent protects their child from all burdens, is this wise help? In this situation, the child develops without the ability to cope independently which, long term, is detrimental to their well being. Hence, sometimes when we feel an impulse to help it is useful to step back and ask ourselves if this is really in the other person's best interest.

   
   

Armed with this checklist, you will hopefully be in a better place to make informed choices about when and how to help others. Help should not come at a detriment to one's own well-being and ideally enhances the other person's life at the same time.

[1] ‘The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions’. In Simple English Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, 26 January 2024. https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with_good_intentions&oldid=9325604.