I’ve been thinking a lot about what being helpful really means. It is relatively easy to offer advice, to suggest solutions, but is this really being helpful? It feels to me as if this is often coming from the wrong place, however well-intentioned.

It may be a way to make ourselves feel good, so we can say to ourselves, ‘I’m such a helpful person.’ Or it may be the ‘obvious answer’ from our perspective, but that doesn’t mean that it will be useful in someone else’s world.

So how can we be truly helpful to others? I think the only way is to carefully listen to their story and to pay attention to their world. When we listen carefully and pay attention to the feelings behind whatever it is, we do something important and helpful to the other person. We find out about their world  and their perspective, and at the same time, we give a form of validation to their world. Of itself, this is often enough: people can sometimes find their own way through a problem if they’re allowed to talk it through fully.

And if we do make suggestions to be helpful, they are far more likely to fit with that person’s world.

I’m a devil for jumping in with advice, but I’m now more aware of the need to make sure that if fits with the other person and their world. I hope I’ve become more helpful.