Munafo Core Values: MCV06 — When You're Down in the Pit, Give Help

When You're Down in the Pit, Give Help

"The Pit" refers to any difficult place, situation, or time in one's life. The principle at work is that when you reach out to and help others, from a sincere intent to be helpful, the result is that you end up becoming healed yourself. When this core value is present, reaching out to help others is a natural and automatic response to being "in the pit".

Helping Others Takes Time

Like any core value, this one can be used as a rule to live by. One common objection to such a rule is quite simply that it takes time. If you're down in the pit, so the objection goes, how can it help to spend extra time and effort to reach out? The objector feels they has insufficient time to take care of themself as it is. (The sense of scarcity is present even in the word choice: it's usually heard as spend time, or take time — why not a positive attitude: invest time?)

Two strategies can help in this situation. The first is rather obvious: apply the idea of helping others into existing time demands. That is to say, find ways of helping that do not require a change to your schedule.

If that is not possible, it is probably because you are not interacting much with others at all: everything you do involves only yourself. If that is so, it is important to remember that interaction with others is essential. Strange as it may seem, it is better to put aside some of your attention to personal tasks in order to invest that time re-establish interaction with others. The resulting benefit to you will more than offset the loss.

MCV06 for Teams

When this core value is present:

The team finds itself in trouble, and responds by reaching out to help others outside the team. (+mcv06a)

When this core value is lacking:

The team finds itself in trouble, and focuses inward to address its troubles. (Note that the individual members can be following the core value, but if they are reaching out just to others on their own team, the team-as-autonomous-entity is not following the core value) (-mcv6a)

Credits:

Spend vs. invest: Caldwell, 20080713

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This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2014 Jul 31.

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