Being Willing to ask for help is a glue of friendhsip

Several years ago, I unexpectedly found myself needing to move. And the most challenging prospect of that wasn't thinking about the laborious task ahead of the move itself, it was realizing I had no idea who to turn to for help with that task.

As I reflect back on that time, part of that was because in my mind I didn't have a lot of "I'll help you move" friends. The other part of that was, and likely the most significant part, I wasn't good at asking anyone for help with anything.

I ultimately turned to my friend Solomon; without hesitation he said I'll be there. Even more, when we couldn't get it all moved on moving day, he showed back up a couple of days later to help me move a couch that arrived after the move.

Solomon has become a great and treasured friend since that moving day. I know it has a lot to do with him showing up, but it has a lot more to do with me being willing to ask him to show up in the first place.

We have a mental health crisis in our country. For men, who are not immune to this crisis, a lot of it stems from their inability to ask for help.

When it comes to help-seeking behaviors, studies show that men are significantly less likely to ask for help with their daily tasks, whether it's related to health, career advice, or even asking for assistance at Home Depot.

Asking for help often requires vulnerability and men don't often feel comfortable displaying that.

Sadly, this carries over to men when they need emotional support. If they can't ask for help moving, they surely aren't going to ask for help with their depression. As a result, there are a lot of lonely men, isolated, wrestling with emotions they have no idea what to do with, which is unhealthy and often lethal.

I didn't know that day when Solomon showed up to help me move that I'd come to depend on him to keep showing up. Showing up to help me wrestle with challenges in my life way deeper than moving.

Our traditional Olive Garden chats may look like just that - chats. I assure you they have much more significance than a chat.

The beauty of those chats isn't that we show up there for one another, it's that neither of us is afraid to ask the other to do the showing up.

It's important to show up for one another in life, but that often starts with a willingness to ask someone to show up for you. It's been my experience that a lot more people than we can imagine want to show up, they just sometimes need an invitation to do so.

Don't rob people of the chance to be the good in your life they really long to be more than you can know. Ask someone to show up for you. Chances are they will. And chances are, that will be more life-giving than you ever could have imagined.