How often do you get hit with requests to help friends and family with projects? Do you have a lot of people asking you for your help? Do they ask you to be their engagement & wedding photographer for free? It’s good to have a great social web to be a part of, because it’s companionship that often makes life worth living. Spending time around other people is not only healthy, but rewarding, enriching, and usually just fun. It’s also good to have such a safety net around you should you ever find yourself in a time of need. However, the constant barrage of requests for helping those around you with their projects can wear you down, especially if you say ‘yes’ to everything.
It’s even worse if you just feel like you’re less than worthy if you don’t help others, which means you might find yourself volunteering needlessly in order to look and feel better. Helping others is always a good thing, but you also need to balance or at least juggle your priorities and responsibilities while keeping enough time for yourself to unwind and relax. Keep reading to learn 5 ways you can deal with project requests for family and friends:
1) Prioritize The Relationships: Sometimes this is easier said than done. If you have a weekend where a friend asks you to help him work on his car, but you also know you need to be putting together furniture for your kid’s bedroom, then your kids should always come first. A real friend will understand that family comes first, especially if you’re a parent.
2) Know What’s In Your Wheelhouse: Is someone reaching out to you for help because they genuinely need another pair of hands? Or is it because they actually don’t know what they’re doing? It’s fine to help others with skills you might have that they don’t, but make sure you’re not getting dumped on. Also, if you’re really that good at something, maybe you should be charging money for it as a side income. If you’re really good at anything, it’s not financially smart to do it for free.
3) Find Other Ways To Support Someone: You can often still help someone without saying a direct ‘yes’ to what they’re specifically asking. Has a friend asked you to come to help them pack up their house and move? Maybe you can have lunch delivered to them while they work. Maybe that friend wanting help on his car can come over and help you with the kid’s furniture before you go work on his car.
4) Block Out Time For You: How much time you need for you is something you need to discover for yourself, but once you figure it out, stick with it as consistently as you can. You can’t help anyone if you’ve got nothing left to give.
5) Say No: Sometimes, you just need to say no. The further out you get in your social circle, the more likely it is that you should probably decline a request from someone for help with whatever project that they have in mind. Also, consider each project. Some are honestly more important than others.
Now that you’ve gone through reading all of this, you’ve learned 5 ways you can deal with projects for friends and family. It’s always good to support those you love (or just like), because a healthy relationship is often a two-way street that works wonder for both participants. Having said that, you might not expect much quick return from something like raising kids. In any event, should ever feel overwhelmed by all that you’re asked or expected to do for others, uses these 5 ways of managing it all.