February 4, 2021 | Caroline Marlow
With a Little Help from Our Friends (Part 3): How to Gain Support to Help You Thrive.
Our guest blog is from Dr Caroline Marlow of L&M Consulting Ltd. A Chartered Psychologist, she specialises in wellbeing and performance psychology. In this third of a three blog series, Caroline encourages and helps us to seek the support that is essential for helping us to thrive.
Gaining other’s support is not just for difficult times. It is also one of the most important things that we can do to help us develop and thrive. This is because social support can improve our psychological wellbeing by helping us to feel: competent, in control, valued, supported and part of a community.
But we need to use support well.
In Blog 1, we looked at how you can build your support network and plan to use support more effectively. Here, we look at the types of support that can help us: make the most of ourselves, increase the chance of us achieving what we want, and to thrive.
The Golden Rule is Don’t leave gaining good support to chance:The more specific you are in knowing what you need at any particular time, the better you will be at finding the right person to help you, and the more likely it is that you will gain the support neededto progress.
To help you thrive, your support network should include people who can help you:
Nurture a Desire to Create or Seize Opportunities to Grow:Often it seems easier to settle where we are, but is doing so best for us in the longer term? Find people who you can share yourdreams and aspirations with; people who believe in you and your potential to grow. Ask them to encourage you to take initiative and to challenge or extend yourself to see what a different future might bring or look like. Also, find someone to reinforce that every experience, successful ornot, can lead to growth and further opportunities.
See Life’s Opportunities:Sometimes our insecurities lead us tonot see opportunities that are there for the taking; opportunities that others see and take. Find people who know your strengths and can help you recognise opportunities that you might otherwise not see or dismiss as too difficult, threatening or as likely to fail. Specifically, ask people who might know how to find the opportunities you want, however big or small. Here you need to have as many people as possible – the more eyes on the case, the better!
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