Throwing Spanners to Help the Works Part 5: Loosen the grip on control

You might be familiar with the story about the guy, who out of kindness, helped a butterfly to work its way out of the cocoon?

He saw it struggling so he got a pair of scissors and cut it free.  Trouble was it couldn’t fly due to underdeveloped wings.  The struggle to get out is an important part of its  development.  

It provides a great analogy for the many problems which can surface when we ‘rescue’ others…when what they actually need is encouragement to do it themselves.

Firstly, it’s so very tempting to rescue someone.  We see them in trouble, so let’s remove their burdon. It’s genuinely a caring thing to do.

This temptation is often reinforced big time by the other person – in two ways:

• Perhaps they seek to be rescued.  I know I fall into this trap regularly.  Why struggle when someone more competent can do it for me!
• Secondly, when we rescue someone, they often thank us. Sometimes with great enthusiasm. We feel good and our desire to do it again has been reinforced. 

But when we rescue them they don’t develop.  In fact we run the risk of making them dependent on us.  It’s possible we might be playing a role in teaching them to be helpless.  That’s not good.

A wise owl once told me that one way of overcoming the desire to rescue others is to grab a spanner and throw it in the works.  Not just any spanner.  The ‘Trust Spanner’ is the one I’m thinking of.

The ‘Trust Spanner’ allows us to loosen our grip on controlling the situation.  

We don’t use the ‘Trust Spanner’ to remove all of the supports a person might need.  We might still give them some guidance, but we don’t do it for them.  

It tells us the other person can likely do it for themselves.  

So, the next time you are feeling the urge to do it for someone else, grab the ‘Trust Spanner.’  Use it to prompt some self questioning:

• ‘Do they really need me to do it for them?’ 

• ‘Is this really helping them to be better?’

• ‘Am I being caught up in the good feelings I get from rescuing them?’

• ‘What might guiding them to do it for themselves, look like?’