Not My Problem

Everyone is different. Just getting that out of the way first.

I want to help people. Primarily, what I want to do is help people help themselves; to teach them how to fish, so to speak. Of the millions of things a person can be good at, I’m better than average at a handful – just like everybody else. So typically, my way of thinking is “If I’m good at a thing that a lot of other people struggle with, then maybe I could benefit them by sharing how I go about that thing.”

There are some big barriers to this.

First is just general humanism: People don’t want advice unless they explicitly ask for it, and a lot of times not even then. When people complain about their situation, they typically want one or more of these three things:

1. Someone to magically solve it for them.
2. Someone to tell them that they’re blameless for the situation, absolving them of personal responsibility.
3. Pity, “victim status,” or some other form of preferential treatment or consideration as a result.

So if someone says, “Ugh, I’m so broke, life isn’t fair,” they’re absolutely not asking you for help with their personal finance and budgeting. Even if someone explicitly says the words to you: “Hey, could you help me with my personal finance and budgeting,” then there’s only about a 30% chance that they actually want that, and a 70% chance that it’s a covert way of asking for one of the other three things.

I’ve written about this phenomenon before, but the short answer is basically just to live your life in a way that makes the things you’re good at very visible, and if people ask for your help in one of those spheres, carefully evaluate whether they actually want the help. If they do, give them as much help as you possibly can.

But there’s also, I’ve discovered, a second layer to this problem. Namely: I don’t always know why I’m good at something and other people aren’t.

Here’s a real example that comes to mind – I would never have the hubris to say pointedly “I’m a good parent,” because only time will tell. But I can confidently say I’m a non-stressed parent. The existence of my children and their presence in my life and my day is a joy, and it never causes me stress, frustration, etc. Their behavior aligns to my expectations well, I’ve had to give my children any sort of “punishment” fewer than a half-dozen times in my life, and I never find myself rubbing my temples and wishing for “just five minutes of peace and quiet” or anything like that.

Meanwhile, I see other parents doing that sort of stuff all the time. Lamenting about chaos or stress, trying in vain to correct the same behaviors in their children over and over, feeling crushed under the weight of the responsibilities or sacrifices of parenting.

I want to help! But here’s my barrier: I’m pretty sure (though definitely not certain) what works for me. Why only pretty sure? Well, maybe I’m really good at managing all that stuff. But maybe my kids are exceptionally good! Maybe I wouldn’t actually do as well with a different set of kids, so my success is partially – or largely – due to good fortune rather than my skills as a father. I can’t exactly run a double-blind study here.

Also, I’m not sure at all why other people, individually, have this level of stress. I don’t have a camera in their house; I can observe maybe 2% of their total parenting time when we’re together or cross paths at events and such. So maybe their kids are unusually stress-inducing!

Heck, maybe I’m just a genetic freak with unusually low cortisol levels, or theirs are unusually high. Life is complex, parenting doubly so. Everyone is different, like I said. Even if 100% of my success is due to my direct effort (which almost certainly isn’t true), that doesn’t mean my methods would duplicate perfectly in another home.

A core life principle I believe in is this: If you want success in a particular sphere and you’re not getting it, but someone else is, you should examine how they’re achieving that success and at least experiment with those methods instead of your own. Because I do that myself, I try to make myself available for the reverse: If I do have a lot of success in a particular sphere, and others don’t always, then I want to help. But when people have a problem that’s not my problem, personally, it’s not always clear the best way to do that.

Doesn’t mean I won’t try, of course. I can always look for someone who has a lot of success helping people with problems that they don’t personally experience, and ask them how they do it!