How to Help Others - by Juliet Ambali

Making other people better at something requires more effort than we need to make ourselves better at the same thing. In other words, it is much easier to tell somebody what they should do if they can see we have done the same thing ourselves.

Our lives say much more than our mouths can ever articulate. How we talk to people, how we react to situations, in whom we put our faith, how promptly and genuinely we care about other people, and a host of other life matrices combine to give us away quicker than we are ready to defend ourselves.

So, the work starts with us. We are better placed to suggest strategies to other people only if we have applied such strategies--or similar ones--to our lives, and we are currently prospering as a result of that.

It is easier for people to believe what has previously worked for someone else. This explains why big organisations spend a lot of money inviting successful people to talk to their members of staff. People with success stories tend to get the attention of people faster than people who spend the whole day talking about other people's success, rather than their own.

You have to have a success story to be qualified to tell other people how to succeed. Otherwise you waste your time with them. A published writer is qualified to talk about how to write and publish a book.

Let us learn patience. While at it, let us take quality time to build ourselves up. Determine to succeed. Identify your weaknesses and spend time to deal with them. Be detailed while you are at it.

And at the end of such personal development exercise, when and if need be to tell others how to succeed, it would be to reinforce what our lives have already told them.