Your Weakness Is My Gain

Everyone has their weakness, of which I mean personality wise. Our achilles heel where others can gain the advantage on us. As much as anyone will say that they don't want to take advantage of their friends, deep down I think we all know that we do it. It's just to what degree do you do it. If you constantly take advantage of your friends, well, you probably won't stay friends for much longer.

I know my weakness is that I'm too willing to help. I like the feeling I get when I help people. However, sometimes this means that you get take advantage of. For instance, from my previous post about being a carpet mat, I used to help people a lot. However, nowadays, I'm extremely happy that I still help people as it makes me happy, but to lesser extents.

If friends ask me for help, I still do my best to help them unless its really inconvenient. Instead of saying yes, I know say no without feeling any guilt at all. I mean why should I, they're the ones asking for help. In the past though, if someone put the hard word on me, I would feel guilty and say yes. Hence it was funny when a work mate asked if I wanted to volunteer for the work BBQ. I saw how it worked last time, you stand there for a whole hour where no one appreciates what you've done and you don't get to eat the whole time. Hence, I politely refused. I then jokingly said "I'm sure .... would like to help" and pointed at my work mate next to me. I thought he was going to just say no as well, but then the other work mate started with the story. She was being genuine when she said how volunteering really gave her joy. I think my other work mate saw it as a bit of a guilt trip. Hence he couldn't say no and said he would help cook at the BBQ. I laughed out really hard.

I gave his stick about volunteering all day. I asked him why he said yes when he didn't really want to do it. He said that he felt guilty otherwise. He has the same weakness of not being able to say no. Many people have it and it makes them really angry that others just assume that they would want to do something. It's brought on by your own past actions though since you never say no. So it's just a vicious cycle that keeps going where others may or may not pick up on but will continuous to take advantage of. I glad that I have realised my own problem and have made big strides in changing. I'm a lot less upset nowadays since I only do things that I want to do.