Be the Lighthouse, not the Preserver!

In this blog, I compare the role of a life preserver with a lighthouse.

You feel it mostly intuitive coming. A loved one is going to do something that you already know that it will not expire, such as the one hopes that it will go. You feel a deep sense of empathy for the possible “go wrong” with all the effort and wasted energy. You think: ” Ai, just don’t do it!”. You experience maybe even a physical discomfort, like tightening of your belly and throat.

Take the time to consider how you typically react and ask yourself the following question:

Are you going to help the person by directly throwing in a life preserver or will you look at this maybe first from a small distance?

From your sensitive self, you may probably want to help by immediately throwing out a life preserver. This support testifies to involvement and connection with the person in need of help. You throw the life preserver, because you know that everything stays safe and the harmony supposedly stays in balance. That saves the other, after all, a lot of discomfort.

As usually your first inclination is to directly help the other by throwing out a life preserver.

I would like to focus on the moment you decide to throw a life preserver to the other person.

“You look around you, searching for the life preserver, and you grab the life preserver, the excess remaining sand slips between your fingers, and in the meantime you are hastily running to the sea. You can’t even hear the waves anymore, your heart is beating in your throat, you make the jump into the cold water and throw the lifebuoy. Fortunately, just in time before something was going to happen!”

The remarkable thing about it is that you yourself afterwards have to process all stimuli and usually forget the crucial self- care.

By this well-meant approach, the crucial self-care gets less attention than it deserves. The other person had not even had the chance to ask you for this mental salvation. How much space for discovery, questioning, spatial thinking, developing self-esteem and problem-solving ability remained there for this person actually?

A life preserver and a lighthouse act both from the best of intentions, but there is still a substantial difference in the implementation.

A lighthouse:

* … … keeps overview, stands above the situation and lets you know that he is present by long rays light spread. “I am here for you”.

* … … requires another response capacity yours, but also of your environment. You don’t equal the movement towards the person, but the other person has to move towards you and that enables them to be really motivated and open.

This enables the other person to learn that it’s OK for things in life to not be in balance. After all, it is more important that the other person knows how to rise and not be defeated when they are not in so-called balance.

Are you a life preserver or a lighthouse?