Sunday Feast: Your Confidence Cottage, Part 3

Looking for your helpers

Confidence Cottage

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

-- Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)

Focusing on help received from strangers

Anita Perez Ferguson, friend, reader, and author of an award-winning Young Adult historical fiction trilogy, suggested a great addition to the Confidence Cottage: helpers. Trusting that helpers will arrive in difficult times is a major confidence booster.

As a journal exercise, make a list of times when unexpected people have shown up to help you. 

For example, when I was in my early 20s, my husband was in Vietnam and I was living in Tulsa where our families lived. One winter weekend, my brother-in-law, who was going to school about an hour and a half away, caught a ride to Tulsa to see his girlfriend. He didn’t want his folks to know he was in town so I offered to drive him back to school.

The snow started shortly after we left and by the time we arrived, it was sticking and showed signs of becoming a serious storm. I needed to work the next day so I headed back anyway and wound up sliding off the road and rolling into a ditch. I was not hurt but definitely in need of help. 

There was a long line of cars headed the other way, taking their kids back to school and several stopped to make sure I was okay. One man took charge. He put his daughter in a car with strangers headed toward campus and drove me home. That was it. A stranger helping someone in trouble and also trusting other strangers to take care of his own daughter. 

I have other stories about the generosity of strangers and I’m sure you do also. However, it wasn’t until Anita mentioned it, that I thought about how much confidence comes from knowing that helpers are almost always there when we need them. People are out there rescuing animals and people; donating time, money and food; building trails, cleaning beaches, planting flowers, teaching children to read, helping immigrants settle into a new land.

There is so much good going back and forth every day, however, it’s the horrible stuff we tend to hear about. Let’s spend a few minutes lining our cottage with stories of strangers who have helped us and make us feel like we are interconnected and live in a benevolent universe.

Please share a story about a time when helpers came to your rescue.

Here are links to the earlier parts of this exercise:

Part 1: Energy and Confidence - Revisit your successes.

Sunday Feast: Energy and Confidence

Part 2: Build your own Confidence Cottage and find meaningful artifacts which remind you of your successes.

Build your own Confidence Cottage

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