Have you ever had to stop and ask for directions?

You’re driving along and making good time. You turn up the radio and nudge your foot firmly against the accelerator.

Perhaps your mind is elsewhere or maybe you’re busy singing along to your favourite song but you eventually come to the realisation – you’re lost!

Discovering you’re lost is quite a strange phenomenon. At first the differences are subtle – the signs begin to change, roads don’t appear to be where they should be and the countryside slowly dissolves into the city (or vice versa). It often takes a while before you’re hit with the inevitable truth – something you have being trying to deny for the previous ten miles. 

You pull over to the side of the road, wind down the window and sheepishly lift your head through. You usher over a ‘local’ and rather pitifully utter those immortal words “Excuse me. I appear to be lost…”

What happens next always seems to come as a huge surprise – most people want to help! I think the British have this natural assumption that the general public feel awkward in this situation - but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

When you ask for directions you get a wonderful variety of responses. Even people who have no idea, don’t know the area or have a zero sense of direction apologise for not being a walking TomTom, before looking around to see if they can introduce you to someone else who ‘may have a clue’.

So what have we learnt? Well, most people do want to help and are often flattered to be asked.

So given this fact, how good are you at asking for advice? Finding out directions frequently puts us in a situation where we have to seek advice so why not apply this more readily in your own life?

I’ve often spoken of the four magic words you need to know if you want fantastic free advice forever. They are so simple that you would be forgiven for not realising their power. So what are these words, I hear you say? Well, I’ll put you out of your misery, they are:

‘I need your help’.

Now this may be a bit of an anti-climax but I guarantee if you use this phrase you will stimulate a brilliant response. After all, the human brain is programmed to help when it hears these words.

It does seem ludicrously simple but give it a try. Next time you need some assistance, instead of asking ‘can you help me’ use ‘I need your help’. Test it out over the next week and rather than going straight to Google, try a human instead.

Be Brilliant!