I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.
Today’s tip is to practice gratitude. List the kind things others have done for you.
I’ve thanked people for their help, which is hard for me. I’ve learned to be gracious and accepting of help, but I don’t really like it. I try to do most things for myself in the world.
However, I was injured recently, and while I could get around, it was painful. My wife, daughter, and even the kids I coach noticed and helped me out in a few ways:
- bringing me breakfast in bed
- getting my computer for me from another room
- carrying my backpack
- going to retrieve my phone from another room
- bringing equipment into the gym and taking it out.
I thanked everyone and managed to appreciate their efforts without feeling sorry for myself. I haven’t always been able to do that.
Voice of the DBA 
I think that a lot of people are in IT because of bit of a different mindset to begin with. I’ve always been independent and it’s always been difficult for me to accept help in my personal life.
There’s also the problem of people with the best of intentions causing more pain by “helping” than it’s worth.
For example, I was working a whole lot of overtime one summer and I had a huge lawn to mow. My brother decided to help by using my lawn tractor to mow the lawn for me. He ran over a hose with the blades running which, of course, destroyed the hose, actually bent the outdoor faucet (which I had to replace along with the pipe that penetrated the wall, bent the blades on the lawnmower, and put dome serious burn-dents in the belt.
During that same summer, my other brother decided to surprise with by painting my kitchen for me. He didn’t clean the walls nor use a primer and the paint started peeling after about 4 months. Of course all the paint now had to be removed instead of just cleaning the walls.
It was the summer from hell, for sure. I had a hard-packed dirt parking area that I parked my truck in. My farming neighbor noticed that I had a couple of pot holes starting to form and so roto-tilled the whole area for me. .
It’s nice to help folks but help is like writing software… make sure that the help is both wanted and done right.
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