The Power of Words | Simone Biles: When It Is Hard to Ask for a Hand

Imagine cooking dinner when the washing machine beeps. The groceries are still in their bags. You could ask someone to take care of one thing, but instead you keep moving, thinking it would be quicker to do it yourself.

Today’s quotation

We think we can do it on our own, but sometimes we just can’t.

Simone Biles

Not as someone with every answer

Gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from several events at Tokyo 2020 to prioritize her physical and mental health. In an Olympics.com interview published in October 2021, she also spoke about the difficulty of finding herself at the forefront of a mental health conversation.

She was still going through her own experience, she explained, and different people go through that process differently. She was not speaking as someone who had found one answer for everyone.

In that conversation, she discussed relying on those close to her, including her parents, coaches, and her boyfriend at the time. Today’s sentence is an excerpt from her remarks about making use of that support.

One task, rather than the whole explanation

The following is this article’s reflection. A serious situation in elite sport is not equivalent to household chores. We are taking one idea—the fact that sometimes we cannot manage alone—and considering it in an everyday setting.

Asking for help can be difficult for several reasons. The other person seems busy. Explaining feels exhausting. You have already done half of it. Sometimes there is simply nobody nearby to ask.

Being told to “rely on people more” may not help much. Still, when someone is available, perhaps you can hand over one task instead of explaining the entire situation: carrying the laundry, or putting the chilled groceries away.

Finishing that task will not remove every demand. But it may create a moment when the person at the stove is not responsible for absolutely everything.

Today does not have to match yesterday

Managing on your own once does not mean you can always do so. Biles’s sentence leaves room for that difference.

If there is someone you can comfortably ask, one small request may be enough for now. If that is not possible today, there is no need to add blaming yourself to the work already waiting.

Source and translation note

Olympics.com / Scott Bregman, Exclusive! Simone Biles on sparking mental health conversation: We’re going through it together. October 10, 2021.

The quotation reproduces one sentence from the published English interview, conducted before the Anaheim performance of the Gold Over America Tour after Tokyo 2020. The Japanese translation in the companion article is our own. The household examples and reflections are this article’s interpretation, not advice Biles gave about household chores.