Simon and Garfunkel once famously sang "I am a rock, I am an island". It's a great song, but is simply isn't true! For whatever reason, we all seem afraid to ask for help, even from those closest to us, regardless of whether we need or deserve it. There's something in our society than seems to dictate that we have to do it all by ourselves ---- either the views that we'll be seen as weak, or just simply pride. This, however, doesn't seem to be true of successful people. They haven't bought into the fallacy that asking for help is wrong. They know the truth that great things are achieved when people cooperate. We all have different skills, knowledge and experiences. Each person you know is a whole new set of untapped reference material and expertise. So if you want to get hold of it and use it, all you have to do is ask them. People are rarely unwilling to assist ---- it's in our nature to be part of communities. A good example I sometimes use in seminars is to pick a delegate at random and ask him how many people he knows in total. The usual answer is somewhere between 200 and 500. For the sake of this illustration, let's select the lower figure and call it 200. Then I ask the person how many people each of those people knows. On the assumption that they have similar-sized circles, they almost certainly know at least 200 people each. On this basis, the people within one degree of separation(1:)for a person who knows 200 people comes to 40,000 ---- can you imagine the size of that experience and knowledge pool? Looking as it this way, giving your friends, family and colleagues the opportunity to help you open your resource bank to thousands of people. That's a whole army of potential volunteers all waiting to be praised! So, next time you need help, don't suffer in silence. Pick up the phone or mention it to a friend. You'll be pleasantly amazed at what you can achieve together. Based on this text successful people often have spirit of   _  .
self-confidence teamwork making efforts taking risks