Brian Laird on WNYC, and for our last 15 minutes or so today, we're going to open up the phones for a call in to invite your stories about moments in which you have asked for help or helped others in need.

212-433 WNYC. Why do we ask this today? Well, recently, Julie Beck wrote in the Atlantic

about how planning her wedding last year made her realize, as she

put it, that quote, the big life moments offer permission to ask for assistance, you should seize it.

Now, before she and her fiance could think of asking for help, family and friends offered to

help plan the bachelorette party, make flower arrangements,

and decorate the venue. As grateful as Beck was, however, she worried that she was asking too much

from her friends, even though they offered to help. So one question we're asking is,

have you ever felt like this? Do you find yourself asking, are you sure, in response to a

friend or a loved one offering to help? Give us a call or text. Maybe you even read that story and said,

yeah, that sounds like something I went through. Or, oh, what's her problem? Of course, you should just

accept their help. 212,433, WNYC,

212, 433-9-6-92, call or text. There was a study in 2008 cited here by the American

Psychological Association that found that people who need help tend to predict that others will say no,

underestimating the likelihood of getting help by as much as 50%. Have you ever gone out on an

uncomfortable limb to ask for help and were maybe surprised by how people, how willing people were? Has anyone ever surprised you by showing up for you

when you weren't sure if they would? Or maybe you surprised yourself by saying yes, this could be

from that angle too. Maybe you surprised yourself by saying yes when someone asked for help

with something like planning a

wedding or maybe something more intense. 212-433, WNIC, 212, 433-9-6-92. A little more. While we

tend to overestimate how inconvenient our requests for help are, right?

That was part of the premise in the article that the Psychological Association found,

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