In this blog post, I am taking a different direction in my personal relation to small businesses. Although this will most definitely not relate to other small businesses, it connects with me and I think the overall message is important to share and for people to understand.

I am a psychology major and have always had a passion for helping others around me in any way possible. So much so, that even those who are closest to me have mentioned many times that I put themselves or others before myself. There have been countless times when I go out of my way to make sure those closest to me are okay, whether that is just being there for them, giving them advice, or doing small acts of service that I think will cheer them up. Concerning my father and his small business, there were many times when both my mother and I would go down to the store to visit, and while we were there, we would walk around and do some house cleaning tasks just to help out. Or, as I have mentioned in previous blog posts, on the weekends we would go to various stores trying to find the best deals or come up with new, different items that we think might sell in the store. These were little things that we did not only because we wanted to, but also because we wanted to help the business and my father as much as we could. However, there would be many times when we would show up with the new items and he would be thankful but still a little upset and it would take him a long time to actually put them out on the shelves.

One of the biggest projects I took on just a few summers ago also consisted of helping my father and his business, by fully deep-cleaning the entire store while trying my best to make it look as brand-new as possible. One of the main reasons I decided to do this besides just wanting to help out the family business was because was father was hospitalized at that time I knew he hated being away from the store so I just wanted to give him one less thing to worry about. Although the store was small, it was not deep-cleaned the way I was doing it for a very long time. I spent over 40 hours over the course of a few days, while also going out of my way to buy extra cleaning supplies that he or the workers could use in the future to ensure they kept the place up to par. Yes, he never asked me to do this and although I did not ask I was compensated for my work. However, based on past experiences I knew deep down that things would go to the way it was in no time.

I don’t know his exact reasons for not always wanting help or not wanting to push himself or his business to the best of its abilities. However, through these experiences and others in my life, I started to learn the important lesson of that you can only help those who want to be helped. For me, this lesson ties into many aspects of my life, including my future career in psychology and the fact that I willingly choose to help others the best I can. For a long time, I would get upset and frustrated at the fact that when I would go to help people or give them advice, instead of reflecting they would just go back to the exact same thing as before. Not only for the career path that I plan on taking, but in general life lessons, it is important to understand and acknowledge this concept and make sure that you tell yourself you did all that you could. In most cases, the ball ends up in the other person’s court and sadly there is nothing you can do but hope they make the “right” choice.