The Familiar Struggle
Have you ever tried to help someone who desperately needed it, only to find nothing changes? If you have, you’re likely familiar with the frustration that comes when others don’t do what you believe would help them.
My mother loves to tell the story of a friend of hers who once said to her, “Nancy. I keep telling you and telling you what you should do. You ‘yes’ me to death, and then you do things your way anyway.” And my mother replied with, “How do you think we’ve stayed friends all this time?”
Maybe you see someone you care about struggling and decide to take on part of that problem yourself. You step in,over-care, and begin carrying responsibilities that don’t belong to you, all in the name of helping.
Most people don’t struggle because they don’t care. They struggle because they don’t know what belongs to them and what doesn’t.
What “Staying in Your Lane” Really Means
Staying in your lane means you are focused on what’s yours: your actions, your thoughts, and your choices. Everything else belongs to other people.
People often confuse overstepping with helping and controlling with caring. What it may feel like your doing is having the opposite effect from what you intend.
Why It’s So Hard to Stay in Your Lane
There are three common drivers:
1. Emotional discomfort
It’s hard to watch people we care about struggle. Reaching in to fix things can feel natural, but often, we’re not only trying to relieve their discomfort, we’re also trying to relieve our own.
2. Misunderstood responsibility
We can mistakenly believe we are responsible for other people’s outcomes. With small children, that’s is partly true, but when we continue carrying that responsibility beyond what’s appropriate, we take away opportunities for growth and ownership.
3. Control disguised as care
Want the best for can quietly turn into directing them, sometimes subtly, sometimes not.
People generally want to use their own agency to solve their own problems. Occasionally, they may even follow your advice, only so they can point back to you if it doesn’t work.
Why Advice Rarely Works
Advice is tricky. It can feel helpful, but it often misses the mark. When you give advice, you step into ownership of something that doesn’t belong to you.
Advice doesn’t create insight. It tells someone what to do instead of helping them see for themselves. I remember a client asking, “Why does my son always have to do things the hard way?” My reply was, “Perhaps it’s not the hard way for him. It’s simply his way.”
Advice can also create resistance. People naturally push back when their autonomy feels threatened.
People don’t change because they’re told what to do; they change when they see something differently and believe that change will help them get more of what they want.
How Coaching Helps
Coaching creates space for awareness, ownership, and intentional choice. It’s not about providing answers; it’s about helping people think more clearly.
Coaching helps people:
- clarify what’s theirs
- recognize their patterns
- choose their next steps with intention
The Mental Freedom® Connection
Mental Freedom offers a powerful lens for this work. It helps people understand: coaching framework because it focuses on understanding:
- What is their responsibility and what isn’t
- When they are choosing to be response-able, and when they are overstepping
- The difference between control and influence
- Why honoring another person’s agency matters
No one else has your exact combination of Connection, Freedom, Significance, Satefy & Security, and Joy. They don’t share your experiences, values, or consequences. And they are the ones who will live with the results of their choices… not you.
Staying in your lane strengthens your own agency, while allowing others to develop theirs.
Coaching is the difference between giving advice and learning how to guide someone through their own thinking.
Reflection
Where might you be stepping outside your lane in your effort to help?
