If your doorbell rang right now and you looked through your Ring camera to discover a bullied 12-year-old boy who's looking for friends, how would you respond?

I'll tell you what this family in Texas did: a couple and their 2-year-old daughter, at their own admission, became family for this boy named Shaden.

Here's the story in question.

Screenshot taken of the video linked above. Credit to Inside Edition for the video.

I’m not here to fully regurgitate a story that you can learn about by watching the video above, so here are two important reminders I took away from this incident.

Reminder #1. Have the balls to ask for help.

Shaden did something a lot of people are afraid to do:

He admitted he was being bullied and that he wanted help.

A lot of people are under this misguided impression that saying something like you’re being bullied would throw you at the bottom of the social totem pole where everyone shuns you.

Maybe that’s the case…if you tell that to the wrong kind of people.

People are mistaken when they think that by asking for help, they are utterly incompetent and incapable. These mentalities are damaging and serve to harm your ego and dignity.

But in spite of this, whether because Shaden didn’t know about the potential downsides to this way of thinking or he didn’t care, he went around asking for help and friends and he found a new family.

By his own admission, his confidence has since gone through the roof after finding success.

You have to understand and remember that life is not a journey that you’re meant to embark on entirely alone. It is natural to want and need help, so don’t think any less of yourself just because you do.

Would Shaden feel this good today if he never bothered to ask for help and friendship? Probably not. He’d more likely be in a worse spot if he didn’t ask.

Have the balls to ask for help.

Reminder #2. Be willing to provide a helping hand.

All the balls in the world don’t matter if nobody’s around to willingly give help.

You can’t force someone to like you. You can’t force someone to be your friend. That has to come from the other end.

I’m not saying you have to welcome everyone into your life with open arms. Not everyone who seeks you for help needs to become your family.

But...

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If you exercise a little empathy and give someone a little push when they stumble and lose their way, you’ll both be better for it.

This family went a step further for Shaden and basically call him family since the incident, but like I said earlier, you don’t have to go to that length yourself. There are different levels of helping people out.

I also understand that you’re not under any obligation to help someone out. You don’t have to give a part of yourself to everyone who asks for it. You have yourself to sustain too, and you shouldn’t put yourself at the mercy of everyone who comes to you for help.

Trust me, as someone who did this growing up, I learned the hard way what happens when you give yourself entirely to others. In the end, you leave nothing for yourself. And in my particular case, I gave to people who only wanted and demanded more, and they were never grateful for what I did.

Ask The Giving Tree how genuinely happy, whole, and fulfilled she really is by the end of the book.

But if you can afford it, and if it wouldn’t inconvenience you greatly, it doesn’t hurt to provide that helping hand. I can promise you as someone who got a helping hand during the darkest times in my childhood, that helping hand can make an absolute world of difference.

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Sometimes, your helping hand can even be the deciding factor between life and death. You don’t know what people are going through.

Exercise some degree of empathy and don’t just look after your own hide.

At some point in life, everyone gets help with something. Pass it on.