I Wasn't as Ready to Receive as I Thought I Was

Prefer to watch? The video's below. Prefer to read? Keep going — this one's for you either way.

I recently spent a month living in a hotel while working remote, and it taught me something I didn't expect: I am not as ready to receive as I thought I was.

Here's the small thing that cracked it open. I had a very hard time letting housekeeping in. Not room service — housekeeping. Someone coming in to make my bed, change the sheets, take out the trash, vacuum, wipe things down. I'm not a messy person, and I always make my bed no matter where I'm staying — a hotel, a friend's house, it doesn't matter. So it wasn't about my space needing help. It was about taking the Do Not Disturb sign off the door and letting someone else in to do it for me.

It took me about five days before I finally admitted, "this isn't going to work" and let them come in. I was sitting at the desk working the whole time, and it just felt so strange. It wasn't about anyone stealing my things. It was about allowing someone to help me — allowing someone to clean up after me — even though I'd had a housekeeper growing up, even though I'd stayed in plenty of hotels before. This time, it felt like real resistance.

That resistance made me start asking bigger questions: where else in my life am I not allowing support? Where else am I not letting people simply do their jobs — because that's literally what housekeeping's job is, to make sure my stay is good. Where am I being so rigid about needing help that I'm getting in my own way?

I'm a lot better now — I take the sign off the door almost every other day at this point. But sitting with that discomfort taught me five things I keep coming back to.

1. Let people do their job. Nobody wants to be micromanaged, and if you're doing someone else's job for them, you're not doing yours. My job at that hotel was to work — not to clean the room. Letting housekeeping do their job was its own kind of respect, both for them and for myself.

2. Redefine what self-care actually means. For me, self-care isn't just nails and a mask and a massage. It's literally taking care of yourself — if you're hungry, you eat. If you need rest, you rest. If someone keeps crossing a line, you have the conversation or decide internally that it's not going to work for you anymore. It's whatever actually meets the need in that moment.

3. Notice your needs before your body forces you to. I realized I now had more time to take care of myself, and that felt almost scary, because I'm so used to being on the go that I don't notice I need something until my hand starts shaking or my throat gets dry. Paying attention became less about managing my environment and more about checking in with myself internally.

4. Ask where else you're refusing help. If you're truly ready to receive, why aren't you taking the sign off the door? Why aren't you letting anyone else do the thing they're right there, ready and willing, to do? What was I supposed to do if I ran out of towels — carry them down to the laundry myself? It doesn't make sense, and yet that's exactly the pattern so many of us run on.

5. Write it down before it gets worse. I'm a pen-and-paper person to the core, and I mean that literally here — grab a pen, grab paper, and write down where you're doing this in your own life. Seeing it in black and white makes it real in a way that just thinking about it doesn't. It helps you catch yourself doing someone else's job for them, or refusing help that's already right there, before you're the one shaking from hunger or exhaustion because you wouldn't let anyone in.

I'm sharing this so you can catch it in yourself sooner than I did — before you get to the point where you're desperate for the help you kept refusing.

👉 Your turn: where in your life are you not letting someone else do their job?