Where and how do you draw the line between teaching/advising and the extreme of almost doing too much for them.

I don't instruct as a martial artist, I am nowhere near the level to do so however I do instruct outside of the martial arts (as a Civilian Instructor for air cadets and a first yeat advisor for my university) and have been doing so for almost four years now. I have taken courses upon courses on how to teach as an air cadet and my job as a Campus Leadership Advisor consistently puts me in a situation to .. well advise. I pride my ability to teach however adivising is where I have some problems.

My problem is I am all to concerned with pleasing and helping everybody to the point where I know I go too far sometimes and do too much. People don't learn if they don't do things themselves, you can guide only so far.

Everybody always looks for the easy way out, asks for the answers instead of searching for them themselves and sometimes I do stop and say, look you need to do that for yourself but more often then not I go the distance in my pursuit to make everyone else's life easier while in turn complicating mine. I spend more time worring about if every one else's desires are satisfied without every giving any thought to my own.

So how do you draw that line between helping and doing ... and how do you stop yourself from crossing it?

I really don't see this as a problem, Christie. You can't move everyone's arms & legs for them. And to really help them you've got to make them do it themselves - with conviction!

I agree 100% with Ironfoot.

MA is about tough love - I can tell you how to block a high kick till I'm blue in the face, but you have to actually do it to really understand.

So, if you are truly interested in helping people (as far as MA), then you NEED to let them do things for themselves. I have found in life, this is true for most other things as well.

also sopmething i've noticed from good teachers (of basically anything) if someone asks how to do 'X' then ask them in return why they think we do 'X' to make them think about what they're hearing....also a good way to make sure they're actually listening.