It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who staunchly supported the self reliance movement. These days, everyone is too busy with their own lives to help you. Therefore, developing self sufficiency is the way to go in order to go through life. Depend on nobody else but yourself.
It’s a fact that being self dependent is better than being dependent on somebody else. When you depend on others, there’s a high chance that they will disappoint you. They have their own lives that they have to take care of first. So then, now’s the time to actually know how to become self reliant.
By the way, self reliance is not about doing everything yourself and disregarding everyone else’s opinions. It’s not about spending your time alone without anyone to share it with. it’s about making sure that you are able to think for yourself and embracing who you are as a person.
The number one enemy is conformity. There’s a popular saying of cliques, tribes, and within society. “Conform or perish” is the popular saying. However, you don’t have to conform to anyone else’s expectations, wants, and needs. You can go forth and try to accomplish things on your own.
You could have the most friends in the entire world yet still be the most self reliant person in the entire world. Depend on yourself, your thoughts, and your instincts because it’s the best way to go through life. In stressful situations, other people can’t make decisions and think through things for you.
Don’t be sheep and think and make decisions of your own accord. Whether you fail or succeed is irrelevant, it’s whether you are the one who made your own choices that matters.
How to Increase Your Own Self Reliance
One self reliance move you can do is to SLAP that social share button and post to your favorite social media! These articles take me a very long time to produce so I can add value to my readers. If there’s one thing you can do for me, please consider sharing this article with your friends.
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So with that said, let’s go over the concrete ways to increase your self dependency.
1) Live Alone and Without Roommates to be Self Reliant
This doesn’t mean permanently. It could be temporary. I’ve lived with roommates before and the one thing that I could not do is talk to myself without disturbing others. I enjoy talking through ideas with myself out loud instead of internalizing it because it helps me think better and more clearly.
Once I started living alone, I was able to talk through my ideas and my thoughts way more. There’s a difference between being alone and feeling lonely and I do not feel lonely. Self reliance means being OK doing things by yourself without the need for others.
it’s great if others are there but they shouldn’t be a necessity. You should be completely fine if you decide to go out to the marketplace all by yourself. Once you experienced what self reliance by not having roommates feels like, then you can reevaluate and see if you would like to continue or not live in such a way.
However, the ultimate choice should be there for you.
2) Stop Asking for Permission, Just Do It
When we are little, school teaches us to respect authority. That is the absolute wrong lesson to learn. Stop respecting authority and thinking they have the final say in your life. In elementary, we had to ask for permission to go to the restroom. Are you kidding me?
We have to ask for permission to do something that literally keeps us alive? What? We should go to the restroom whenever we feel like it. It will take some time to adjust to the change in psychology. The most common things people use to establish authority are age and college degrees.
People think that if they are older than you, they are superior than you. Stop listening to that line of thinking. Those people are delusional people who have a dying need to protect their own ego. Age doesn’t matter. What matters is what that person actually accomplished in their life.
Self reliance is when you know to stop asking for permission from authoritative figures and just do it. Authority made people do things that are morally and legally wrong in the past.
3) Go Out Alone and Practice Self Reliance
To be completely self reliant, don’t text others how your day is going or what it feels like to be outside alone. Just enjoy the moment for what it really is and let things flow. When you go out to the park by yourself, there’s no need to talk to others and catch up with them. Actually look around. Be present.
Enjoy the nature for what it really is and actually appreciate how things are. There’s an art to doing things alone and by yourself. You don’t have to accommodate everyone else’s needs, you don’t have to find out what schedule works for everyone. All you have to do is show up.
Spend a weekend doing things that you would like to do with others. Be amazed at how great doing things by yourself actually can be. Self reliance allows you to do this without caring about other people’s judgements. There’s no need to expect a magical night but see how great going out alone can be.
4) Communicate Your Needs to Others
Expect your needs to be met. This may sound like you are dependent on others, but as long as you are actually not dependent on whether others meet your needs, it is self reliance. Whether others choose to accommodate your needs or not, it’s nothing personal. You still find out ways to have your needs met anyway.
Figure out a way for others to accept your point of view. If your point of view is incorrect, then it’s time to change. However, make sure that you are changing for principled reasons. Not just because others are telling you to, but because there are legitimate reasons for you to do so.
Instead of paving the way for others, sometimes, you have to expect others to pave the way for you. Otherwise, you will forever spend your life as a giver while takers take advantage of you and walk all over you. Trust me from someone who’s been an eternal giver. Once you give people an inch, they expect a mile afterwards.
5) Assert and State Your Opinion
There is a time to remain quiet about your opinions. Things such as politics where people are very passionate about is not smart to discuss if it’s not a trusted person. However, self reliance states that there are appropriate times when you should assert and state your opinions.
That is a classic case of brutal honesty. As long as you are not doing it in an “in your face” way and delivering the message in a neutral tone, there’s nothing wrong you’re doing. Don’t let others talk over you. It’s one thing if you are hogging the conversation so that others can’t even speak.
It’s another thing if others talk over you without caring about your thoughts. You deserve to be heard. Unfortunately, in a group setting, it’s almost a given that you have to fight to get your voice heard. People are going to overlap over you and talk over you. Don’t let them and assert your opinion.
6) Care About Your Own Goals
Yes, world hunger exists. Yes, it shouldn’t exist. However, do you really have the time and the resources to make any meaningful impact towards it? If you positively impact one person’s life, that’s a great deed you did. However, if you take care of yourself and become a powerful person in decades, you can potentially make an even bigger impact.
Self reliance is not about ignoring every important and controversial issue in the world. It’s about taking care of your own self first before you can lend a helping hand to others. By trying to take care of everybody, you end up taking care of nobody. Go in stages and tackle one goal at a time.
Whether we like it or not, there are limited resources in the world. There’s no way to help others if you don’t help yourself first. Take care of your own goals first. Unapologetically and bravely go towards your goals and achieve them. As long as you are not doing anything unethical or illegal, you have nothing to apologize for going after it.
7) Stop Asking for Advice, Lose or Win By Yourself
There are many articles that I read that said “the biggest indicator of success is when you listen to others”. BS. There are so many times that I listened to others only to fall straight on my face. It’s one thing to fail because you made the choices yourself. However, when you fail when others told you to is when you are powerless.
At that moment, even if you correctly blame others for their incorrect advice, they will blame you right back and say “you still chose to do so at the end of the day”. Therefore, practice self reliance. Listen, respect, and take the other people’s advice into consideration. However, if you disagree with it, disagree with it.
You do not want to win or lose because of other people, you want to win or lose because of yourself. That’s when you can factually and objectively look behind and see whether you could have made a different choice. What YOU could have absolutely done differently.
The only person in the world you can 100% control is yourself.
8) Accept Responsibility for Your Life For Self Reliance
You may have been dealt a bad hand through no fault of your own. There’s no questioning it. Whether we like it or not, we don’t choose how we start our life. How or when you start your life is never up to you. However, your middle and end of your life is dependent on your choices.
Your life could be particularly bad. However, no matter where you are in life, you have the power to pull yourself from the bootstraps and soar to untouchable heights. Everyone in the developed world has the absolute power to do so. It’s a matter of working additional hours or figuring out how to solve other people’s problems for a profit.
Or it could be because you want to rebuild a relationship with a long lost son or daughter. Whatever the case may be, there’s plenty of time to repair damaged relationships. Self reliance means that you realize that you have the power to do so. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, it matters how you’re going to move forward from it.
Accept responsibility and the world will be free.
9) Learn Street Smart Skills
There’s book smart and street smart. Self reliance requires you to be street smart more than book smart. Do you know how to cook? Start a fire? Change a tire? Whatever you need to get you through life without having to got o a restaurant? Without the need for others to do things for you?
These skills are the most valuable when you least expect it. Soft skills and communication skills can take you farther than any book smart you bring to the table. Whether we like it or not, we live in a people oriented society where others influence your level of success.
Therefore, it’s in your best interest to learn important street smart skills like negotiation, communication, and more. Warren Buffett famously is willing to pay $500,000 more for an MBA graduate whose communication skills are great.
Once you know how to add value to others, people will be more than happy to add value to you, later down the road.
Your Self Reliance Makes or Breaks Your Life
Self reliance can make or break how you progress through life. Imagine blaming other people for not paving the way for you when you could have done that yourself. That would be embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to not succeed because of a lack of effort. If you lost because of a lack of skill, that’s fine because there’s nothing you could’ve done.
However, evaluate and figure out if you lost because of a lack of effort. Rely on your own efforts to get there instead of someone else’s. Other people’s help may be helpful but you should be the reason that gets you across the finish line. When you find out that you don’t need others for your survival, that is great news.
That doesn’t mean push every single one of your friends out of your network. That wouldn’t be the smart thing to do. That’s not what self reliance is all about. However, when you are comfortable in your own skin, the world opens up for you. When you can go out on your own and not feel shame or discomfort, that’s freedom.
Don’t let someone else control your life by you being dependent on them. Be in control of your own life and help others when you are able to. The day you find out that you can walk away when you want to is the day you will feel ownership of your own life. No one else can take that peace away from you.
It’s time to break free from the bad habits authority taught us from a young age. What’s bad is that lessons we learn from a young age are ingrained in our psyche. The thing to do is to recognize it and break free from it.
My Story of Self Reliance
I truly had to live a self reliance lifestyle. When my parents left the country, I had no other choice. There was no choice to “move back in with my parents”. It was either make it on my own or starve out on the streets. That point brought about a certain level of fear in myself. I had to make it or risk going bust.
Instead of using that fear to cower, I used that fear to motivate myself even further. There was no way I was ever going to fail. If I fail, I don’t eat. And I don’t ever want to get to a point where I don’t have food out on the table. So I did everything and anything that I possibly could do to make sure I’m successful.
Although I hated it at times, at work, I said “yes sir, may I have another sir?” and did as I was told with little pushback. These days, I push back if things aren’t the way that I want it to be. However, I understood and accepted that it was the cost of moving up in the world.
Although others have done it without doing that, it was a game that I was willing to play. I had no other choice because I had zero fallback plans. When your parents nudge you off the nest so that you either fly or die on your own, that’s when you see what you’re really made of.
Self reliance is a great feeling. I don’t need to ask my parents for anything more than they’ve already done for me. Although it helps, there’s no more need. Depend on no one else but yourself. Self sustain your life. Not only will people respect you more, you will respect yourself more.
How to Increase Your Own Self Reliance List:
- 1) Live alone and without roommates to be self reliant
- 2) Stop asking for permission, just do it
- 3) Go out alone and practice self reliance
- 4) Communicate your needs to others
- 5) Assert and state your opinion
- 6) Care about your own goals
- 7) Stop asking for advice, win or lose by yourself
- 8) Accept responsibility for your life for self reliance
- 9) Learn street smart skills
I’ve lived alone and without roommate. But roommate help save money. I bought my first house and rented to a roommate to help pay the mortgage. Started me on the way to FI.
There’s absolutely a balance between living with a roommate and without a roommate in terms of independence and the money that you can save. It’s all based on your preferences!