The A-Z Guide For Successful Singles – “S” is for Self-Reliance
By Susanne on Mar 5, 2010 in successful lysingle
From the moment of your conception your parents unconsciously imposed their dreams and ideals about how you would turn out to be. Later on your teachers had imposed ideas about who you should be and what direction your life should take. When you hit your teens, being desperate for acceptance and belonging, you accepted the ideals your peers had about how you should be.
Unfortunately a minority of the population ever get over the teen years – and the need to conform and be accepted over-rides the quest to be oneself.
The media and advertising industry capitalize on this. Every day you are bombarded with messages about who you should be and how you should live your life. From the glitz and glam of the celebrity culture, t o the powerful marketing messages in the consumer market. It is so easy to get swept into beliefs and ideals about how you should live your life and who you should be.
So you spend your life doing what you are “supposed to do” for success and happiness – as defined by others. Even when it comes to dating and choosing who to spend you life with you look to the experts and follow what they say – and then you can’t figure out why it doesn’t work. At some point it comes crashing down on you – whether a trauma, a crisis or a mid-life transition brings it on – there comes a point when most people question what the hell their life has really been about.
Ralp Waldo Emmerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” makes an important point about those individuals who live their own lives. He mentions great names like Socrates, Copernicus and Martin Luther and reminds us that what these great people shared in common was that they were different, they didn’t follow the crowd – they lived their life according to their own beliefs and rules.
“There is only one success . . . to be able to spend your life in your own way”
Christopher Morley
And that is what Self- Reliance is about. It’s synonymous with self-sufficiency and self-direction. It’s about autonomy, personal independence and the capacity to rely on one’s own intuition and capabilities rather than rely on other people things or events outside of yourself. Self Reliance is freedom or in the words of Ralph Waldo Emmerson: “Man is his own star.”
Self -Reliance means you are capable of dealing with life’s challenges that are thrown at you, taking your guidance from yourself rather than from other people and things. It’s about having the courage to listen to yourself, rather than letting other people, things or events decide what you should be, do or have.
A Self Reliant person is able to listen to themselves, trust their intuition to achieve success and happiness in their life – as they define it. They trust themselves to know what’s important to them and to go for it and they take 100% responsibility for their lives.
The opposite of a Self- Reliant person is a dependent person who looks outside themselves and to other people for guidance, rather than listening to themselves. These people give the control of their lives to other people, things and events. And when things go wrong –it is the fault of something or someone outside themselves. The problem with this is that the dependent person puts themselves and their lives at the mercy of others.
Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t need others in our life – we do. But the help a self-reliant person asks from others is the kind of help that makes them better able to care for themself – it’s the opposite of asking to be rescued.
When you ask for help there are two points to keep in mind:
1. When you do take advice take it from people with lives you like. Be selective!
- Take advice about relationships from people who are good in relationships
- Take advice about money from people who are good with money
- Take advice about career from people who are good in their career
2. Make a decision about how you want to live your life rather than look to others to tell you how you should live. You can copy people you admire or try to be like them but it won’t work for you. Why? Because you are a different person.
If you truly want to be free to achieve the things in life you want. If you want the freedom to be yourself, if you want to achieve happiness and success in your life as you define it ,why not learn to trust your own inner sense of what is right for YOU. After all, this is YOUR life.
