DR Robert Anthony believes that a self-confident personality is not possible until we build a solid foundation of self-reliance. Many people think that a person who is self-reliant must be aloof, disinterested or unfriendly towards others. This is a totally false conception. By not being dependent, the self-reliant person can relate to others with compassion and empathy while, at the same time, retaining self-confidence and poise. Able to stand on their own two feet, they do not feel the need to manipulate others.
The main deterrent to self-reliance is the mistaken certainty that others are smarter, wiser or more intelligent than we are. This causes us to look to others for our happiness and welfare. The person who is dependent in this sense must always reach out to something external. He wants people, circumstances, conditions or God to do for him what he should be doing for himself. This causes him to depend, manipulate, conform, compare and compete.
The dependency habit
Dependency is slavery by mutual agreement. It is degrading for both the person who is dependent and the person who is being depended upon. Both parties are equally lacking in self-reliance, for such a relationship flourishes on mutual exploitation.
The most unfortunate aspect of dependency is that when you think you are dependent on another individual — you are! You neglect to develop the necessary self-reliance to meet and solve your own problems.
A sure sign of dependency is when you habitually look up to others as superior. The moment you begin to compare yourself with anyone, you are subjecting yourself to psychological slavery.
The habit of leaning and depending is so ingrained in certain individuals that they abdicate all personal authority in favour of another person, philosophy or religion. They feel that they will be secure if they can find a person, organisation or religion that they can cling to with blind devotion. They allow this person, organisation or religion to be responsible for their happiness. And, of course, this includes the luxury of having someone or something to blame whenever failure occurs.
The leaning, dependent individual is at the mercy of those around him. Believing others smarter than himself, he is always looking for someone to lean on when a new problem confronts him. Subordinate to those upon whom he depends, their advice becomes a COMMAND that he feels compelled to follow. And often there is more than one “advisor”, so he is in a constant state of exhaustion as he tries to decide whose advice to follow.
Advice is everywhere. Most of it is free and not worth the price. You usually have a dozen or more “unpaid advisors” who are more than happy to give you their opinion. But since others are generally engrossed in their own problems and do not know what you really “should,” “ought” or “must” do, you invariably get the wrong advice. Indeed, accepting advice from someone who is not qualified to dispense it is like going to a plumber to get your teeth fixed. Most people cannot solve their own problems, so how can they advise you to do what they have not been able to accomplish themselves?
Overcoming dependency is not easy. We have been conditioned since childhood to look to others for our welfare, guidance and wisdom. But while dependency plays a role in our upbringing and education, it was never intended to obliterate individual identity. Each one of us is born with the innate ability to resolve whatever difficulties we face.
“No one can ever let you down if you are not leaning on them.” No one can hurt your feelings, make you unhappy, lonely, angry or disappointed if you are not dependent on them for your welfare, inspiration, love or motivation. The person who is self-reliant does not need to find a master to lean on. He is able to meet life’s challenges with confidence and power by looking at each situation in the light of reality. He sees things as they are, not as he would like them to be, and refuses to let his life be dominated by resisting reality.
Self-reliance
Self-reliance is not only the belief that you can handle things and become successful; it is something more than that. It is having the courage to listen to your inner prompting for a hint of the kind of success you truly desire. It means taking your cue from yourself — not listening to something or someone outside yourself to get an idea of what you should be, do or have. “When we learn to read the ‘signs’ correctly and follow our intuition, we can begin to trust ourselves and not follow the beat of someone else’s drum.”
Once you have developed self-reliance, you do not have to procrastinate, escape or evade what is facing you because you have the confidence to meet each life situation with self-assurance and poise. You are free from worry because you know that you are in full control. You are not separated from your source of Power. You do not need repeated doses of inspiration and stimulation from others to do what you have to do. Instead, you go through life with the realisation that the internal Power within you is greater than any problem that faces you.
Overcoming the need to manipulate
As a child, you neither knew nor cared about what was going on in the world around you. Your only concern was your own welfare. Helplessness made you dependent on what others would give and do for you. Your greatest happiness was being fed, held and fondled. Your main concern was to get as much attention as possible.
You quickly discovered that if you started to cry, you could summon an adult to take care of your needs. Smiling, too, worked exceptionally well. So you soon learned to smile when you were picked up and cry when you were put down.
This simple exercise in manipulation set the pace for the rest of your life. Your entire childhood was spent developing skills that would make a good impression on others and influence them to pay attention to you. Thus, even at this early point in your life, you were programming yourself to depend on other people’s approval and to feel rejected when others disapproved. As a child, behaviour like this was excusable, but as an adult, it is self-defeating. If you are still trying to manipulate others to do that which you are sufficiently capable of doing yourself, you cannot consider yourself emotionally mature.
The greatest gift any parent can give their children is to help them to become self-confident by making them self-reliant. Children should be given as much responsibility as they can handle at any age level. Only through independence will they learn the joy, privilege and human dignity of standing on their own two feet. It is a basic responsibility of parents to assist children in making a smooth transition from dependency to self-reliance. Children should be allowed to make and learn from their mistakes.
Every time you do something that someone is sufficiently capable of doing for themselves, you are literally stealing from that person. The more you care for someone, the more alert you must be to see that you are not depriving them of the opportunity to think and do for themselves, whatever the physical or emotional consequences. This is true not only in parent-child relationships, but in marriage, family and all interpersonal relationships as well. We cannot live other people’s lives or bear their burdens, no matter how much we love them.
Individuals who have not developed self-reliance have no alternative but to use manipulation to get what they want. If you are not self-reliant, you have to depend on your skill at influencing people to serve you and fulfil your needs. If you do use others as a vehicle to get through life, you cannot possibly go faster or further than you can convince them to take you.
BY CAPT. SAM ADDAIH (RTD)
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