Independence and Self-Reliance Keys to Happiness

"As the price of liberty is vigilance- so the price of independence is self-determination, the price of dignity is self-assertion, and the price of respect is self-respect," wrote psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz.

Self-determination and self-respect are the necessary keys most unhappy people need to grasp the concept of taking full responsibility for and control over their own lives. Until they find this key, dissatisfied people dream that there is someone else who can make {it better", who can take total care of them, who can be responsible for them more effectively than they can. This condemns them to searching for the person who can protect and care for them.

Self-Reliance and happiness begins when we realize how false and destructive this dream is; when we understand that no one can take care of us better and that only we are responsible for our lives; and when we start to learn effective methods for doing these things ourselves.

By developing self-reliance and independence, which is the ability to take care of and be responsible for yourself, you acquire:

(1) Emotional Competence: The emotional tools necessary to free yourself from dependency. To be responsible is to be able to make effective decisions and choices for yourself, to weigh alternatives, and to evaluate ethical dilemmas and solve problems. When a problem arises, the independent person has acquired the skills it takes to face it squarely, learns as much as possible about it, considers many options, weighs the possible outcome of each option, and perhaps seeks advice and counsel before reaching a decision. As an independent and self-reliant person, you can ask directly for help, but you remain in charge of how much and what kind of help you accept, and you make clear agreements about what is expected in return.

(2) Inner Role Model: When you develop self-reliance and independence within yourself, you also are developing the role models that enable you to choose appropriate friends and a suitable mate. The interaction you have with yourself is a role model for all your other relationships. For example, if you criticize yourself frequently, you're more likely to stay around others who are critical, because it feels familiar.

Likewise, self-reliance and independence in yourself also helps you see it in others. When you have a caring, responsible relationship with yourself, you develop an internal relationship model to use as a basis for your friendships and intimate relationships with others. As you become more experienced at identifying healthy friendships, your circle of good friends grows-beginning with your relationship with yourself, expanding to a few new friends, and eventually growing into a supportive "family" of choice who reinforce your autonomy and independence.

(3) Self-Understanding: You gain the understanding that you are responsible for yourself and must learn whatever you need to make your life successful, functional and happy; rather than waiting around for someone else, or trying to gain another's approval.

Taking care of and being responsible for yourself requires skills that are usually learned in early childhood. However, we don't always get the healthy positive examples we need, so we grow up without the necessary learning. This is not unusual, or entirely the fault of our parents. If you were gradually taught and encouraged to be self-reliant from early childhood, you would learn the necessary skills and attitudes for autonomous living one step at a time. Unfortunately for many of us, our parents were not trained in autonomy either, and could not teach us.

Even the popular idea of parents' "responsibility" for children can be counter-productive. Parents who see their role as controlling their offspring rather than teaching them to make choices on their own, teaches the children dependency rather than independence.

Another reason self-reliance can seem difficult is because most of our society actively discourages it. Media images of love and caring, a parental "I know what's best for you" attitude among helping professionals, religious and political figures, and the generally accepted idea of parents' "duty" create an atmosphere in which independence appears to be selfish and alien. We are taught to value caring for others to the point of martyrdom, and to regard caring for ourselves as "self-centered" and "egotistic".

Children who don't learn caring for others, self-love and self-control (as opposed to guilt and duty) become dependent and insecure adults.

Recovery programs challenge these attitudes by defining caring for others without regard for self as "codependency" and "enabling". Twelve-Step programs such as ACA and Al-Anon have popularized a concept long established in psychology theory: that it is unhealthy to be too dependent on another. However, while all these have indicated that dependency is unhealthy, they haven't yet learned to value self-reliance.

Contrary to what you may think, self-reliance and independence actually enhance relationships with others, and allow giving and receiving to be truly unconditional. Only a person who is fully able to care for him or herself can be free to love and give freely; deprived people give grudgingly.

High on Learning

As children, our natural curiosity is powerful. In fact, young children are small "learning machines". Their whole being is focused on learning through their five senses. Research shows that children are "turned on" by situations in which they can learn. Their bodies produce hormones such as adrenaline and endorphins-natural substances that produce a "natural high"-the body's own, internal motivation and reward system for learning.

When faced with a new experience, as long as they feel safe and unthreatened, young children are highly motivated to explore and learn. Secure toddlers are irresistibly drawn to bright colors, new sounds, and new experiences-they find your jingling car keys fascinating. To a child who has supportive, loving, functional parents, the world is a fun, safe place to be, and learning is exciting, and exhilarating. Children who feel secure are compelled by their joy in learning to venture forth, to begin to take small risks, and begin to act independently of their parents. It is in taking these risks, under parental supervision and support at first, and increasingly independently as the child grows older, that the necessary skills of self-reliance are first learned.

Independence grows out of these healthy learning experiences. Through taking risks, we learn how to solve problems, and also how to deal effectively with disappointment and failure. When we have learned these skills, our experiences with life are successful, producing confidence that we can rely on ourselves to experiment, to solve new problems we encounter, and to comfort our disappointment and correct our mistakes. When we know these things, we know we can take care of ourselves.

Frightened, insecure children, on the other hand, are dependent on the adults around them. Their world is too insecure to risk, and they look to others to solve their problems and care for their feelings. Being unaware of your motives, feelings, wants and internal dialogue leaves you out of control, unable to figure out how to satisfy yourself. It is, indeed as though you don't own your life, as though someone else must run it.

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You Can Oppose What You're Experiencing or Create a Better Outcome

Create Space Between Your Problems And Your Thoughts

What is troubling you in your life right now? Has it been occupying your time and energy? Sometimes, no sooner than we have dealt with an issue, another one emerges and we wonder when it will ever end. What is going on that we keep experiencing problems and resistance? Are they real problems or an opportunity to heal aspects of our life that need attention? I realise these questions may be difficult to answer in the short space of this article, however if we don't make time to examine our lives, we're likely to be drawn into the chaos and drama. There are many reasons problems occur. Some of them relate to childhood wounds, while other times problems arise because of other people's actions imposed upon us. Whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic forces, problems force us to pay attention to what is taking place within us.

Do you believe challenges occur for no clear reason or because there are greater lessons embedded in the experience? Your answer will dictate whether you stay mired in your problems or see them as vital clues to your life's purpose. Often, our first impressions are not truthful because we're responding to the chaos instead of what needs to be attended to. Have you noticed this before? For example, I've observed this theme in my life and now wait for a clearer picture to unfold before overreacting. Most times, what I believed was a problem turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Can you relate to this with a recent experience? What we're responding to is what psychologists call catastrophising, depicted in our response when we receive a speeding ticket. However, if we step back from the drama, we might realise we were rushing about our lives and need to slow down to the speed of life.

What we need is to create space between our problems and our thoughts. It's hard to distance ourselves because fear and other disempowering emotions have a way of convincing us things are worse off than they seem. As you know, this is one way of looking at it but it is not what is taking place. It might be helpful to consult with those you trust such as loved ones and ask for an unbiased perspective. It's easy to get caught up in our problems and soon enough we're seized by it, without solving it. Nowadays, when problems emerge, I will consult a few close friends whom I trust with their opinion. I reflect upon their advice and allow myself some space to consider the problem from a different perspective. This allows me to engage my creative brain to find a perfect solution when I least expect it.

Take Consistent Action, Even The Smallest One

Have you experienced this: where you forgot about a pressing issue and while taking a shower or during a walk, the perfect solution emerged? This is testament that opposing our problems seldom yields a solution. This is because opposing and reacting to something limits our potential to solve the problem. We perceive it through one lens instead of a multitude of possibilities. There are infinite possibilities to solve your problems and I know you may find it hard to believe, especially when the problem is consuming you. Distancing yourself from it will help you gain a greater perspective of what action you need to take. Are you feeling better about this? Can you see how when problems arise we may not need to take any action unless it is warranted? Perhaps the issue relates to our own thinking and we must clear out our thoughts before attending to the problem itself. Consider the advice of author and Jungian analyst James Hollis who writes in What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life: "Ask yourself of every dilemma, every choice, every relationship, every commitment, or every failure to commit, "Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?" That is, are your choices empowering you or contracting you?

Finally, we ought to focus on small improvements when faced with problems since this is the gateway to greater solutions. For example, you may find you gained weight over the Christmas holidays and find it difficult to get back to your routine of healthy eating and exercise. Subsequently, the more you focus on it, the angrier you become. What if you made the tiniest of improvements every day such as walking around the block or eating half a candy bar instead of a full one? What I'm alluding to, is that taking consistent action, however small, creates waves of momentum to overcome our inertia. Considering this, reflect on the problem I asked you about earlier and come up with three strategies to tackle it. Don't think big, think small. What is the smallest action you can take every day to solve it? Once you've come up with three solutions, choose one you can commit to and begin it at once. Doing something small can help us feel better than trying to find a grand solution that may take weeks or months. After all, if we continue to resist our problems, we leave little room for an improved outcome, when all along it may have been staring us in the face.

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How To Turn Your "What If___" Into A Positive

"A study by Jason Moser and his colleagues at Michigan State University, and published in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology have found brain markers that distinguish negative thinkers from positive thinkers. Their research suggests that there are in fact positive and negative people in the world. In their experiments they found people who tend to worry showed a paradoxical backfiring effect in their brains when asked to decrease their negative emotions, which Moser said, "suggests they have a really hard time putting a positive spin on difficult situations and actually make their negative emotions worse even when they are asked to think positively." ~Psychology Today June 30, 2014

Christopher Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford University and co-author of The Man Who Lied To His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, argues that we tend to see people who say negative things as being smarter than those who are positive. Thus, we are more likely to give greater weight to criticism than praise. ~Psychology Today June 30, 2014

The most frequently used negative statement is "What if___?" When someone is uncomfortable, unsure, afraid of something that he/she is contemplating or is being asked about, the immediate response is; "What if___?" What if the sky is falling? What if I fail? What if I can't do it? What if nobody likes it? Any negative perspective under the sun can be tossed up.

What if you flipped your negative perspective to positive possibilities? What if the sky is waiting for me to soar? What if the Universe is conspiring to help me create success? What if I can do it? What if people are waiting for what I offer?

Any positive perspective under the sun is true. What if your health is better? What if you help others to find their dreams? What if life as you know it now changed and is better? WHAT IF this is your big success?

WHAT if is isn't easy? You will learn many things. WHAT IF it takes longer than you thought it would?? You will learn perseverance. You will learn patience.

Turn your 'What if___? to work for you and invest in yourself, invest so you can get where you desire to be.

Where will you be if you continue on the path you're on right now? Look at the truths of the matter. Would you be in a better place? Would you realize your goals if you continue the status quo. As Einstein aptly said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."

What if you take the step to contact me to talk about your future? What if you learned how to create your dreams and desires? What if you created Financial Freedom?

Don't allow your negative 'What if___? sabotage your life and future.

Three strategies to transform negative beliefs to positive beliefs:

• Identify your most frequent negative beliefs.
• Use Interrogative Self-Talk instead of negative beliefs.
• Focus on Incremental Progress, Not Perfection.

The majority of people have difficulty identifying negative beliefs or noticing when it is operational.

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