Trust Yourself To Be More Self Reliant

Improve yourself and be more self reliant

The ability for humans to imitate is one of the great evolutionary advantages of our species. Through imitation we learn how to speak, hunt and build, but there comes a time when imitation falls short and for better or worse, we are left to plow the soil at our own feet.

What we admire about great minds like Shakespeare, Plato and Milton, is that they spoke well about their thoughts, and were self reliant. It was true of their time, but what was true to themselves, is they had the courage to follow their own thoughts, and their own convictions to trust in our own intuition, It is that spontaneous insight which flashes across each of our minds, and that is the genius of each and every human.

Yet, all too often we dismissed these thoughts simply because they are our own. Instead of owning up to our brilliance, we give it all away and disregard our own genius.  We often take ideas from others, even if have our own thoughts and felling about a topic.

American writers, Ralph, Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were the central figures behind the transcendentalist movement of the 1830s. It was an idealistic philosophy developed not to oppose the empirical method of science, but rather to focus on the power of the individual.

Emerson and Thoreau expanded on the system of thought developed by Immanuel Kant's. Who believed that to understand the nature of reality? One must first examine the reasoning process which governs the nature of experience. One of the key beliefs of transcendentalism is that there is a divinity which pervades all nature and all humanity, as well as a belief in the inherent goodness which exists in all people.

They believe that society and its institutions, particularly organized religion and political parties, corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly self-reliant and independent.

The great fear that tears us from the self trust is our apparent obligation to consistency. The eyes of the crowd have no means for gauging our personality other than from our past actions, and we are terrified to disappoint them.

We carry along this corpse of past actions because it is the only way for us to find recognition in the eyes of the public to the self-reliant individual. The eyes of the crowd are of no significance.

What you believe either yesterday, today, and tomorrow; just speak what you believe. It is certain you will contradict yourself, because humans evolve thus, you are sure to be misunderstood at times. Pythagoras was misunderstood and so where Socrates, Jesus and Galileo and Newton. Every pure and wise spirit that has ever approached greatness, has no need to explain themselves to others. Their loyalty is to the future.

The journey is one of zigs and zags, moves and countermoves, actions and contradictions. Our apparently contradictory acts or decisions can only truly be examined at the end, when the entire narrative of our life's work can be analyzed at one time.

To be original, is to tap into our childlike nature. Children are the perfect model of self-reliant behavior because they are too young to be hesitant and fearful. They are possessed by a need for self-discovery.

They apply their own standards to the world and have no care for how their actions are interpreted by those around them. This stands in sharp contrast with the attitude of cautious adults, who because they are overly concerned with reputation, approval and the opinion of others, have great difficulty acting genuinely or spontaneously.

The worst thing one can be in the crowd is inconsistent, but it is inconsistency that we find the death of individuality. Our culture gives us identity, but at the same time, it views our societal role as the totality of who we are.

It protects molds, constrains and limits us all at the same time, no matter how much your father, your mother, your friends or your culture may try, they can never truly insulate you from reality. Instead, we must surrender, give in completely to the temptation of discovery and our curiosity of the unknown.

It is a path that must be walked alone, but it requires only one thing to trust in yourself, like all the great minds of history have done in doing so. You will find that childlike genius waiting to be discovered. I know we have all had the same experience you get home from a long day, work feeling absolutely exhausted. You know you should read a book or do something productive with your time, but all you want is to collapse and drift to sleep.

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