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“A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Thereupon many statesmen and philosophers came to Alexander [the Great] with their congratulations, and he expected that Diogenes of Sinope also, who was tarrying in Corinth, would do likewise. But since that philosopher took not the slightest notice of Alexander, and continued to enjoy his leisure in the suburb Craneion, Alexander went in person to see him; and he found him lying in the sun. Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many people coming towards him, and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. And when that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, ‘Yes,’ said Diogenes, ‘stand a little out of my sun.’” – Plutarch, Alexander

Alexander was so impressed with Diogenes that he told his followers “who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher” that “truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

What was it about a philosopher famous for living in a clay jar on the street, eschewing material possessions, and flaunting convention that so impressed the wealthy, empire-conquering king?

Diogenes did not need to please Alexander because he needed nothing from him. Not money, food, or shelter. More importantly, he didn’t need approval or blessings.

Being as powerful and famous as he was, Alexander transformed everyone around him into sniveling sycophants. It’s no surprise that the self-reliance displayed by Diogenes’ contempt earned the king’s respect.

Diogenes’ simple, ascetic lifestyle may seem to exemplify self-reliance, but these externals are not its essence.

Rather, self-reliance is a mindset, an approach to life that can be adopted whether you live in a wilderness cabin or a “little box” in the suburbs. Self-reliance is about living a life in which you make decisions and opinions with primary respect to your own experience of the world. You trust yourself. You’re true to yourself.

This doesn’t mean living in a void, it just means that we’re conscious about our relationship to the world and other people. It’s not rejecting external advice outright, but trusting ourselves enough to sift through which advice is worthy. We’re aware of the agendas of others, and don’t let them sway us from our self-determined path. Self-reliance doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting all established customs and values, it just means experimenting with them so we know if they work for us. It’s putting stock in our inner wisdom.

This was the kind of self-reliance Rudyard Kipling celebrated in “If”:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch”

This was also the kind of self-reliance that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about in his masterwork, Self-Reliance. It wasn’t about living off the grid, farming, or beards (though his self-reliant friend Thoreau had a great one). It was about maintaining sovereignty over the self in a connected, civilized world.

This is the kind of self-reliance, though exalted by the philosophers of the past, that remains acutely relevant today.

In fact, there may never have been a time when developing this type of self-reliance has been more important. We’re over-politicized and polarized. Advertisements are creeping further and further into our content, making them less obvious. The Internet has given us two or two-thousand sides to every story. Social media feeds allow our peers to weigh in on our every decision. The comment section of a blog post allows us to see what other people thought of an article before we’ve formed our own opinion. It’s increasingly difficult to live a life that is inner-directed rather than other-directed.

In order to operate effectively in this kind of autonomy-sapping environment, developing a strong sense of self-reliance is crucial.

Just as Emerson’s project of self-reliance didn’t mean withdrawing from the world, but engaging it differently, so will ours. We’re not interested in escaping society, but we don’t need to be subsumed by it either. We won’t be rejecting our culture wholesale, but taking a different, more intentional, centered, and effective stance towards it.

The development of that stance begins with dispensing with the cultural myths surrounding self-reliance and coming to understand what it is not. From there, we’ll begin to grapple with what it is, and how to embrace it more fully.

What Self Reliance is Not ...

“The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard…and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

An Excuse

Self-Reliance means respecting our own experiences, ideas, and traits.

The best of those things.

It’s not an excuse to be lazy, immoral, confrontational, distant, or an asshole in general.

It’s not an excuse to mock the ideals of others, be narcissistic, or hurt others in any way.

Sartre recognized that “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Notice the word “condemned” — the freedom self-reliance offers isn’t fatalistic or nihilistic. It means taking on more responsibility, just a higher grade responsibility than we’re usually saddled with.

Self-reliance is a call to be true to yourself in the most important way possible.

To try and use it as a way to justify the worst parts of yourself is a terrible mistake.

Doing It All On Your Own

Self-reliance is associated with 100% bootstrapping your life.

But the notion that we’ve got to do it all on our own is absurd. We’d all die as infants if it weren’t for the extreme generosity of our parents.

There’s no such thing as a purely self-made man. Every day we benefit from thousands of years of collective human ingenuity.

There aren’t many things of significance you can build entirely with your own two hands. You need others. After all, Thoreau’s Walden Pond was owned by Emerson.

The rest of these “is not’s” follow from this premise.

Total Self-Sufficiency

“Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-reliance is not about elevating ourselves over everything else, believing we’re an entirely self-sufficient, all-powerful island. Rather, it’s about heightening our connection to powers greater than ourselves.

A lot of the ideas and excerpts of Self-Reliance may be misunderstood if read through a narcissistic lens, in which you possess everything you need to be successful on your own. But true self-reliance is, in practice, obedience to something bigger (this can be religious or not — we’re talking about things unexplainable or unmeasurable to us). Self-trust is also trust in the Big Other:

“As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies,

‘His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;
Our valors are our best gods.’”

Self-reliance doesn’t advocate taking matters into your own hands as the sole means of success; rather, action, the exercise of will, becomes a kind of sacred act, a prayer, that allows the individual to tap into powers outside the self.

As it is often put, “God helps those who help themselves.”

Self-reliant action is magnetic. It doesn’t rely on total knowledge or a perfect plan, just trust enough in oneself to move forward.

When we build anything, the more energy we’re willing to pour into it the more others want to help us. I see this with businesses all the time. An entrepreneur pitching a new business isn’t nearly as persuasive as one who’s worked on the business for two years himself and has traction.

We’ve heard this said many times in many ways.

Thoreau declared that “… if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

And of course, Goethe’s famous (loosely translated) couplet:

“What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

People throughout history have been amazed by the power of self-trusting action. It is worth a leap of faith to see just what they were talking about.

Being a Loner

“One is really only alive when one enjoys the good will of others.” –Goethe

Christopher “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless was radically individualistic. He raged against society and eventually fled to its fringes, then decided to leave it all together for a while. He found himself alone, sick, and starving in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness. His final realization? “Happiness is only real when shared.”

Macaulay Culkin’s character in Home Alone wants to be alone so bad, but quickly realizes how important other people are — even if they kind of suck. He needed space, but not that much. His mistake wasn’t in wanting solitude, but in thinking he’d be better off never seeing his family again.

Self-reliance is often symbolized by the hermit who lives alone and doesn’t need or associate with other people. And certainly, as we’ll see, solitude is an essential aspect of self-reliance. But the solitude we need is more nuanced than that.

The trick isn’t to always be alone or always be surrounded by people. The trick is doing what’s right for you at the moment. Introverts will need more solitude than extroverts, and extroverts more social situations. But both need both.

If we’re too embedded in the cacophony of civilization, the sound of our own thoughts will be drowned out.

But if we’re too removed from society it becomes difficult to know what we know. The understanding we gain in solitude remains impotent unless it’s exposed/tested/run up against society in some way. Nietzsche noticed this in his own ideas: “…all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”

In the German philosopher’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the titular character would rotate between a hermit-like life and a teaching type of life where he brought his messages to society. Nietzsche himself followed this pattern throughout his life.

We see this in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as well. Every hero must go out to adventure, usually beginning the quest alone. But the journey wasn’t over ‘til he returned to share the elixir (usually some special knowledge) with society.

Excess society is an asylum that will overpower our own thoughts; excess solitude is a vacuum that will desiccate them.

Healthy, intermittent solitude is a greenhouse where our best ideas can flourish and grow.

Selfishness

Seeking autonomy not only doesn’t preclude building relationships with individuals, it also doesn’t preclude fostering genuine concern for those individuals, as well as concern for the welfare of society as a whole.

Emerson, in fact, formed deep friendships with his family and other people, and often gathered with them to discuss philosophy and sharpen each other’s thinking. He and other members of these sort of mutual improvement societies took the strength they gathered from their meetings, and, rather than being insular and looking to completely withdraw from the world, actively sought to engage it and were often quite politically active. Self-reliance was a means of helping others; you can only reach down to pull another up, if you’re on solid ground yourself.

Emerson understood that the more our actions involve us in something beyond ourselves, the better off we are. In fact, an interest in serving others becomes a positive feedback loop for our self-reliance — the more self-reliant we are, the more we can help others, and the more we try to help others, the more self-reliant we become.

While we often think of responsibilities and personal entanglements as detracting from one’s individualistic sense of self, caring for other people paradoxically can be one of the best ways of finding ourselves, as Milton Mayeroff explains in On Caring:

“Direction that comes from the growth of the other should not be confused with being ‘other directed,’ where this refers to the kind of conformity in which I lose touch with both myself and the other. Rather, by following the growth of the other, I am more responsive to myself, just as the musician is more in touch with himself when he is absorbed in the needs of the music.”

In fact, connecting with other people is the main way we find our place in the world, as Mayeroff further unpacks:

“Through caring for certain others, by serving them through caring, a man lives the meaning of his own life. In the sense in which a man can ever be said to be at home in the world, he is at home not through dominating, or explaining, or appreciating, but through caring and being cared for.”

Self-reliance doesn’t mean the selfish refusal to sacrifice oneself. Rather, it means that we know our duties and passions in life and give ourselves totally to pursuing them to the point that we don’t consider the energy and resources spent to be sacrifices. Mayeroff continues:

“Obligations that derive from devotion are a constituent element in caring, and I do not experience them as forced on me or as necessary evils; there is a convergence between what I feel I am supposed to do and what I want to do. The father who goes for the doctor in the middle of the night for his sick child does not experience this as a burden; he is simply caring for the child. Similarly, in working out a philosophical concept the need to reflect on it again and again from similar and dissimilar points of view is not a burden forced on me; I am simply caring for the idea.”

Self-reliance is about being true to ourselves. The surprise is that this means allowing one’s “self” to disappear more often.

What Self-Reliance is ...

“Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful. It by no means consists in rushing prematurely to a showy feat that shall catch the eye and satisfy spectators. It is enough if you work in the right direction.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude

The Ability to Be Alone

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” –Blaise Pascal

All the above caveats aside, solitude is foundational for self-reliance. If we can’t be alone, we can’t be self-reliant.

Nietzsche describes a danger of this inability in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.” If we’re afraid to be alone, we’ll accept the company of just about anybody.

If we spend our time alone itching to be in the company of others, how can we discover what we truly think? If we’re forever embedded in the “madding crowd” it can be difficult to parse our inherited, default desires from the things that we truly want to want.

Emerson describes the state of mind we must find in order to think clearly:

“Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable.”

And warns of the difficulty of keeping these insights when going into the world:

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members…. The virtue in most request is conformity….  It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Note that the goal is not to remain in solitude, but to reestablish our connection to ideas that disappear when we’re engaged in society.

This is not just important for those we think of as needing to remain close to the muses of inspiration, like writers and artists. Regular retreats into solitude offer serious ROI for business people as well.

In fact, three of the most successful businessmen of our time have used this practice quite successfully.

Warren Buffett famously removed himself from Wall Street to set up shop in Omaha because his priorities are different than that of most CEOs or investors. Instead of spending his time traveling, speaking, having meetings, and rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers of the Big Apple, he lives quietly in the Midwest and reads as much as he can.

When Bill Gates was running Microsoft he would take two “Think Weeks” a year to envision the future of one of the most successful companies in the world. He would go off by himself to read and think to gain clarity about what strategy Microsoft should pursue.

Steve Jobs said:

“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, ‘Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.’ And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.”

If we don’t get out from under the opinions of our society we may never be able to hear our own unique ideas. Sometimes the best thing we can do to help the world is to take some time away from it.

Having an Inner Scorecard

“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard…If all the emphasis is on what the world’s going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’ll wind up with an Outer Scorecard. Now my dad: He was a hundred percent Inner Scorecard guy. He was really a maverick. But he wasn’t a maverick for the sake of being a maverick. He just didn’t care what other people thought.” –Warren Buffett (Alice Schroeder’s Snowball)

If you try to play tennis on a beach volleyball court you’re not going to have any fun at all. You’ve got to know the game you’re playing and the score you’re trying to make.

If you don’t know what race you’re running, life is a minefield full of things you should have accomplished by now. I might be having a great day, hop on Facebook, see a friend with a kid which reminds me that my mom wants grandkids and then the shit, I’m supposed to have kids by now section of my brain goes off.

Most envy or status anxiety has less to do with what we haven’t done and more to do with our lack of focus on what we’re doing. Self-reliance is caring about the game you’re playing, not trying to win all the games. Comparison and competition with others aiming at the same target might be helpful–but only within a limit.

Self-reliance is rejecting the standards and rules given to you by your biology and by society, deliberately developing your own code, then guiding and evaluating all your actions by this inner scorecard.

Class Transcendence

“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Being self-reliant means that we don’t wait for cultural acceptance to do what is right. We don’t behave based on the narrative society has developed for our social class, but what we believe the right thing to do is. This doesn’t necessarily mean we create values from scratch: we can choose which communities or people celebrate the best values and join them.

The impoverished philosopher Diogenes didn’t envy Alexander the Great, but Julius Caesar did. In fact, he broke down into tears after realizing how much more Alexander had achieved than he at the same age.

When we act with self-reliance, our actions are elevated. By any worldly measure Diogenes fell far below Caesar, but he also fell into a class of his own; the fact that Diogenes didn’t need anything to feel content allowed him to walk above the mess of envy and ambition — the trappings of status.

Those who can walk upright without the approval of certain classes will be free from silly competitions.

N=1

“You are not a lottery ticket.” –Peter Thiel, billionaire investor

Self-reliance means that you’re not too caught up in odds. Maybe 90% of the people who try the thing you’re trying fail at it.

This tells us nothing about the population trying the thing. It doesn’t say anything about their knowledge, grit, network, financing, skill, personality, timing, etc.

Another successful investor and entrepreneur, Ben Horowitz, put it this way in The Hard Thing About Hard Things:

“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand: your task is the same.”

A study might say that 7 hours of sleep is the optimal amount for adults in your age range. That doesn’t mean that’s what you need.

On the other hand, the fact that some people live long lives smoking cigarettes doesn’t mean you should assume you’ll live as long as a smoker.

Probabilities are useful in some places more than others. They never tell you your chances at doing what you want to do, though. (Just look at Donald Trump’s wildly swinging chances of success leading up to the November 2016 election.)

Simplicity

“Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the foreworld again.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“By dint of action, and extracting from himself strict account of his deeds, man arrives at a better knowledge of life. Its law appears to him, and the law is this: Work out your mission.” –Charles Wagner, The Simple Life

Life gets complex when we try to balance the baggage of the world: the presidential election, your friend’s relationship problems, your 5-year career plan, your well-studied social-labels or other ideologies, your social media popularity, foreign wars, etc.

Complexity comes with expectations and a slew of “shoulds.”

Minimalism, surrender, a clear path, comfort, and few material things may support simplicity, but they are not essential to it. Simplicity has less to do with our external life than we might think. Charles Wagner writes in The Simple Life that, “Simplicity is a state of mind”:

“It dwells in the main intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is honestly and naturally human…At bottom, it consists in putting our acts and aspirations in accordance with the law of our being.”

Simplicity is a stance. A singularity of purpose. It comes from knowing what one is about and a trust in the future which is only attained through reliance on one’s self.

Faith in his abilities allows the self-reliant man to inhabit the present more fully, which creates a simplification of his world. Not out of ignorance, but in an elegant focus on the task at hand, unburdened by the noise of life.

As we rely on ourselves the baggage of the world is shrugged off. This freeing up of minds allows happiness, tranquility, and focus to flow in.

Realizing the Alternative is Harder

“I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

When we deny ourselves we begin to mutate into something disgusting. Like a geisha’s foot broken and bound, our spirits become contorted and confused. We lose power each time we “break” ourselves for other people.

Self-reliance means refusing to let your soul wither away because those around you have a different idea of what you should be like. It means finding those whose wants are your wants. Finding space to live by your nature.

Of course self-reliance is not about feeding the worst parts of ourselves. The lazy, stagnant urges that would lead to the decay of our bodies and souls. Self-reliance is about overcoming and exertion of the will. This isn’t about a trainer telling you to do a pushup and you refusing because it’s “not your nature.” It’s about resisting boring bestsellers to follow your own interests. Or bravely defending an unpopular opinion you believe to be true, but for which others judge you.

It’s about listening to the little voice within us with an idea for a business — not the one that tells you to fall in line.

Kyle Eschenroeder

read more @ https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/finding-true-north-guide-self-reliance/