Dependency should be a crime! Okay, maybe that is a little harsh. At the very least, maybe we should ticket people who are dependent on other people. Could you imagine a world where everyone is totally self-reliant and operating in conjunction with one another?
That might be the closest thing to paradise. Alas, it will never happen. But that doesn’t mean we can’t strive towards it. It’s time to wake up and be your own person.
The One Problem To Solve Is The Problem of Not Being Able To Solve Problems
Say that five times fast. But in all seriousness, the reason people struggle with being their own person is simply because they lack the ability to be problem solvers.
What’s funny is that humans at their very core are problem solvers, but we only tend to solve problems when we struggle with our survival.
Imagine the daily life of a caveman, from the moment he wakes up, to the moment he goes to bed, you best believe he is solving problems every waking second. If he doesn’t, his cave’s food stash will run out, he’ll freeze from the sub-par shelter he built, or he’ll get mauled by a sabertooth tiger. The laws of nature can be unruly.
The problem we face today, is that there is no “fight” anymore. If you wanted to sit back, watch cartoons and eat potato chips for the next 50 years, you could. Sure, you might suffer from poor posture, but no one is going to kick down your door and force you to take care of yourself.
See: Healthy Weight Loss Strategies That You Can Do Daily
If you want to be your own person, you just have to make the decision that you are going to be a person who solves problems.
To Be Your Own Person, you must act!
I get it, life is hard. But life does not stop and only gets harder as you age. Frankly, you have no choice.
The sad thing about getting older is that you realize, as you begin to wean off your parents, the more action you have to take in your life in order to survive. Eventually all of these tasks will be entirely up to you:
- Wash dishes
- Do laundry
- Buy groceries. See: The Basic Grocery List That Will Save You Thousands A Year
- Build your wealth
- Cook your own meals
- Buy a home
- Understand personal finance
- Sign a lease
- Budget
- File taxes
- Get health insurance
- Handle emotional upsets
- Get a job
The list could go on forever. It’s a lot!
Even right now, your ego—that internal voice that is screaming out after reading that list—wants nothing to do with accepting responsibility. However, it’s by accepting responsibility that you get through it at all.
You must take action if you want to be your own person. You must accept that effort is not a choice; effort is necessary.
The Fine Line Between Degeneracy and Success
So where do we go from here? We don’t live in a caveman world anymore that forced us to act to protect ourselves from physical harm, but we do live in a world with modern comforts and pleasure. Sometimes that is even scarier.
At least with physical harm you knew you’re in trouble so you have no problem taking action in the moment. In the modern world where you can relax all the time, you face the temptation of being lazy for YEARS!
Every day we face the temptation of knowing we have things that need to get done, but how often do we actually get them done when we are supposed to? We wait, and wait, and wait. We put it off for another day, waiting for that perfect moment where you have that surge of energy that never comes.
Before you know it, the task never gets done. Too much time has gone by. You shrug it off and move onto the next thing only to repeat the pattern again. You may not notice the degeneracy now, but believe me—you will notice it at 60 years old when you realize you built nothing.
Every second, there is a choice you can make to be someone who puts in effort, or be someone who chooses degeneracy.
Continuous Effort Overcomes Every Obstacle
I want you to sit silently for a second. Close your eyes and observe the feelings in your body. Don’t think about it too much, just whatever your mind instinctually goes to when you observe your feelings.
You’ll notice the “thing” that is focusing is your awareness. Pure awareness. It’s like a spotlight you’d see on a concert stage. You can choose where to place that spotlight.
Every time you move it, that is effort. You can play around with it. Shine the spotlight through your body. Do a full-body scan from the top of your head down to your toes.
Now sit and keep that spotlight focused on one point in the body for 5 minutes. It’s hard right? There’s something coming in that wants to put that spotlight out. That’s the ego, and it does not want you to stay aware.
The ego wants you to stay unconscious or “asleep”. That is the illusion we find ourselves in. To stay in a dreamlike state year after year until you realize your life takes a downward spiral.
If we want to overcome and transcend the ego, we must keep our inner spotlight on, as much as we can. We must stay conscious and aware, focused on our internal feelings and emotions.
This internal process is the very source of all effort that overcomes every obstacle. If you can master it on the inside, effort on the outside will become more spontaneous and automatic.
Here are some examples of what that might look like:
- You’ve had a stressful day at work and now are back home working overtime trying to finish a project. You remember to turn on that internal spotlight and focus on the effort within. Next thing you know, you start working. You work at a slower pace, but it’s consistent and doesn’t really feel very difficult. Next thing you know, the project is done and you felt like time flew by.
- You and your wife are fighting about finances. You try to reason with her but she is being passive aggressive and ignoring you completely, shutting you out. This only angers you more and makes you want to get a rise out of her by raising your voice even more. You pause and remember to stay aware of how you’re feeling. You pace around the room, staying focused on a single spot inside your body; eventually the anger dissipates. You go read a book and by the next morning, the fight between you and your wife seemed so petty. Everything gets resolved through just a small conversation.
- Someone you loved dearly just passed away. You feel numb, almost emotionless. You don’t know how to feel. You feel guilty, and don’t know why. A couple days later, you’re in your room alone and thoughts of that person begin to enter your mind. You stay conscious and focused on your heart. All of a sudden, tears roll down your face and you feel an overwhelm of emotions. You’re shaking, but not holding anything back. You finally feel every emotion that was bottled up inside. After all the emotions subside, you feel an inner calmness because you know that person is in a better place.
The state of True Independence
As you practice putting in continuous effort internally, the results of the effort begin to manifest externally in the form of accomplishments.
Related Reading: How To Spiritually Manifest Your Goals The Right Way
The list I mentioned earlier with all those tasks gets done. You build a successful life due to sheer consistency of effort that was applied every single day.
You no longer depend on others for your survival, and because of this, others flock to you through natural magnetism. They admire you.
You become a natural problem solver and finally feel like you have become your own person. This is the state of true independence.