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This post is not supposed to be about being antisocial, distrusting others, losing faith in humanity, or anything like that. It’s not meant to be negative. I believe that we can and should rely on others for a lot of things. Hopefully, everyone you consider a real friend in your life is someone you can rely on for many things. And hopefully you have a family that you can turn to for help with just about anything. There is strength in asking for help. There is strength in numbers. There is humility in admitting that you can’t do some things alone. But, when all is said and done, there are just some things that you need to be able to rely on yourself for, because a lot of times, others won’t be able to give it to you. In fact, there may be many times when others try to directly stand in the way of you getting what you need.
Remember that people have their own agendas. They have their own insecurities. They have their own blind spots. Even those who love you and want the best for you are flawed, and looking to them for guidance could send you down the wrong path. Why? Because they’re on the wrong paths themselves. People are busy, too. While a friend may offer to be there any time you need her, she just wrote a check she can’t cash. Nobody can actually be there for you any time, unless you literally pay a life coach to be on call for you. People have their own stuff to do. They need to be there for themselves, and that will take priority over being there for you. But if you can learn to rely on yourself for some of these core things, you’re set for life.
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Exercise self-discipline
If you want a gym buddy, that’s fine, and can be helpful on some days. But if your pact is, “I go to the gym when you do,” then you may quickly find yourself taking a lot of days off. You need to tell yourself that you are sticking to your exercise routine, regardless of what anyone else is doing.
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Enforcing boundaries
If there are some boundaries you want to enforce in your life with, say, a nosy neighbor, a coworker who asks you to do things that aren’t your job, or a codependent friend, you need to enforce those. You can’t just hope they take a hint and stop doing what they’re doing. You need to actively enforce your boundaries, knowing that the second you don’t, others will try to cross them again. You can try to tell others to respect your boundaries, but they’ll probably still try to push them.
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Eating self-discipline
Your body is a temple, but you’re the only one living in it. That means that nobody but you will ever care as much about what you put in your temple as you do. Your friend who pressures you to order the chili cheese fries and bacon burgers with her will not suffer the consequences your body feels. So, just like you can’t really rely on a workout buddy to work out, you can’t have a “diet buddy.” You can but, you need to rely on yourself to make the right choices first and foremost.
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True creativity
Do not look at what others are creating to figure out what you should create. True creativity can only be born when we don’t compare or compete. Don’t try to figure out what the world wants or what others would find impressive. That is not the point when it comes to being creative. You can only be genuinely creative when you look within, and not without.
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Financial self-discipline
So you want to develop better spending and saving habits. That is very good. You think you’ll ask a friend, “Let’s make a pact to shop less or to dine out less.” What happens when that friend says, “Screw it. Let’s go to a steak dinner?” You’ll cave. You can’t look to others for your self-discipline. They’re just as weak as you are.
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Motivation
You will have days you don’t want to…work on your novel…work on your website…go do the volunteer work you said you’d do. You may want to call a friend and ask her to talk you into it. But what if she’s in the same headspace that day? What if she is feeling unmotivated, too? You need to learn to motivate yourself when you really don’t feel like doing something that’s good for you.
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Respect
Nobody will respect you if you don’t respect yourself. It’s just that simple. Anybody who appears to show you love and affection when you clearly don’t respect yourself automatically does not respect you—what they like about you is the fact that you will let them walk all over you. Getting respect from others must start with getting it from yourself.
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Making relationship decisions
Whether you feel, in your gut, that this relationship is wrong for you or that it’s right for you, you can’t ask friends or family to make that call for you. When you do that, you’ll just look for people to tell you what you want to hear. You’ll talk yourself back into a bad relationship, because a friend tells you all the reasons the guy is great. Or you’ll talk yourself out of a relationship you love, because friends pressure you to do so. You just have to go with your own intuition for decisions like that.
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Making career decisions
Nobody but you knows what job is right for you. Your parents will probably tell you to take the job that pays the most, because they’re protective of you. Your friends might tell you to go after something that you aren’t ready for, because they haven’t done their research, and just think you’re the greatest. And you are. But you also know that maybe as someone in her first year of piano lessons it isn’t time to quit her day job and try out for the symphony. You know, deep down, opinions of others aside, which job taps into your unique skillset and would make you happiest.
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Staying positive
When you don’t get the promotion. When your work doesn’t get chosen for publication (for the 10th time). When another first date is a bust. You can call friends and family to vent. But they may say, “Well…maybe it’s time to quit that job” or “Maybe it’s time to quit submitting your work for publication.” You don’t want to quit. You want a pep talk. Sometimes you can only look to yourself for that.
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Telling yourself, “It’ll be okay”
When you’re going through something truly difficult, like an awful breakup, friends and family will naturally tell you, “It’ll be okay.” But you can’t just rely on them for that. You will be alone, late at night, with your thoughts. Who will tell you “It’ll be okay” then? Nobody, if not you. You have to develop the inner strength to assure yourself when there is nobody around to assure you. Otherwise, you’ll just text your ex or do something dumb when nobody is there to stop you.
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Fully appreciating your wins
Only you will ever fully understand what a big deal it is when your Facebook business page reaches X amount of likes, or when that influencer reposts your article, or when that online store picks up your line of accessories. Friends and family outside of your industry will rarely understand how much work you put into that and what it means. So look to yourself for a pat on the back.
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Having a great time
Hopefully, you surround yourself with fun and positive people. But sometimes, there will be a bad egg who brings the party down. You have to be able to rely on yourself to have a good time. You may even need to make bad dates fun for yourself. If you can have fun, even when those around you aren’t, you shouldn’t have any codependency problems.
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Getting what you want
It’s very, very rare in life that some guardian angel in your industry is just keeping an eye on you, tracking your progress, and advocates for you when you won’t advocate for yourself. For the most part, you have to go out there and ask for what you want or nobody is going to give it to you.
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Appreciating your progress
Others may not see it. Others may not realize how far you’ve come, because the obvious and external accolades aren’t there yet. But you know. You know that this time, you did things different and better than last time, thanks to your hard work. Appreciate yourself for that.
