Our country was founded on many strong principles. One of these principles is that we are a society of people who are self-sufficient. Our national culture upholds and supports the idea that anyone can achieve success – all a person needs to do is pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get on with it.
This is a good concept, which has built, developed and invented wo
rld changing ideas, machines and technologies. But, when taken too literally, it has also created failures, calamities and disasters. The paradox of self-sufficiency is to know when you cannot and should not depend only on yourself, to understand when you should ask for help.
One of the characteristics of highly independent and successful people is the ability to identify the proper time to get help. The “secret” to being constructively independent, rather than destructively, is to understand your knowledge gaps and then seek out assistance to fill them. It is not important to know the answers to all the questions, it is important to know where and how to find the people who know the answers.
In our culture’s bootstrap mentality there is a false belief that gaps in knowledge, skill or understanding equal weakness and that this weakness is a character flaw or a moral failing. Unfortunately, because of this, for thousands of years people have been unsuccessful because – often due to pride, ignorance, ego or misguided notions of independence – they did not get help for these gaps.
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses; it is part of being human to be good at some things, average at most and poor at others. You can learn to make one of your strengths the ability to recognize your weaknesses or gaps. Once they are identified, you can ask for help to change or minimize them. Truly self-reliant people understand their success is enhanced by other’s knowledge and that they can “…stand on the shoulders of giants.”(Sir Isaac Newton).
