We grow up conditioned to obey. The willingness to obey is possibly an evolved trait as human babies are so relatively helpless and require far more education, training and development than other mammals. The children that obey adult guidance, designed to avoid risk and disaster, have a higher likelihood of survival. Unfortunately, the need to get quick and instantaneous results when children are at risk often involves a lot of negative motivation through shouting and scolding. Because it works so well it often becomes the normal method of control when control is immediately wanted. This is a real case where what’s easy in the beginning becomes difficult and what’s difficult in the beginning becomes easy. Through overtly controlling children we can get instantaneous relief from difficulties on a daily basis but we tend not to encourage children to develop the ability to take responsibility for making their own decisions and especially for accepting and dealing with the consequences when things don’t turn out as desired. The result is that most people end up very dependent and needy.

The majority of us are raised to be dependent. We just follow the crowd with a herd mentality and it can work in terms of ‘getting by’ and not ending up in desperate straights but it doesn’t create a satisfying way of living. We end up feeling controlled and we end up with little understanding or capability in what it takes to exercise personal control. In wealthy and advanced nations it has become easier and easier to fulfill basic survival needs and so we become more and more interested in fulfilling our higher level aspirations. We will never do that by remaining needy and dependent. To achieve full maturity as an adult one must be capable of taking full responsibility for personal decisions and actions. In the beginning that’s very hard because it’s risky, it’s uncertain, it’s unknown and it can prove unpopular with the people you are close to.

Independence requires setting your own course, choosing your own parameters for what’s right or wrong, what’s good or bad, what’s sensible or foolish. That means ’stepping out of line’ initially. It means taking risks and it especially means taking personal responsibility for decisions, actions and for dealing with the consequences of those actions.

If thinking and acting with independent thought is something new for you then I recommend taking a gentle and experimental approach to it. Your purpose is to find better ways of thinking and acting in order to solve problems better. It’s not necessary, or favorable, to lunge into huge changes. Reflect upon what you are not getting and what you want to have and what changes in thinking or action would be necessary to get what you want and experiment with that. If it works you’ll feel encouraged to do more.

For example: As I grew up I was barked at a lot by the people around me. It was all designed to get me to behave as desired by whoever was barking at me. The shouting got an immediate reaction from me and the fears of being put down in no uncertain terms if I didn’t behave as desired meant that I did as I was told. I ended up with a very reactive mindset. I was almost unable to make decisions by myself because I had no training in it. I just followed instructions. I also had the extra problem that the demands and rules of the people around me often conflicted. On one day for one person I might have to behave in a certain way and then the next day (sometimes the next moment) I had to behave in a different way for someone else, sometimes the completely opposite way. The rules seemed random and indecipherable and I spent a lot of time feeling perplexed and confused. I had no good understanding of how to behave and very little confidence. I became a sucker for seeking approval from other people at almost all times and consequently I was easily manipulated by those willing to exercise control over me.

This caused me a lot of bother and I really didn’t feel good about myself. It became clear that adapting myself to fit in with and to get the approval of whoever I was dealing with was corrupting me. It prevented me from behaving consistently and it prevented me from behaving with personal integrity, i.e. I was not true to myself. My need for approval became a monster that created continuous turmoil in my life.

After reading Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7-Habits of Successful People” I came across the idea that if you allow other people to be responsible for making things work for you and for making you happy then you will usually feel nervous and unhappy because you have no control over the outcome. I don’t recall if he expressed it as neediness but, in effect, that was the mechanism at the heart of what he was referring to.

I saw the logic of his point and so from that point on I realized that I had to take responsibility for setting up my own rules and guiding principles in life. I started off quite simply and said to myself, “I never act in ways that are deliberately designed to upset other people and so if someone I deal with is already upset then it’s not through anything that I did. Consequently, if that person feels bad then that’s not because of me. I don’t have to respond and accommodate them just to make them feel better. If disapproval occurs because I’m not willing to make things right for that person then I now accept that. I haven’t done anything wrong so I don’t have to take responsibility for fixing things.”

This was a far superior interpretation of events and a much better attitude to adopt but it was a departure from my previous thinking and behavior where I accepted that I was the problem and that I was responsible for making the other person feel better (a fast ticket to becoming a victim of the whims of everyone around me). I didn’t make any declarations to anyone that I was changing my ways. I just quietly introduced this new approach when someone tried to palm off some bad feeling onto me and a desire for me to instantly provide some form of relief. I wasn’t negative or aggressive, instead I was just ducking the punches - something that I had never done before. The people who used to give me trouble now found it difficult to land a blow on me and so they gave up or found someone else to use as a punchbag.

It took a while to implement this approach and I initially did it for situations where the intensity of emotions created was not very high. It would not have worked for a highly emotionally charged situation right from the outset. I was too conditioned to respond instantly to outbursts. By working on the lower level stuff and showing that I was no longer easily manipulated I started to condition other people to the fact that outbursts would have less impact on me. Some people didn’t like that and in a few last ditch efforts would really come down on me but by this time I was already sufficiently experienced not to give in easily and revert back to my old reactions. I was getting better results and I felt good about myself because I was no longer a victim. I had broken the back of my need for approval.

I didn’t refuse to help people and I still cared about how they felt but I refused to take responsibility for how they felt and for solving problems that I didn’t initiate and that I didn’t want end up answerable for. The important thing was not to be a willing recipient of the emotional ‘poison’ that others tried to pass on to me and not to keep accepting responsibility for solving other people’s problems (more problems for me and also the additional risk of disappointing others if I failed to come through, which just cranked up my overall stress levels even further).

It’s quite a thing to experience such a change and it wasn’t so difficult in the end. It feels great to ‘be your own person’ and decide for yourself what’s right or wrong, good or bad, sensible or foolish. What is more is that other people begin to respect you more. Instead of acting feebly and irresolutely you can act with courage and with confidence. You accept that you can’t please all of the people all of the time and that to attempt to do so is foolish. It is far better to cast yourself in your own mold rather than to try to fit into the molds of other people.

It takes courage to give up being needy. It’s so much easier to let other people be responsible because then we can blame them when things don’t work out for us. We don’t get what we want but as a relief we can say, “It wasn’t my fault” and for a lot of people this becomes a default condition. You can live life that way but you end up living a very reactive life and a very unfulfilling life because you don’t take action nor attempt to control efforts to get what you want.

The courage necessary becomes easier to implement once you understand the mechanism of neediness (making someone else responsible for fulfilling your desires) and the negative effect that it has on your emotional well-being and your ability to achieve fulfillment. Taking responsibility for fulfilling your own desires is easy in principle but in practice it can prove difficult in the beginning because you have to experiment and learn. That means making mistakes and sometimes taking losses. Most of us don’t want to do that but that is a necessary requirement to move from immature, dependent and needy thought and action to mature, independent and self-controlled thought and action. It’s well worth the effort because you will receive long-lasting contentment and fulfillment that you will never find by remaining dependent and needy.

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[Photo by rotten]