Summary
Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler explore how self-reliance, while culturally celebrated, is fundamentally a defense mechanism rooted in childhood abandonment or emotional neglect. When caregivers failed to show up, the child learned that depending on others leads to disappointment, so they resolved to handle everything themselves. This creates a pattern where the self-reliant person unconsciously pushes away the very help and connection they crave — double-checking others’ work, not making room for vulnerability, and giving compulsively to avoid receiving.
Joe shares his personal journey with self-reliance, tracing it to being kicked out of the house in eighth or ninth grade by an emotionally abusive, alcoholic father. A pivotal moment came when a friend told him “you make it impossible” for people to show up for him. The episode examines both the benefits (resourcefulness, grit, resilience) and the costs (aloneness, micromanagement, inability to receive help, limited solution sets). Brett parallels this with his own experience of suddenly recognizing he could support a friend he’d always seen as self-sufficient.
The deeper teaching is that self-reliance is an illusion at every level — we all depend on the biosphere, on infrastructure, on thousands of other humans. The more someone believes in their own self-reliance, the easier it becomes to harm others because they can’t feel the interdependence. The path out involves feeling the underlying emotions (especially helplessness and grief), welcoming abandonment rather than bracing against it, and allowing vulnerability so that support can arrive.
Key Concepts
- Self-reliance is a defense against helplessness
- Self-reliance blocks the ability to receive support
- Self-reliance is an illusion at every level
- Vulnerability invites the support self-reliance blocks
- Compulsive giving is a self-reliance strategy to avoid receiving
Key Quotes
“One day I’m sitting there complaining about how people don’t show up for me and my friend was like ‘yeah, you make that impossible.‘”
“You don’t want to open up a door where somebody can let you down again. And so you start acting like you got it all together — I got this, I got it, I know, I’ve got it.”
“The more removed you get from that, the more you don’t think that you’re relying on nature… the easier it is to pollute. It’s the same thing with humans.”
“I’ve never met somebody who’s hurt a lot of folks who doesn’t feel like it’s all on them, that they have to do it.”
“All a nursing mother wants is to hear a baby’s cry… that’s the way the universe works — if you cry out your weakness, it’s waiting to come and provide for you.”
Transcript
my parents kicked me out of the house when I was in the eth OR nth grade like you nobody is going to be there for you this is how this works and so I became extremely self-reliant and it I remember just getting so angry I mean even early marriage I was so angry cuz nobody would show up for me and you know one day I’m sitting there complaining about how people don’t show up for me and my friend was like yeah you make that impossible I was like what all right everybody welcome back to the art of accomplishment where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease hey Bri Hey Hey Joe how you doing yeah how am I doing I’ve been I’ve been going through a thing lately which has been really fascinating for me and it has to do with self-reliance which is what I want to talk about today now I have this friend who we’ve been friends for years and over that time he’s been building a business and you know I when I first met him you know I was I felt far newer in the the Bay Area VC funded Tech scene and he seemed like a very uh like an incumbent uh a veteran yeah and so I started out kind of seeing him as this person who knows what’s going on and many ways he does but also I’ve been more recently starting to realize how the way that I’ve been seeing him in that light has actually been preventing me from showing up in ways that I could actually support him and um more recently you know the the funding environment’s been challenging in many sectors and you know he’s been having a hard time raising money for his company and recently they hit something that is both a crisis as well as a blooming opportunity and it’s sort of a high risk you never know which way it’s going to go but there’s suddenly there’s a lot of valences for support and I found myself stepping in and realizing that there’s actually connections that I have there’s ideas that I have there’s um there’s resources that I could bring and I realized that this is something that I hadn’t been doing before with this person for some reason mhm I I had been seeing this person as they’ve got it and it had never occurred to me to be like hey why don’t I introduce you to these people yeah and somehow that all dropped away very recently and I’ve been finding myself uh joyfully engaged in what’s going on in that uh in that whole situation which is actually really it’s very exciting uh both in terms of possibility but also in the the joy of Engagement and like being in it yeah I have I have a curiosity because I I’ve seen this phenomenon before but mostly from the other side because I mostly work with like extremely self-reliant people right most of my most of the people can come to a course they make enough money there’s a lot of self-reliance there and not all and all the CEOs I work with there’s usually a big streak of self-reliance and um so the question I have is as this crisis opportunity showed up how is he asking for help more how is he showing up in a way that makes room for you to to step in and be there for him yeah that’s fascinating there’s I mean there’s so many parallel things going on one there’s ways that he asked for help from me that I don’t think he had before yeah two there’s ways that I saw his excitement and the way that he was like responding to the Ever Changing situation that like I wanted to get drawn in I was like I want to be part of this excitement and then I found myself asking how can I help in ways that I hadn’t been doing in the past despite being really excited about their uh what they’ve been doing in the world for a long time something something in the energetics of the of our experience together switched yeah so that’s something so what I see is that and I I experienced it firsthand in my life earlier which was I was extremely self-reliant right so you know my background dad was emotionally abusive and alcoholic and so I learned at a very young age nobody was going to be there for you right my parents kicked me out of the house when I was in the eth OR ninth grade like you nobody is going to be there for you this is how this works and so I became extremely self-reliant and it I remember just getting so angry I mean even early marriage I was so angry because nobody would show up for me and you know one day I’m sitting there complaining about how people don’t show up for me and my friend was like yeah you make that impossible I was like what what I make that impossible and you know when you have that strong thing of self-reliance where because people didn’t show up for you there’s a way that that hurt that self-reliance hurt that oh I have to do this for myself and so you don’t want to open up a door where somebody can let you down again yeah and so you you you start acting like you got it all together I got this I got it yeah I’m I know I’ve got it I know I got it it’s okay yeah no blah blah blah blah and then if someone does help you because you’re scared of having them let you down you double check their work do they really have it are you really going to be there did you really it’s like asking a teenager to do something six times they’re just like off and they don’t do it right like it’s but you do that with all your friends and so that’s or people who work for you and that’s what I noticed is that I had to look forward to being abandoned to be let down so that I could overcome self-reliance at the same time self-reliance was like amazing in some ways and so there was goods and bads with it but there was definitely some drawbacks that I didn’t want to live with anymore how would you define self-reliance what what exactly does that pattern look like yeah the pattern is typically you were abandoned or somebody let you down horribly when you were a kid so some way that you were supposed to be a tune to you didn’t get a tune to and the only way to take care of yourself was to take care of yourself it wasn’t to depend on somebody else to take care of you it wasn’t to convince somebody else to take care of you so if you had a circumstance where there was just no way you were going to get the financial support you needed or the emotional support you needed from the from the environment then you started saying oh I’m I have to be there I have to be able to do this for myself there’s a feeling that arises in you that’s partially disappointment but also helplessness and you just are not going to allow yourself to feel that and so wait no I’m not going to feel that I will be determined as hell I will focus I will do whatever I will push and pull and scream and scratch to get it so that I don’t ever have to feel that level of helplessness again and you see this sometimes with people who grow up poor and they just no matter what happens they are going to not be destitute again or you can see it with people who are emotionally let down and they are just never going to be hurt again that’s they’re going to create that reality and so that’s where self-reliance it’s just that will that comes online to not feel that way and it makes you incredibly resourceful yeah so there’s there’s a couple pieces to break down there one is that you needed you needed support in some way and you didn’t get it you were let down it seems like there’s a also a way where you’re not allowed to feel the disappointment you’re not allowed to feel that heartbreak yeah or you’re not allowed to need you’re not allowed to ask there can be any any entry point any of those could be entry points to developing that implicit or explicit yeah usually it’s an imp it’s an implicit thing where so either I I have to totally admit that the people who are here to take care of me that are adults that are my caregivers are completely incapable I don’t want to have to feel that so it’s that kind of or sometimes you get punished know you can’t be disappointed in me or they’re not even there to feel that way so you have to just take care of you and your sister or whatever it is so there’s that that as well there’s you know rejection of that emotion or or shame when you’ve had that emotion but typically it’s it’s implicit it’s I it’s really overwhelming for a 5-year-old to think that they’re not being taken care of by the adults in the room yeah yeah that the surface is that surface is one of the Tells of self-reliance that I’ve started to see which is somebody’s going through life some setback happens and they just go immediately onto the next thing they’re like oh that happened we’re moving on to this now this is a new thing and there’s a way that that actually looks really emotionally intelligent from one perspective yeah but if you take the full Journey it’s like I wanted something I got disappointed I let myself feel the Heartbreak of it and be seen in that and in and then I can move on to what’s next then I can move on to what’s next and not repeat it right cannot repeat the pattern because it’s in in that middle space where you’re allowing yourself to feel the to feel what you have to feel and not having your expectations met and also be seen in it that’s where the opportunity for support yes comes in that’s right and support and healing yeah yeah so the self-reliance is often times the self-reliant character is a hard is it’s hard to heal because you’re not having the mour process which means you’re not feeling the emotion that you were that you couldn’t feel the first time around or the second time around or the third time around so you can’t get out of the golden algorithm you can’t get to a place where you’re where you feel the Heartbreak feel the grief of the situation of the pattern that’s repeating so that you can welcome that emotional experience in the future and they’re least likely to ask for support in healing that thing exactly yeah yeah that’s right so what are what are some of the benefits of of the self-reliant pattern yeah like I said resourceful willful Drive there’s just a deep it’s not quite disciplin but it’s a I will overcome resilience grit grit yeah yeah there’s a lot of that that comes with self-reliance and every single really successful CEO I know has a a pretty heavy self-reliance streak that they have to overcome in part to have a great team mhm because if they’re too self-reliant they’re micromanagers they don’t they can’t attract great talent they can’t delegate well yeah so let’s go further into that the costs what what what are some of the failure modes when when the self-reliant pattern isn’t overcome and is driving the driving the show whether it’s in a company or in a life yeah it’s a lot of failures and it one is it’s really hard to experience getting help even if you’re getting it you don’t get to experience that you’re getting help you make a transactional or you push it away um that’s one thing uh the other thing that is that there’s a whole set of solutions that you don’t see because you couldn’t even imagine that other people would want to participate so it’s all all the solution sets revolve around you in your capacity and no matter how smart you are there are certain things you are going to be in incapable of and so so there’s just you can’t have as wide of a of a reach you can’t make as big of a company you can’t have as large of an impact if you don’t get over some of that self-reliance um so that’s another one uh there’s a deep feeling of aloneness that comes with self-reliance you can be surrounded by people but you feel like you’re all alone in it yeah and so that’s that’s quite painful as well those are some of them yeah as I’ve been working through my own self Rel have also noticed that there’s a there’s been a shift in the way that I perceive people so if I if I am self-reliant or I’m running the self-reliant pattern thinking I need to be self-reliant I’m more likely to believe other people either should be or are self-reliant so there’s a distance that that creates yeah and I’m less likely to perceive them as having open valances for me to support them yeah there’s a couple other things that happen in in that similar vein if you go the other way the more extremely self-reliant you get the easier it is to justify heinous acts on other humans so think about it this way if you relied on your natural environment for all your food you probably wouldn’t hypothetically hypothetic hypothetically if you needed something like a biosphere to produce food that you eat exactly but it was a direct thing you knew that if yeah these trees got poisoned you would not eat you probably wouldn’t poison those trees you would make sure you would do what you had to do to protect those trees the more removed you get from that the more you don’t think that you’re relying on nature or you can’t feel that you’re relying on nature the easier it is to pollute it’s the same thing with humans the more transactional your world gets the easier it is to just say well the algorithm says that these people shouldn’t get health care or whatever it is it’s easier to create to have heinous acts on people if you don’t feel the interdependence that all humans have on each other now we are we all rely on this biosphere but right transaction can make it so that you don’t see it yeah and we all rely on each other like we couldn’t even have electricity without thousands of people right but it’s it all can be hidden through transaction and the further that gets away the easier it is to do things that hurt people all the way to you know autocracy yeah I mean something that that description surfaces is that self-reliance is an illusion all the way down it’s a an illusion all the way down and the more you believe in that illusion the more likely it is that you’re going to be hurting a lot of people yeah and it doesn’t I’m not saying that all self-reliant people hurt other folks and I some of them have great intentions but the other seems to be very true I’ve never met somebody who’s hurt a lot of folks who doesn’t feel like it’s all on them that that they have to do it right it’s like it’s like a shrinking sense of self like a smaller sense of self if if what you see as what you’re relying on is yes all arrows point back to self then you’re not seeing the broader ecosystem in which you are a part of a system of Greater someone was going to take it so it might as well have been me somebody was going to do it so it might as well have been me it’s it starts becoming that kind of mentality yeah instead of oh I rely on all these people can’t hurt them yeah and you see this economically happening it’s you know it’s it’s no secret economically that a strong middle class makes everybody wealthier but the more self-reliant you get the easier it is to say I’m getting Wealthy on the backs of shrinking the middle class yeah and then everybody gets poor including there becomes less and less people in the society they’re wealthy and that highlights sort of how this propagates through society as well for every person who feels self self reliant to someone else that person looks selfish or self-absorbed or self centered or self whatever right and there’s a lack of possible connection and interconnection available you hide from yourself the ways that you actually are reliant so if I have a belief that I should be self-reliant then the ways that I actually am reliant on say all of my employees caring about the vision and showing up for work every day and then putting their hard into what they’re doing I get to say that I’m actually just hiring them and that I’m I’m the one driving the ship and that this is still all like I’m alone in it the the one thing that I want to make sure of is it we don’t it’s not like self-reliant people are bad guys you just had this metaphor somebody says look they’re selfish right right and that is part of what makes self-reliant people self-reliant right yeah people look at that self-reliant person and they make them bad guys yeah instead of seeing that they’re scared so it’s a two-way it’s a both people you were also just not helping your friend totally right like you could have looked at your friend who looks self-reliant and say oh I see I got a friend who needs help or or that I or that I just want to help them or that they’re not being an they’re just scared and and those little acts that the people the CEOs don’t get you always know who the leader in the room is like who the CEO is cuz they’re the ones that’s handing out the compliments nobody looks to the CEO and says wow that was a really good job Bob you know and if they do it’s usually it’s usually with some sycophancy it’s it’s some it’s not just hey I acknowledge that you’ve done some really hard work today and so they’re not being seen and that yes they’re creating that reality but also so are the people who are yeah who are looking at them as self-reliance so it’s a two-way street it’s an interesting two-way street yeah and so is the way that we put them we in society often put self-reliance on a pedestal look how self-reliant this person is that’s right you know even like a burning man principles radical self-reliance and yet also it’s right show up naked with no water and find exactly the pla provides like how somehow it’s both of those things but uh ex but you know we have we we have that kind of headwind in in our culture against asking for help vulnerably against asking for help or seeing that you’re getting it all the time yeah that you’re constantly you know be on a garbage strike in New York City for a summer you’ll see how Reliant you are on on everybody but like you said it’s really easy to not see it so we’ve we’ve spoken about the intellectual I want to go into more of the emotional experience of like what is it like emotionally to to be self-reliant and living that pattern for decades how would I know shut up I’m here supporting you teeing you up with your story see it come on exactly for me in the really heavy self-reliant days there was a feeling of aloneness you know early businesses that I was involved in it was why can’t people act like owners I wasn’t letting them but um but there’s a feeling of aloneness there’s a feeling like you have to do it all yourself it’s often very frustrating suffring people often can get frustrated relatively easy because of that same it’s hard to feel the helplessness as hurt or fear so it’s easier to Feel It is anger typically not always but typically and self-reliant people often compartmentalize our emotions while they’re while they’re in the super self-reliant phase because they can’t allow themselves to be overwhelmed they have to get everything done um and so there’s Sometimes some a grandis of themselves as well look I’ve done this all myself and other people haven’t and so there can also be AIT a bit of arrogance that comes all of those are some of the emotions that come with self-reliance so what was one of the of course this is never just a single moment but what are some of the pattern interrupts that occurred for you feeling my emotions was one of the most important aspects was learning how to feel the anger and the sadness sadness for me was the hardest at the beginning as you know crying learning how to feel that feeling hurt feeling anger all the way baby a baby in a crib crying is possibly like the Prototype helpless expression yeah yeah the Prototype self-reliant a baby allowed to cry in the crib all alone for hours yeah until they St like the moment they stop is the moment they start becoming self-reliant this pattern yeah yeah so so that was yeah that was emotionally a big part of how it felt for me and then the pattern interrupts so feeling feeling emotions was a big part of the change one was the when my friend basically like I said told me it’s CU you’re not allowing and when I got to see that I was in a golden algorithm with that I was pushing people away that I wasn’t making room for people to help I wasn’t vulnerable able so people could help me in that in that moment of vulnerability and then when I tested it out and was so surprised I need help and somebody came to help me I was like what’s going on um still took me a long time to see it uh welcoming the abandonment was a big one for me welcoming that feeling of Abandonment because as I did I could be vulnerable and in that vulnerability help came I remember this roomy poem that basically says that all a nursing mother wants is a b to hear a baby’s cry and it’s this idea that that’s the way the universe works if you cry out your weakness that it’s waiting to come and and provide for you yeah and I tested that theory a little bit and then I tested a little bit more and it just kept on kept on showing up that if I could be vulnerable it wasn’t like every every time I was vulnerable everybody would show up but when I was vulnerable able people would show up and often time the amazing thing was one of the recognitions I had is as I was self-reliant I had a lot of people around me who were used to me being self-reliant not needing them and therefore if there was any transaction it was me giving them stuff giving them my time or my attention or my advice or whatever it was and when that started dropping other people showed up and I remember I was I was was raising money for a short film it was the first time that I ever went and raised money and I all the people who I’d been so generous to almost none of them helped me raise money and all the people who were super self-reliant now that I think about it I hadn’t thought about it this way but they they they were generous folks but they never needed me for anything those were the folks that were the most likely to give to the thing I was raising money for and that was a it was like oh the universe provided for me so to speak like I got the stuff that I needed when I said I needed help but it just wasn’t from the people that I had those relationships with it was from the people who were who were just naturally givers who were naturally had something to give and many of them being self-reliant themselves but yeah so that was an interesting thing to see yeah it’s interesting to to think of different different ways that you can operate from self-reliance one of them being to give to everybody so that you don’t have to receive yeah another think about your friend yeah I’m pretty sure he is doing that same thing he’s almost always in the role of The Giver of advice he’s almost always in the role of providing for other oh mentors many people mentors many people right that’s one of that’s one of our tricks that’s one of our self- relying tricks yeah yeah yeah especially in like the like sort of like the coach archetype as well it’s really easy to get into the coaching profession to be like oh great like I can be for a whole bunch of people and then never to admit never have to admit that I need them right yeah a surrogate for the intimacy that I really want that’s right yeah that’s one of the big dangers and pitfalls of coaching yeah yeah for you as that pattern fell away what what emerged in its wake a lot less less of what me it’s like an ego death in it there’s you know these patterns they never completely extinguish that you know there’s still parts that are more and more finely Unwound forms of self-reliance but the but generally there’s a there’s a ego that has to be maintained right to what are we relying on yeah when we call when we think we’re self-reliant what is that self is that construction right and that’s that’s there’s an ego to that that just starts yeah dropping away and there’s an openness and there’s a there’s a sweetness there’s more gratitude typically there’s more faith not Faith like in a in a religious sense I guess it’s kind of religious but it’s there’s just a faith in how things will work it doesn’t require you to manage reality as much a trust the trust yeah yeah exactly awesome cool yeah thank you Joe you’re welcome thanks man yeah thanks everyone for listening to the art of accomplishment you can find us on YouTube Twitter SLX and all the platforms at Art of a comp Joe is on X as fuore Joe Hudson I Am Eric kler a i r k s t l r and we’ve got a bunch of shorts coming out these days on YouTube so be sure to check out our YouTube channel and if you if you like this episode please share it with a friend don’t be self- relying about it share it get it out there see see what happens actually I had that happened a woman told me the other day that she was in a huge fight with her husband and they decided to listen to a podcast together wow and it got them out of their fight which I thought was great that’s awesome yeah it felt good yeah see this is what’s possible everybody enjoy