The How and Why of Self Reliance

Skills for self reliance are not just concrete skills like learning how to bake your own bread, bank a fire to keep overnight, grow your own food and put it by.  Some of the skills that engender self reliance are entirely abstract.  One of the underlying skills that most self reliant people seem to have [...]

A logical focus among folks interested in self reliance, and perhaps the most common starting point is food self reliance—producing and putting by their own food. As grocery store prices have risen more and more people have sought more economical means to put food on the table, with a perhaps unstated goal of becoming less [...]

Since “more” is a relative term, one must assess how much there is before trying to figure out how to increase it.  If your goal is to become more self reliant, you must come to grips with how self reliant you currently are.  So let’s start with the aspects of self reliance we’ve already gone [...]

There are many aspects of self reliance. Have you ever heard that old saw “How do you eat an elephant?”  One bite at a time. Attaining a high degree of self reliance is no different.  One place to start would be to figure out different aspects of self reliance, and then assess where you are [...]

What is self reliance? All right; let’s start with some definitions. Merriam-Webster Online says it’s a noun dating from 1815 meaning “reliance upon one’s own efforts and abilities” The Free Dictionary says it’s a noun meaning “Reliance on one’s own capabilities, judgment, or resources; independence”, taken from The American Heritage Dictionary, or “reliance on oneself [...]