Do You have Self Reliant Syndrome (SRS)?

The problem of relying too much on your self

By Lebo Pule

Imagine that you never really fail at anything. Whatever hurdle you come across you find a quick, almost flawless solution to your problem and then swiftly move on to yet another exciting escapade of your life. You are ridiculously resourceful, you think on your feet, you have a sharp mind and seemingly everything works for you. Things happen with great ease in your life and quite frankly you hardly ever need any real help from anyone. That would be great right? Well… maybe not.

Allow me to explain. It’s not always a great thing to be self reliant, being too Self Reliant, like any syndrome, is bound to end up at worst destroying you or at best you will end up repeating the same mistake while being completely unaware that you are running around in circles. SRS has strange and sometimes confusing symptoms. A person who has SRS can easily be mistaken as being a “go getter” or shrewd, so it can be hard to detect. I’ll give you an example of a very smart, self reliant, ridiculously resourceful young fellow who had a bad case of SRS. Let’s call him Stanley.

Stanley finished matric at 16, did a one-year course at a college, got a junior position at one of the banks. Lasted 6 months at the bank, then got a job as an administrator at a big IT firm, studied for a marketing diploma part time, got bored as an administrator after just 4 months, found ways to convince the sales and marketing department in the company to take him as a trainee something, anything. He discovered he was great at sales, in fact he excelled in sales. He became an exceptional sales rep. Stanley decided to join the competition after just one year with the big IT firm. He did even better at the new company. Decided to start his own business after 2 years at the competition, and again he did well – but only for a while, then things changed somewhat.

Somehow things did not flow as per usual. This did not concern him much at first because he knew he could always count on himself.  Until he had played almost all his resourceful and smart cards over and over to no avail, then he became a little alarmed. The situation did not improve, in fact the opposite happened and he got seriously tangled. He dug deeper into his resource kit and played even more cards, still nothing improved. The playing field had changed requiring different strategies, different resources and most definitely a different way of thinking – he did not know that.

He did not know that because he had never failed before. He had never really needed help from anyone before, real help that is. The  problem was that he did not know how to ask for help. An even bigger problem was that he did not know when he needed help. He needed others to help him think differently, see things from a different angle; he needed to learn to take advice.

How you know that you have SRS

1. You share very little with others about your next move, including your close friends, you never ask for advice or if you ask you hardly ever take it.
2. You never stay long enough in a place (a job, an industry, social group etc.) to make an authentic impact
3. When things go bad in your life you disappear, perhaps calling this period “lying low”.
4. When things don’t improve during your lying low period, you start asking for help – except you tend to ask for help with the symptoms in stead of with the real challenges you face. For example, someone running low on cash because of not having an income, instead of coming out clean and asking for ways to earn income – might go around borrowing small amounts of cash from Tom, Dick and Jabu, whilst pretending to be fine.

What causes SRS

There are a number of issues that cause SRS but strangely enough the most common cause is not having failed at anything before. Stanley’s story above is a case in point where he never failed at anything from a very young age, and everything he touched seemingly turned into gold. He therefore assumed that life was like that and forever will be like that. Stanley learned the hard way. After losing everything he finally got it, he finally asked for help. Genuine help.

So in conclusion, when things are going smoothly for you, with no help from others, it could mean that lady luck has visited you but then again it might be a good idea to stop and do a little introspection, you might have caught SRS.

Next month we’ll look at what to do about it, if you or someone you know is suffering from SRS.