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6 areas for declaring your personal independence

The Practical Prepper

As you celebrate our nation's independence this July 4th, it's worth pausing to reflect on your own independence too. Said another way, our personal independence is simply how self-reliant we are. Each of us can assess our overall independence by measuring the level of self-reliance and personal responsibility we've assumed for our physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and economic needs.

When we are self-reliant, we are better able to take care of ourselves and our family. Our self-reliance prepares us to handle a greater amount of hardship without becoming dependent on others. We can become self-reliant by:

Shepherding our mind: we need to take advantage of all educational opportunities that we can handle in a reasonable way. Reading is an excellent way to educate ourselves and build our ability to think critically. However, like food, we should limit the amount of "junk" reading we do. There's nothing wrong with some "light" or "casual" reading, but we all need books with some substance to build our mind. In addition to reading, exercising your mind in other ways is useful too. For instance, try word or logic puzzles to keep your mind sharp and able to focus.
Maintaining our body: practicing sound principles of nutrition, exercise, and hygiene will help keep our bodies functioning optimally. Eating healthy foods and moderating our intake of alcohol and other unnecessary substances is ideal. We can avoid disease by keeping our bodies and homes clean. We should get proper rest, and we should exercise regularly, according to our needs and limitations. The more we keep our bodies healthy, the better we are able to care for our own needs and help others.
Developing spiritual and emotional strength: Spiritual strength is all about feeling connected and balanced on a deeper level, which gives your life has meaning and purpose. This is typically fostered by following some regular spiritual practice, be it religion and prayer, or self-guided meditation or visualization. Emotional strength relates to how you handle the stresses in life, i.e., your resiliency and flexibility. Emotional strength is usually built on a strong foundation of loving and respecting yourself. Building emotional strength often simply takes practice; positive self-affirmations are helpful, and growing in your spirituality will usually enhance your emotional resilience and stability.
Growing our skills: This is applicable on two fronts. First, we need to learn the knowledge and proficiencies needed for our desired career path. What's more, having other related, applicable skills can make you more valuable to employers (or clients if you're self employed). Aside from professional skills, learning practical hobbies and recreational skills can give you the ability to do more for yourself.
Increasing our household preparedness: At the most basic level, this involves storing a supply of food, water, and other supplies against times of disaster and need. This type of preparedness is what a great many posts in this blog are about, and don't need to be covered more here.
Managing our personal finances: Learning how to live within our income is the best way to become financially self-reliant. It also requires setting up and managing a working budget, making (and planning for) practical financial goals, and avoiding debt. In addition, wise management of our income includes buying food and other essential items when they are least expensive, avoiding waste, and developing a savings fund to provide for emergency financial needs.

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it is! In order to become self-reliant, we must be willing to work, and do so diligently.

What's more, we parents have the responsibility to teach our children these basic principles. In that way, we help them develop their own self-reliance and provide for their own families in the future.

In closing, it's important to remember that "no man is an island" as you read this post. We are responsible for developing our personal independence. However, that is just the starting point.

If we are ever unable to temporarily meet our basic needs on our own, we can ideally turn to family members, close friends, our church, etc., for support and assistance. However, the primary responsibility for our social, emotional, spiritual, physical, and economic well-being lies first with ourselves.

Believing that preparedness and self-reliance are key to individual freedom, Atticus Freeman is the founder of the Self-Reliant Info blog, in addition to authoring The Practical Prepper weekly blog here on Farm Dreams. Thanks for reading!

Tags: career, debt, finance, health, personal, preparedness, reduction, self-reliance, skills, spirituality, More…wellness

2 members like this

Comment by Cliffson on July 4, 2012 at 9:19pm: Unfortunately anyone who embraces the values described above now fits the definition of a terrorists per Dept of Homeland Security. See the link below.

http://www.infowars.com/homeland-security-report-lists-liberty-love...

Comment by Atticus Freeman on July 5, 2012 at 2:06pm: Thanks for the link, Cliffson. I've seen similar articles in the past from Infowars and other sites, along with the various reports they cite.

I urge anyone reading such things to NOT simply take the articles at face value. Always go to the source material and read it. Sure, it takes time, but you'll get a much better sense of what's really going on when you see things in context.

In this case, the "new" report (entitled Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008) is really looking at the geographic distribution of terrorist events across the US for the past several decades. It is not really focused on "defining" terrorism.

Instead, it uses definitions of terrorist groups from the Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism study. This second study defines a variety of terrorist groups from far-Left to far-Right along with others, including religious groups. And yes, it includes this definition:

The extreme far-right is composed of groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.

This can sound pretty damning at first glance; but, bear in mind that there is also a "Religious" category, including a "Christian/Catholic" subcategory that encompasses "Catholic Traditionalist, Christian Identity, Christian Reconstruction, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, and Evangelical."

Given the latter, shall we assume that DHS is targeting all Christians as potential terrorists? I think not.

It's more realistic to see how actions (probably including plans of action) are the difference. In other words, being a Christian isn't an issue; being a Christian and using violence to promote your beliefs is (for example, by bombing a rival religious building or an abortion clinic).

Likewise, believing in personal liberty, knowing how to defend yourself, having preparedness plans and supplies, and following the practices described in the article above aren't a problem; however, using any of those tools to infringe on others' rights or commit violent acts are.

Are we right to be wary and watchful? Of course.

Is there reason to panic about live self-reliantly, or — worse yet — to actively change your beliefs and/or eliminate your preparedness stores? ? I don't believe so.

Comment by Cliffson on July 5, 2012 at 9:10pm: Atticus, in general I agree with your feedback and it is appreciated. It's the direction of things that bothers me. The Germans thought everything was hunky dory too as laws were passed that appeared not to affect them. Then overnight it was illegal to be gay, a jew, black or a number other things and the penalty was death. I don't like the parallels. Using violence to further ones beliefs or infringe on others rights has always been wrong, but today our government has no problem doing so. We have a president who updates his "Kill List" weekly. That's scary. And now that the supreme court has ruled to that forcing people to buy insurance is just another tax, what stops them from telling parents whose childeren have not served in one of these god-forsaken wars that they also owe a tax as part of their fair share. It's just an example to make a point of how extreme things have gotten. How I wish things were different. I'm sixty years old and I remember a time when our nation was far more civilized. Makes me sad. Keep your powder dry mate and your silhouette off the horizen.

Comment by Atticus Freeman on July 5, 2012 at 10:52pm: Thanks again, Cliffson! I appreciate the dialogue, and agree with your points, especially about the direction our society is headed. I think history (not just WWII, but much earlier as well) demonstrates the "fatal sequence," as described (in bold) by Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company:

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction. - Henning W. Prentis, Industrial Management in a Republic, p. 22

Comment by Cliffson on July 7, 2012 at 1:21am: If that doesn't nail it I dont know what does Atticus. I've read a lot of history in the vein of the things noted above but never come across Prentis. Thanks for the heads up. I love this pqrt of the quote

"The competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas."

Comment by Cliffson on July 7, 2012 at 1:31am: Do you know where I can find a copy?

Comment by Atticus Freeman on July 7, 2012 at 2:00pm: When I was preparing to post the above, I was actually looking for the quote attributed to Alexander Tytler (or Alexander Tyler, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Thomas Macaulay, etc.). I came across Loren Collins' article, The Truth About Tytler, which clarified things considerably, and led me to the H.W. Prentis Jr. quote above.

Unfortunately, his Industrial Management in a Republic book isn't widely available. If you're affiliated with specific universities, you can read it online via the Hathi Trust Digital Library. You can also find the print version in a few libraries across the U.S., as shown in this WorldCat search.

Amazon.com offers used copies of the 51-page book H. W. Prentis, Jr. 1884-1959, as do other online booksellers, but I haven't see it.

There is good news, however. If you'd like to read some of Prentis' material, you can find a number of articles for free through EBSCOHost. In addition, Prentis (and many other good authors) is included in some of the free material available through the Ludwig von Mises Institute's website, mises.org.

Comment by Atticus Freeman on July 7, 2012 at 2:02pm: Incidentally, Prentis' transcribed speech, America Tomorrow, is a good place to start; it's an interesting and worthwhile read, IMO.

Comment by Cliffson on July 7, 2012 at 4:40pm: Great info! Thank you so much. I should have thought of looking at Mises. Great site! Thanks again.

Comment by Atticus Freeman on July 7, 2012 at 5:13pm: Not a problem... I like to spread the word about original American values and help increase interest in Liberty. :)

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