The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

March 5Originality of Character

The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all people as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts by guardians, who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a person as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded by doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help.

Margaret Fuller—Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Have your own thoughts about what you want from life ever frightened you because they seemed laughable?

Can you recall school classmates everyone made fun of because they were “different”? Maybe that was you.

Maybe you felt bad for those kids because they were bullied and made miserable, but they may have also been guarding what to them seemed the only way. They may not have defined it as self-reliance, but their “originality of thought and character” was something they had no choice but to live.

And it may have caused some pain, but it also may have turned into joy and self-reliance and, in many cases, success as only they could define.

Self-reliance requires freeing your mind of doubts. Self-reliance means you can't want everyone to like you. In fact, it may simply want you to like yourself.

Today, treasure your originality of thought and character and let it shine.

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