We need others. We are not self-made.

It's an "I-can-do-it-myself" age. Almost everyone is nursing the thought that his or her accomplishments are made possible by his/her effort alone. We couldn't be more wrong.

As life continues to humble us, we find more and more the ever-growing desire to feel we can achieve all we want all by ourselves to be a mirage.

I'm not talking about overdependence on others. No! I'm talking about the need to see how much we have achieved based on the effort of others. If not for anything, we should understand first that once upon a time, a mother carried us in her womb for nine months — she probably had one or two reasons to “let us go” but she decided to go through the sleepless nights and aches to see us be born.

That's the first evidence that we need others — we didn't give birth to ourselves. Well, I don't know if you did, but I didn't. I couldn't. Someone had to do that for me. I'm glad “mama" supported me while I couldn't support myself.

Here are a few reasons people adopt the “I did it myself" mindset:

Previous experience of abandonment

People deserted us when we needed them the most.

Majority of us have had to experience the sad feeling of being abandoned, especially when we need people around us. You look around you, hoping to see people but all you see is the effect of the baffling wind blowing hard on your skin reminding you it's the only one available to give you a hug when you would have hoped to get the hug from a friend, brother or even a spouse.

This makes us credit all our wins to our effort since we went through some tough times alone. Oftentimes, those who left us (left-people) make us become blind to those who never left.

Previous experience of people letting us down

People we had hoped would support us had given the least support in the past.

Our experience with people would always be a major way we judge the world. It's easy to hear someone say, “People don't care". But isn't that assertion too vague? Have you meant every person in the world to make such a conclusion? Why classify everyone as uncaring? Such statements are often from people who have been let down by those they have trusted. It becomes difficult to trust again.

They raise their guard and believe they are all alone, hence they attribute their successes solely to their effort.

Short-sightedness

Sometimes, we consider the number of those who stood by us to be too few. We say, “Only that guy stayed with me; he probably didn't get the opportunity to leave. He merely stayed as a form of pity for my situation.”

How true is that? This is merely a figment of our imagination. Even if one person stayed, that person is worth more than one thousand people who didn't. Give him the credit, you couldn't get here if he wasn't there!

Don't be short-sighted — learn to see the length of the impact of the so-called few that stayed. Their decision held you on. You couldn't win without “the few" who believed in you!

Commonized effort

Sometimes we view those who stay and cheer as just “cool", so we make statements like, “Although I am glad they stayed, this was all they did. I could have done it myself."

Now, here is why that statement is wrong: we should be grateful for what someone did for us that we didn't do for ourselves, not just for what we couldn't do for ourselves. So, if someone washed your car, don't commonize that favor with the thought that you could have done it yourself or paid someone else to do it. No! Every act of kindness matters — be grateful!

Paused effort

Sometimes, people don't stay “all the way", but be glad they stayed all the while, and they didn't stay in your way!

We tend to forget that everyone has his own problems and we should be responsible enough to face ours. This is one reason we expect everyone around us to always be there for us. But it doesn't work that way.

For instance, if your parents supported you financially throughout high school but could support you through college, be glad you got the support you needed to get you started. Even if you go on to take care of yourself through college, understand that the foundational help you got from them made it easier to continue and finish college yourself. Things could have been messier!

Don't disregard people's effort and start going about claiming to be self-made because they paused along the way.

One way to tackle the five views discussed in this article is to value all effort and be grateful for your current position, despite how rough your journey has been. Remember, every support is important — son't see it as anything less. You might not have gotten where you are now if you hadn't got I — even the one you feel is insignificant.