No one is coming to save you.
There are two ways that you can view that realization.
You can either look at it with hopeless eyes, knowing there is struggle ahead. Or, alternatively, you can look at it as an ultimate expression of freedom to make the kind of life that you want for yourself.
The problem with wanting or expecting other people to save you is that it has a price. And that price is acting under their expectations, potentially being influenced by their needs, or being forced down a path that isn’t right for you.
Instead, when you stop expecting others to save you, you can do these things differently to build your success.
1. You stop outsourcing your life and worth to others.
No one is coming to save you. And that means that you don’t need to shrink yourself down to become acceptable to the people who would do the saving.
In my personal experience, help tends to come with a lot of strings attached and expectations on what I should or should not do in my life.
When I was really struggling with my mental illness, drowning in it, I had people who wanted to help, but only if I did something they wanted me to.
In one case, it was going to church.
Now, if you’re a believer, more power to you. I totally respect that.
What I don’t respect are people who try to force you to find Jesus or listen to a sermon to be worthy of a bologna sandwich.
Frankly, I’d rather go hungry than live a life that isn’t mine, and I did a couple of times.
It’s not always religion, of course. It might be a parent offering financial support with the expectation that you take the career path they want, or any other kind of conditional “support.”
When you stop relying on that support and the validation of others, you are free to carve your own path.
2. You stop waiting until you “feel ready” to take another step.
People often lament that we never seem to have enough time in life.
I disagree.
Looking back on my life, I can see many times when I just wasted a lot of time because I was waiting on something.
Maybe I was waiting on someone to make an important decision, like when I had relationship struggles. Or maybe I was drowning in my own self-doubt, which caused me to delay and falter.
If you’re waiting to “feel ready” or for someone to come and get you started before you can begin to heal, improve yourself, and create a better life, then you’re going to waste a lot of time.
The fact is that you may never feel ready, particularly if you struggle with something like anxiety that can disproportionately amplify your fears. And no one is responsible for helping you to get started or do the work for you. You have to save yourself, whether you feel ready or not.
3. You start taking concrete actions instead of relying on motivation.
Motivation may help to get you started, but discipline is what will take you to success.
As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Meaning, if you want to get in shape, you have to eat right and exercise regularly. If you want to expand your education, you need to attend classes and study regularly. If you want to reach for big goals, then you need to make small plans on how to get there.
Motivation is fleeting.
In my case, as a working writer, I’ve often been asked how I find the inspiration and motivation to write.
The answer is – I don’t.
I sit down, and I write whether or not I have inspiration or motivation.
As much as I love writing, it’s still work. Sometimes I just don’t want to work, but I do it anyway. And if I’m not happy with it because I wasn’t particularly inspired, I can always edit it later.
4. You start gaining competence instead of wishing for easy situations.
After you realize that no one is coming to save you, you may find yourself drawn toward building your self-sufficiency.
You start realizing that other people are not always reliable, so you have to build skills that you may not currently have.
Maybe that comes in the form of working on your mental health, communication skills, cooking, life skills, or developing your job skills further.
The more skills you build, the less reliant you are on other people to help get you out of a tight spot.
You know they may not come, or that their help is going to come with conditions. So instead of subjecting yourself to that, you can just do whatever needs doing yourself or have the means to hire someone for the job.
For example, it took me years to realize that I was expecting other people to solve my emotional problems for me and how unrealistic and unfair that is. I needed to learn that skill for myself.
So my emotional intelligence was built with the help of therapists and a lot of reading.
Now? Now I can solve my own problems much more effectively, or I’m humble enough to seek out appropriate help for them when I can’t.
5. You start taking responsibility rather than only viewing yourself as a powerless victim.
You aren’t responsible for whatever difficult or terrible things happened to you, but you do have to decide what you’re going to do with them.
A number of people lock themselves into self-pity. They perceive themselves to be nothing more than a victim, so they wait around for someone else to rescue them from their own problems.
As someone with severe mental health issues, I can tell you that is unlikely to work.
Not only do you need to deal with their expectations, as I’ve already mentioned, but most people just don’t have the knowledge or skills needed to rescue you, and neither should they be expected to.
The stories that are told about it are romantic and heart-warming, but it doesn’t usually play out like that in real life. “I found my person, and I just knew I had to change!” simply isn’t a winning strategy.
6. You start making uncomfortable decisions sooner.
I’ve reached a point in my life where I would rather make the uncomfortable decisions sooner rather than waste time wallowing in self-pity.
Unhealthy relationship not working out? Alright, time to end it. Do I hate my job? Time to find another. Do I need to get in to see a doctor? Better sooner than later so it doesn’t have a chance to get worse.
I’m middle-aged, and I spent far too many years avoiding uncomfortable decisions.
Delay almost always makes things worse. Problems rarely just go away. In most cases, I know that whatever is going on is not going to magically resolve itself, nor is anyone going to come and fix it for me. I’m just going to suffer until I take the steps I need to take to fix the problem.
So the sooner I do that, the better.
7. You start being more selective about who you let into your life.
I wasted so many years chasing after other people, hoping that they would save me in certain ways.
This often came in the form of chasing after the wrong romantic partners, subconsciously hoping that love would “fix” me. In hindsight, it’s a pretty shortsighted way to go about trying to live my life.
It made me not a good partner, because I was asking the other person to perform emotional labor that I should have been getting from a counselor.
The reality is that only mental health professionals were equipped to support me, but not even they could save me, because I’m still the one who had to do the work.
Once you realize that, you start to bring the right kind of relationships into your life, because you’re not looking for someone who wants to fix or rescue you. What’s more, someone who wants to do that probably has their own issues too.
8. You stop wondering whether life is fair or not.
Spoiler alert: It’s not.
Terrible things happen to innocent people who don’t deserve it, every day. All the time.
Entropy is real, and things will crumble if they aren’t maintained and actively improved. Nothing lasts forever, and there are different ways that you can take that.
You can either accept it, plan for it, and work with it. Or, alternatively, you can sit around and hope that someone else will fix it for you or that it won’t get any worse.
Mental health needs to be cared for, relationships need to be nurtured, physical health must be maintained, and you have to be the one to spearhead those efforts for your own life.
No one will do it for you.
In closing…
No one was coming to save me – and realizing that was such a moment of freedom for me.
Taking radical responsibility for the state of my life and well-being gave me freedom. It’s not up to everyone else. I don’t have to sit around and wait for anyone else. I can use my brain and my own skills to build the kind of life that I want for myself.
But I had to realize that no one was going to fix it for me. Do you?
