How to Support Yourself When No One Else Does (Read Time: 3 min.)

Whose support do you have?

Whose support do you need?

Whose support are you not getting that wish you could have?

How do you stay the course when the people who are supposed to love you most support you least?

These are the kinds of questions that I get from clients all the time. I hear stories about unsupportive spouses, resistant parents, unruly children, and bosses, co-workers, and friends who work a living hell. When someone tells me about the lack of support they have as they fight to achieve their dreams, the 'story' quickly goes to how much easier achieving these dreams would be if this person had more help. If I let the story go on for a few more minutes, what I hear is the frustration, disappointment, and anger that this person feels about realizing that no one has his/her back.

While the emotions need to be recognized and validated, what is such a person to do? You can't force people to support you who don't want to. You can't make people see your vision if they're choosing to be blinded to it. You can't be everything to everyone and still have time to accomplish every dream in the time you'd like to. There's a choice that has to be made here.

When you don't have the support you need, how can you still achieve your dreams?

It won't be easy but there is a doable way to stay the course, even if no one else is willing to help you with it. The answer is simple: support yourself. How you do that is where it gets more complicated. Supporting yourself means you choose to have more faith and trust in who you are and what you're going after than anybody else does. Your faith becomes your immune system against the pain and anger you feel towards those who aren't on your side. In being your own personal cheerleader, you have to create a support system that exists outside of the people you originally thought would be in it.

That means you have to step out, meet people, connect with like minded individuals who can share you vision. It means you surround yourself with books, articles, audios, and videos from people who have a vision and who've accomplished that vision. You listen to the success stories of people and pay particular attention to the obstacles they faced and how they overcame those obstacles.

It means you don't talk about your vision with people who can't see or who won't support you. Talk about the weather, what's for dinner, how your day went at work but don't put your heart on the line knowing that it's going to get stomped on. That also means that even though those people aren't as supportive as you'd like them to be, you choose to love them anyway. You honor the good you see in them and you cast aside their inability to be who you need them to be. The sooner you can accept others for who they are, the sooner you can let go of the pain, hurt and disappointment of who they might never be for you.

Supporting yourself when no one else does requires that you trust yourself, believe in yourself, and hold on to the truth that whatever is for you will show up right on time. This means you don't act out of rush or desperation. You don't make choices because you're afraid that someone else is going to convince you not to make the choice. When you feel pressured (by yourself or others) to rush to a decision on something, 99.99% of the time, that decision will be a mistake. You can take the time you need to decide which path to go down. Nothing has to be decided today.

There's skill in trusting yourself. It means you don't rush but you also don't delay. It means you look for signs of what to do next and you put your faith and trust in those signs as you move forward. Trusting yourself requires that you are willing to make mistakes but it also means that you know that you will learn from whatever mistakes you make.

At the end of the day, rather than wasting time complaining and hurting over the people who "should have" supported you but don't, focus on fully supporting and trusting yourself. You are all you need to succeed. Other people can leave your life but as long as you never leave you, the success you obtain will be the result of what you give to it. Other people's support is nice and to get to your dream faster, it is necessary but if you don't have that at the moment, it doesn't mean you stop pursuing the dream. It simply means you go at a different pace while you search out and create a new inner circle of support. You can do this. Never confuse other people's limitations with your abilities. Let people have their limiting beliefs. Trust and support youself enough to not make theirs yours...

You weren't built to be broken...