Self-help is the best help

Meaning: It is said that “Self-help is the best help”. Self-help means always trying to help yourself without depending on others. If means that whatever you can do or you are in a position to do, you should do it.

For example, whenever you feel hungry and you want to eat something, you make it yourself without waiting for somebody else to make it to you. This is called self-help and therefore the best help.

Self-help is the best help: Good helps those who help themselves. Lazy people are reluctant to do anything. They may be rich men who can afford to appoint servants to wait on them, but they should also try to become self-dependent. Self-help is necessary to build confidence, and to lead a pure and ideal life. Therefore, we should atleast do the things by ourselves that we are capable of doing or we are in a position to do.

Disadvantages of people who do not know how to help themselves: People who do not know how to help themselves face many problems and disadvantages in life.

• They fail to discharge their duties sincerely and lose the confidence of other people.
• People lose faith in them and always hold them in low esteem.
• Such people wait for somebody at every step of their life and hence fall victims to unnecessary trouble and criticism.
• Other people take the advantage their idleness and too much dependence on others ruins them.

Example of a person who practiced self-help: The life of Mahatma Gandhi is a bright and glaring example of self-help. Gandhiji practiced what he preached. He taught the people how to do their own work and never to depend on others.

• He cleaned his own room and spun his own cloth.
• He cleaned his own clothes and cut his own hair.
• He stopped going to the laundry and the barber’s saloon at one period of his life and showed that he could manage his own affairs all by himself. This is a unique example of self-help.
• He took care of his goat. He fed it, nursed it and bandaged its wound.

He did all this while discussing the problems of the country and attached due importance to these small matters. He did this because he considered no work to be small and took every work as worship.

Conclusion: Self-help is the best help and therefore it should be cultivated by everybody. It will not only make us smart and active, but solve many of our problems automatically. Great men in history have always preached self-help, because it is a quality that makes a man great. One can become self-made only through self-help. Children should be taught this by their parents and parent must practice it before they teach.