The Myth of Going It Alone

If you dropped a human being into the wild - naked, unarmed, stripped of tools or shelter - we wouldn’t last very long.

We have no claws to tear, no fangs to defend, no armour to protect. We run slowly, our skin tears easily, our skulls are soft.

By any rational evolutionary measure, we shouldn’t have made it. We should’ve been someone else’s lunch.

And yet, somehow, we didn’t just survive, we rose to the top of the food chain. We became the apex predator.

We out-thought, out-organised, and outlasted creatures that were faster, stronger, and far better equipped for the natural world.

So how did that happen?

It wasn’t because of muscle.
It wasn’t because of speed.
It was because of something less visble, something you can’t measure by looking at a skeleton or a fossil.

It was because of connection.

From the very beginning, our survival depended on one another.

We didn’t thrive by standing apart, but by coming together. We cooperated. We shared the fire. We shared food. We told stories that helped us remember what mattered and warned us what to avoid.

We divided roles - hunters, gatherers, carers, watchers - and in doing so, we built community.

We passed wisdom down through language, ritual, and song.

That’s what made us strong, not independence, but interdependence.

But somewhere along the way, the story shifted.

Modern culture started telling a different tale, one that whispers that strength means standing alone.

That you should cope by yourself.

That asking for help is somehow weakness.

But our brains are not convinced…

Our neural architecture is literally wired for connection.

Oxytocin, mirror neurons, co-regulation, shows us that we are born into this world requiring connection and benefiting from it.

Your nervous system works better when someone else is near.
Your thinking sharpens when you feel safe.
Your creativity ignites when your ideas bounce off another mind.

Connection is what humans do best.
That’s what you do best.

So if you’ve been trying to carry everything on your own - the stress, the decisions, the expectations, the weight of it all - I want to remind you of something simple:
You were never designed to do this alone.

You were built for tribe.
For trust.
For shared firelight and shoulder-to-shoulder effort.

The strongest people I know don’t go it alone.
They build the right circle around them, and then they grow within it.

Because connection isn’t a weakness.
It’s our oldest strength.

Ask Yourself:
Where in your life are you trying to “survive” alone  and who could you invite back to your campfire?