I wonder about all the advice to be independent. A certain amount of self-reliance is good, but too often what happens is that those with privilege fail to see the ways in which they rely on others. The workers growing, delivering and selling their food. The people who built and maintain the roads. The education system that helped them get where they are… no one is really alone. No one is successful on their own, and hiding the support can really distort the story. Billionaires are not self made, they've crapped into the same sewage systems as everyone else their whole lives.

Behind allegedly lone, successful people, there are usually a host of invisible people doing the work. That might be their mum, or their wife - self made men often have invisible women enabling and supporting them. There may well be funding. The rags to riches story is popular, and people like to present themselves as having made a lot of money by dint of their own efforts. Dig a little deeper and there often turns out to be inherited wealth, opportunities and open doors that most of us would not have been able to access.

We achieve more when we cooperate. The myth of the lone successful, self made person encourages the rest of us away from the approaches that would do most good. Competition gets less done, and by trying to be individually successful, a person might cut themselves off from the very resources that would benefit them most. 

When we buy into the myths of the independently successful person, we can end up not noticing all the resources and invisible helpers they depended on. We can end up perpetuating class and gender based oppression where the unpaid work of women, and the underpaid work of working class people disappears from the story of the self made man. We need new stories that better recognise who is doing the work, and that no one is successful on their own.

It's important with any success to recognise who was part of it. Who made it possible? Who picked up the slack somewhere else and created the space that gave you opportunities? Who did the work that your work builds on? We all get opportunities to acknowledge this kind of thing in our own lives, to give recognition, and to resist the temptation to make our successes seem like entirely solitary activities.