The benefits of self-sufficiency

There are many benefits of self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency not only saves you money, it protects you from the vicissitudes of life and also helps to protect the environment.

Sufficiency is when you have enough for a life of well-being. A big part of self-sufficiency is knowing how much is enough. If you can reduce your material needs you might be surprised how little you actually need.

Modern economies are good at providing extrinsic satisfactions but the benefits of self-sufficiency include intrinsic satisfactions. Self-sufficiency is surprisingly satisfying as anyone who has grown vegetables or made their own clothes will tell you. It provides us with intrinsic rewards like a sense of achievement, self-esteem and self-confidence.

Self-sufficiency doesn’t mean ‘going it alone’, indeed it is good to be interdependent, where people support each other reciprocally for mutual benefit. In modern societies, as incomes have increased, and there is more and more competition for status, trust between people has decreased. Mutual self-sufficiency increases levels of trust in society.

The more self-sufficient you can be the more well-being you will have overall.

Examples of self-sufficiency

There are many ways in which you can be self-sufficient. The table below outlines the range of ways you can be more self-sufficient and provides links to pages on this website where you can find more information.