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Dear Live and Invest Overseas Reader, 
Self-sufficiency can be achieved from Neither Doomsday Prepper nor Wilderness Mountain Man you need to be… but, with the right systems in place, living can be free. The new reality TV vision of self-sufficiency is hairy rawhide-clad mountain men and women jumping into frigid rivers in the wilderness to wrestle salmon from giant grizzly bears. It’s as comically ridiculous an image as it is unnecessary. Self-sufficiency needn’t be nearly so dramatic or exotic. It can be achieved from the comfort and convenience of your own home and garden, meaning you can reap all the benefits of a self-sufficient lifestyle while also continuing to enjoy all the comforts of our modern age. Strictly speaking, self-sufficiency means being in the position of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction from anyone else. In reality, though, we humans need interaction and the opportunity to trade for that which we don’t or can’t produce ourselves. Even the wild mountain man got his axe from someone. What I Learned From My Irish Grandmother My grandmother was a small, timid country girl in 1920s Ireland, a time in that country when often all you had was your self-reliance, without which you were left with only your faith and pride to eat. By the time she was 10 years old, her mother having passed away and her father working all hours at the local creamery, my grandmother found herself the head of a household of six people. She gardened, raised chickens, geese, and ducks for sale, cooked, cleaned (with homemade cleaning materials), knitted, and sewed, gathered wood, made soap and candles, dressed game, made bread, butter, cheese, and yogurt, helped her uncle with the poitín still (Irish moonshine), played with her friends, and went to school. 
Being self-sufficient means you When I asked her how she managed all that, she answered, “I was lucky; my father worked Saturdays to pay for my school uniform and copy books.” When I replied, “No, I don’t mean how did you manage school… I mean how did you manage everything else,” she gave me a puzzled look, and said, “I don’t understand. I just did what everybody did. It was normal life.” And it was. When I started a family, and the reality of living in the modern world began to sink in, I got a little nervous about being able to take care of my family in uncertain times. I realized with a little embarrassment that what I wanted was to be as robust and self-reliant as my granny when she was a 10-year-old girl. It sounds like a joke, but I’m serious. If my grandmother could do all this by age 10, there is no reason why I, a grown man, can’t follow her example. In fact, I have it far easier than my grandmother did living a self-sufficient life. I don’t need to learn all the skills she mastered (though it could be fun to try). These days, thanks to new equipment, technology, and ideas, nearly all of the drudgery my grandmother went through (though she didn’t see it as such) needn’t be part of a modern self-sufficient lifestyle. Many of us classify ourselves by our profession, meaning we can defeat ourselves before we get started by thinking, “I’m an accountant/housewife/professional race car driver… What do I know about gardening, securing my own renewable energy source, or creating an independent source of income?” I’ll let you in on an amazing secret: If a child can do it, you can do it, too. And in the process, you might unlock skills or passions that you once had as a younger person but put aside or were told you shouldn’t waste time with. “Why should a modern woman like you learn those skills?”… or “What man who wears a suit needs to know that?”… Appropriate knowledge and planning is real security… from future upheaval, in the face of turbulent times, and for real self-assurance. The World’s Only Self-Sustainable Nation The fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s triggered the start of Cuba’s Special Period, during which access to petroleum and its derived chemical fertilizers and pesticides practically ceased. Imports of food stopped, and the large-scale agricultural machine that had been Cuba’s domestic food source ground to a halt. Chronic food shortages ensued, and the average Cuban adult lost 20 pounds. Cubans had to resort to eating anything they could find. The peacocks, the buffalo, and even the rhea are reported to have disappeared from the Havana zoo. Cuban domestic cats disappeared, too, from streets to dinner tables. 
Urban agriculture within and around This is a stark reminder that seemingly resilient economies can be shattered overnight as a result of political events on the other side of the world. Permaculture consultants arrived as part of aid efforts and taught new sustainable urban agriculture techniques to Cubans. Today, hunger has been dramatically reduced. Urban agriculture within and around Havana accounts for 60% to 90% of the produce consumed in the city and utilizes about 87,000 acres of “land” on rooftops, balconies, empty lots, and parks. The 2006 Sustainability Index Report, put together by the World Wildlife Fund by combining the United Nations Human Development Index and Ecological Footprint measures (or natural resource use per capita), contends that, as a result of all of this, Cuba is the only nation in the world that is living sustainably. Growing Your Own Food Is Only The Start Once you are growing your own food, why not grow your building materials, energy sources, medical supplies, and clothing materials, as well? Even if you don’t need these materials for these purposes for years… or ever… knowing you have an acre or two of hardwood lumber (which could also be dual-purpose delicious fruit or nut-bearing trees) growing behind your pasture fence goes a long way to providing peace of mind. If the price of hardwoods continues to climb, it could be a lucrative investment for you and your children, as well. If there is a major shift in the economy, you have a source for helping to feed your family, for repairing you home when the trees’ productive fruit life is over, and/or to build homes for your children, growing right behind the cow pasture, forever. This Isn’t About Stockpiling Canned Goods A goal of self-sufficiency does not need to be viewed as Doomsday prepping or survivalist training. In fact, many of the usual “prepper” habits are the antithesis of self-sufficiency. Stockpiles of canned food and dried goods are not renewable, especially not when you are living in a bunker. And having stacks of cement bags for future building projects can be great, too, but once you use them, they don’t grow back. They only truly sustainable way to feed yourself and your family in the long run is to do what man has done for millennia: Grow and store your own food in a sustainable manner, either you yourself or as part of a community effort. An amazing amount of food can be grown on rooftops and balconies of city folks' apartment buildings, too. To Fail To Prepare Is To Prepare To Fail 
A little self-sufficiency
Societies around the globe that have lost their direct connections to their food supply chains will be the most chaotic during desperate times. The Great Depression in the United States was a poignant example of this. Images of soup lines remain iconic reminders of how metropolis dwellers were unable to provide for themselves… while rural agrarian communities were sustainable and simply returned to barter societies. In those communities, life continued on in a fairly normal sense, as farmers exchanged crops for construction materials, bakers exchanged bread for piano lessons, brewers exchanged beer for sausages… and on and on. Self-sufficiency does not have to be absolute. You can trade with your friends and neighbors or through a co-op, but learning a new skill can be a fun and even lucrative talking point for social gatherings… and invaluable should the time come when you really need it. If you have a lawn, you can farm. If you have a balcony or flat roof, you can grow fish and vegetables year-round. A little self-sufficiency is better than none. Self-sufficiency can be addressed on three fronts: the physical, the financial, and the emotional. Becoming Physically Self-Sufficient Being physically self-sufficient means being able to produce and supply your own:
To be truly self-sufficient, these things should come from a renewable resource you control or that you can trade for or purchase easily within your community. Being sustainable through sustainable relationships will make the lifestyle easier, more pleasurable, and more productive. “Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency; man is a social being.”
--Gandhi
Becoming Financially Self-Sufficient Being financially self-sufficient means you are free from all debt and bound to no lender. It means having multiple sources of income so that you have the ability to generate cash flow if one income source disappears. It means having skills or products available for barter or trade should the monetary system collapse and become unusable. It means having a “Wealth Stash”—including cash, metals, liquor, tobacco, and gas, just in case. Becoming Emotionally Self-Sufficient Physical self-sufficiency is important, but so is emotional self-sufficiency. Seneca praised “a mind that can abide itself when left to itself.” That means having “self” resources, so that your tranquillity is not dependent on external factors. Seneca observed: “A man is happy when no circumstance can reduce him; he keeps to the heights and uses no buttress but himself, for a man sustained by a bolster is liable to fall. If this is not so, then many factors outside ourselves will begin to have power over us.” Trust to your own reason. What is reward for being physically, financially, and emotionally self-sufficient? A greater sense of freedom and a greater control of your life and your future. In addition, you will eat healthier and you will be happier knowing personally what went into growing and raising the food you and your family are eating. You will reduce your dependency on money and reduce your need to work a stressful, 60-hour per week (or more!) job. Should the “preppers’” worst fears about the fate of our world ever come to pass, I can’t think of anything that would be more emotionally sustaining than the knowledge that your family’s food, shelter, and medical well-being were fully protected and safe in YOUR hands. More Reasons To Become More Self-Sufficient
In 400 BC, Aristotle referred several times to a self-sufficiency concept in his work "Politics": “For a household is more self-sufficient than an individual person is; and a community of a mass of people counts as a city only if it proves to be self-sufficient… “A city is the community of families and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life. This sort of life, as we say, is a happy and fine one; hence we should suppose that a city aims at working together, not merely at living together.” “Freedom is the Fruit of Self-Sufficiency.” How Do You Get Started? In response to the interest and enthusiasm we have received from our readers regarding the self-sufficient life, we are offering a two-day Self-Sufficiency In Belize Seminar following our Live and Invest in Belize Conference in January. The interactive workshop will take place Jan. 22-24, 2016 in San Ignacio, in the heart of Belize’s Cayo District. Attendees will be shown a broad range of self-sufficiency techniques and strategies with opportunities to participate and interact. During this unique program, you will learn… 
This is a one-of-a-kind program and perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn how to create your own self-sufficient lifestyle, in full or in part, today or whenever you’re ready. Belize’s Cayo District is one of the best places in the world to pursue a self-sufficient lifestyle. So join us in Cayo, in January, take the first steps toward self-sufficiency, meet like-minded people, make connections, and start on your own journey to becoming self-sufficient. You can review details of the program we’ve put together for Jan. 22-24, 2016, here. I look forward to meeting you in Cayo and spending two days in the beautiful wide-open spaces of Belize learning how to be self-sufficient together. Con Murphy P.S. Attendees at the Live and Invest in Belize Conference and Belize Circle Members enjoy a special discount off the program fee. Full details of this one-of-a-kind Self-Sufficiency In Belize Seminar are here. See you in Belize!
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