Being Selfish

Being selfish seems like something that should come to us so easy, however I’m sure I’m not on my own when I say that it’s something I struggle with a lot. It’s difficult to put your own needs first, when you just want everyone else around you to be happy, even though it’s impossible to make everyone happy, I will try my hardest to get as close as I can to it. However sometimes in your life you do have to be selfish and sometimes it makes you happy and sometimes it hurts. Somehow my mind makes me feel bad and it’s something that feels really unnatural to do. I think it’s getting over that initial guilty feeling first, before you start feeling some kind of happiness from doing something for you. Again, I think it’s because you start thinking, I could be potentially making someone else feel sad because of my actions. No one likes to be called selfish either.

The thing is we need to be selfish to take care of ourselves and love ourselves. Don’t get me wrong there is the bad kind of selfish, those who be selfish out of personal gain because of arrogance, jealousy or hate against another person but if your being selfish out of respect and love for yourself, I don’t think that’s so bad after all. When you break it down, is it really that bad to help bring yourself happiness too?

How many of us are guilty of saying yes to things that we don’t actually want to do? I bet each one of us have done at least once. When you look it from the outside in though, by saying yes to these things, are you putting your all in to whatever it is, or are you only halfheartedly putting the effort in? When we say yes to things we do want to do, we give all our energy to it, we gain more, we achieve more.

I think at the end of each day if you ask yourself, “what have I done for myself today?” most of us would struggle to think of something. I think we have grown up to put others first, and that really isn’t a bad thing, however it turns us into people pleasers, and being selfish is found as quite an insult. I know for a fact that if someone called me this, I would be offended no matter how much deep down I know myself better than anyone, and will know it’s not true. Now we find it hard to break away from being a people pleaser because of being in a routine for so long. We worry constantly about what others will think of us or how we are perceived, that we put our own well being on hold. If you think back to a time when you was really excited about something and because you were excited you told people, however people started throwing out there opinions and a large percentage were negative, so then you go against doing that thing that you was excited about. Perhaps I’m now taking this into a different direction, but I am hoping that most of you are seeing what I am getting at.

Obviously everyone has there own opinions on what selfish is, and unfortunately people judge, so lets take a look at some of those things. You are not selfish for having a different opinion. How many of us have backed down for having a different opinion to someone else. As long as we are open to seeing and hearing different people’s views, that doesn’t make us selfish for having our own. Your not selfish for not apologising if your not sorry. What would the point in that be? Our views shape us, and I would rather have no apology, than a fake and meaningless one.

One thing that I am feeling at the moment, is people seeing me as selfish for being career focused and having different priorities to others. This is a completely different feeling I’ve never experienced before and quite a strange one because of this. I think for a lot of people your career is just a job, it isn’t necessarily important. It’s just a job you have to do everyday, what is more important is what happens outside. For me that was the case for a long time, however since I have been giving this opportunity, I have become incredibly career focused, yes I understand you have got to have a life, but I want to make something of myself and I want to have an impact on what’s going on around me and I will never apologise for that. For me as well, your career is permanent, relationships can be permanent but it’s not worked out for me yet haha. So I guess what I am trying to say is I would rather have my career sorted out first, and build everything else around that, because that is what I have to fall back on and that is what is inspiring me at the moment. I’ve still been able to do things with friends, and see family and yes a relationship would be nice and if it happens, it happens, but at this point in time it’s not top of the list. People who truly care about you, will understand you and respect that.

There’s lots of examples of things that we may think are selfish but actually aren’t, but the last one I wanted to talk about, is not replying to someone’s text or email straight away. If your in the middle of something and someone sends you a message, it is totally acceptable to finish what you were doing before you reply. I don’t know where it’s come from, but somehow we have come to believe that we need to reply to someone straight away, when in fact, no we don’t. If your not doing anything then fair enough, but if your busy then I don’t see the problem not being able to reply to someone for a while.

If there’s anything you are to take away from this post, then I hope it’s that it’s good to do things as long as its not going to negatively impact on others, so recharge your batteries, take a bath, apply for that job, go on holiday, whatever it is, do it.

A x