Is It Selfish?
It’s selfish. How can you even think about putting yourself first when you have a spouse to love, children to look after, and a career to pursue?
That’s a myth that society has sold us. The very idea that looking after yourself is a selfish act is dangerous. You tend to prioritize the interests, desires, and needs of the people that you love. That does make sense because you only want the best for them, you want them to be happy, to feel understood and heard. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t love yourself. In fact, we should be trying to cultivate more of those feelings in ourselves rather than always doing it for others.
What does that mean?
By taking care of your needs first, you allow the care that you offer others to come from inner abundance. Ultimately, it means that you can be a more giving person by putting yourself first.
Perhaps the myth has been perpetuated by the fact that most people believe that they have to forget about themselves to truly love others. So, we allow resentment to build, we feel frustration and don’t discuss it, which results in hurt for ourselves and the people around us.
Making You A Priority
So, to be your best and give your best, you have to prioritize yourself over everything and everyone. Let’s take a look at the reasons and benefits of doing so.
- Love is All Around
Do you know how you want the best for the people in your life? They want that for you, too. So, just imagine how much better your relationships will be when you put yourself first and feel your best mentally, emotionally, and physically. Encourage them to prioritize themselves and things can only get better. Just think about how much better you feel after a full night’s sleep, when you eat well, exercise, and socialize. When you don’t do those things, you feel irritable and that is generally taken out on the people you love. Looking after yourself is looking after others.
- Avoid Burn Out
Everything feels like a chore when you are overworked, stressed out, and on the brink of burn out. Even if it’s sitting down to take a break or meeting a friend. Things that should be fun feel like too much work because you’re thoroughly exhausted. You can’t give it your all and fuel it with your positive energy when you’re all out of fuel. Burn out depletes serotonin, without those happy hormones it’s difficult to push on. Your brain chemistry is working against you, literally stealing your joy. Sometimes you need to just say no in order to prevent burn out, even if you’re saying no to something that sounds fun.
- The Requirement of Rest
R&R seems like a treat, but it isn’t optional – it’s a requirement. With a never-ending to-do list, it’s vital that you learn to rest. It’s easier to say yes, often saying no creates conflict and as people pleasers, we just want to keep the peace. However, that’s going to fuel burnout. Your body will kick into survival mode if you don’t rest enough. A lack of sleep will increase your stress hormone levels and just fuel your stress. When one area of you is overextended, every part of you suffers because your brain will drag reinforcements in from other areas.
- Overextending Yourself Makes You Sick
Don’t underestimate how exhaustion, stress, and anxiety affect you physically. You should think of stress as an alarm system. It is telling you that you’re on thin ice. Stress is your body’s fight or flight response and it’s preparing you for a challenge by drawing resources to help you survive it. When your life is on the line, stress is a great thing. However, when you live in a chronic state of stress and anxiety, your body is overworking itself. The chain reaction it causes steals resources from other parts of you, it wears you down and invites disease and sickness into your life.
- An Energy Imbalance
It’s often said that animals (and babies) can sense your energy and anxious owners make anxious pets. So, when you’re happy, others notice, just like they feel your anger and frustration. It doesn’t require an extreme emotion for others to absorb it. For example, when you walk into the office in the morning and your boss is in a bad mood you can feel it immediately. Just like anxious parents can instill that same anxiety in their children. The best thing that you can do for both yourself and your loved ones is to learn how to manage your stress, which means putting yourself first. Learn to listen to your body.
What Putting Yourself First Really Means
Putting yourself first means that you have the energy and the mental strength to support others when they need it. Even after the points above, you’re probably still feeling as though prioritizing yourself is selfish. Start by thinking about selfishness on a scale. On one end there is 100% selflessness and on the other 100% selfishness.
You don’t want to be at either end. So, rate yourself on the scale. Where are you right now? Now, how can you move yourself on the scale to create more balance? You might not think of yourself as selfless, but when you think about how much you do for others versus how much you do for yourself, the picture will become a little clearer.
Moving Forward
To move forward, you have to reframe what selfishness really means. Extending compassion to yourself is not selfish. You must believe that you are worthy of both happiness and self-care. You deserve pleasure and you need to make it a priority. This may feel uncomfortable at first because most of us enjoy pleasure, but don’t rate it too highly on the daily to-do list.
Life is short, though, so we must enjoy it and have as much fun as physically possible. To enjoy things like a meal with friends or kick back with a massage, make yoga class, enjoy a date night with your partner or to say no to something to give you time to do nothing… you must manage stress. The key to stress management is in putting yourself first.
You leave yourself unhappy, exhausted, and depressed when you don’t put yourself first. Sometimes you say yes because something sounds fun, but you don’t have the time or energy to truly commit to it and it ends up being a chore. Saying no might be difficult, but it could just be the biggest favor you ever do for yourself.
Saying yes to everything can leave you in a state of anxiety. As you try to be absolutely everything to literally everyone, you make yourself ill. You take on extra responsibilities at work because your boss relies on you and you want to impress them.
Yet, you can’t do it all in working hours, so you take that extra work home. Suddenly, you’re snowed under with work, and it’s impacting your home life. You’re setting yourself up for failure and starving yourself of the self-care that you deserve.
You’re always tense, your body hurts, and even though you feel like you are in desperate need for a massage, you feel guilty about taking time out to book one. Every single second of your day is accounted for and it’s attending work, running errands, visiting parents, grandparents, dealing with kids, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and… what about you? There’s no downtime. You will eventually reach a breaking point.
You Can Heal And It Starts By Putting Yourself First
You might be thinking that things aren’t that bad for you at this point, but they can quickly spiral if you don’t learn to practice self-care and put yourself first. When you put yourself first there’s more time, there’s more energy, more freedom, more happiness, and you can actually enjoy life again.
Of course, you will also find that you are more efficient. Yes, you will be more productive and efficient at your job when you take time for yourself. It makes you better at solving problems and even improves your creativity.
When you consistently put yourself at the bottom of your list, it will affect your health. When it does eventually impact your health, this will impact your job, business, and loved ones as well. If you continually refuse to slow down, then your body will eventually turn on you and fuel chronic stress, which can kill.
You also lose your identity when you put yourself last. This is something that happens to women a lot, particularly mothers. It’s easy to lose yourself when you constantly prioritize your children. That can make you feel lost and resentful.
In fact, you may feel like a doormat. Yet, you can’t blame others for treating you this way when you didn’t create boundaries for others to follow. Others will treat you how you treat yourself.
For parents, you know the pressure. You’re a role model to your children and you don’t want them to ignore their needs. If you were to watch your life play out for your children, would it make you happy or would you be mad at the position they were in?
If you have a romantic partner, then you will know how much your relationship suffers when you burn out. Your partner needs you to put yourself first. They need you to look after yourself in order for your relationship to prosper. Encourage them to do the same and see how much your relationship and happiness improve. So, hopefully, you now understand just how important it is to put yourself first. Let’s take a look at how you can do that.
Briefly, think of that scale that we discussed earlier. It’s not about changing who you are as a person, it’s about creating a shift in your mindset and replacing your unhealthy habits with healthier ones.
So, choose a couple of things from the list we discuss below and implement them to see how much freedom and energy they provide you with.
- Better Boundaries
Boundaries are important. It’s up to you to set yourself and enforce them. Teach the people around you that you have boundaries and you won’t accept people overstepping. It will take time, so don’t give up if it doesn’t go well from the start. It’s a change for them, too, so it may take time for them to take heed of your new demands.
- Be Assertive
Do you assume someone knows what you’re thinking or feeling? You just assume they know what you need or want. No one is a mind reader so; you need to improve your communication skills and learn to be more assertive. You must tell people what you need or want and let them know how they can help you achieve that.
- Stop People Pleasing
Are you a people pleaser? You need to learn how to say no and let go of the guilt it makes you feel. Don’t accept guilt trips from others, put your foot down when you need to.
- Me Time
You schedule everything else in your life so why wouldn’t you write yourself into your calendar? As you get started, just ten minutes is a great way to start the process. Carve ten minutes out of your day to do an activity that you know recharges your batteries. It’s non-negotiable; just treat it like an interview or an appointment that you can’t miss.
- Cut Toxic Ties
Nothing consumes positivism and energy like toxic people. If you know any, distance yourself or cut those toxic ties. It’s more difficult to do if they are related to you, but just because they’re blood doesn’t mean you should allow them to drag you into their negativity. You can’t fix them, so instead, aim to minimize your exposure to them.
Selfish Versus Selfless
Since society tells us being selfish is bad, there’s a stigma associated with the word. When someone calls you selfish, it stings. It’s one of the worst insults anyone can hurl at you. When society talks about selfishness, they are saying you don’t care about others. Looking after yourself is not the same as hurting others or stealing their joy. You are merely protecting your own joy, and your “selfishness” is allowing you to do more for others. While others may say it’s egotistical to practice self-care, the rest of us recognize how important it is to do for yourself as well as for others.
Naturally, we take on more than we can handle because we feel the need to help others. It’s nice that you want to help others and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, when it is draining you of all your energy, you’re doing no one any favors.
You might continue to maintain relationships that are traumatic or harmful. It might be that you feel depressed or angry because you struggle to say no. You may take on other’s disputes or feel guilty about putting yourself. You can’t live like that, at least not happily.
With self-care becoming increasingly popular, now is a good time to have a full and frank discussion on prioritizing yourself. It flies in the face of the concept of selfishness. When a plane runs into distress and the oxygen masks drop, you put yours on first before you attempt to help anyone else. That is an extremely appropriate life lesson.
How can you help others when you are incapacitated? It’s more than just taking an hour out and slipping into a bubble bath, although that is a great act of self-care. The key to self-care is recognizing when it’s appropriate to put yourself right at the top of your list (and for others to do the same).
Sometimes, the most appropriate course of action is to go see the latest superhero movie or rom-com on your own and splurge on a delicious healthy breakfast, instead of something basic and boring. There are small acts of self-care, as well as major ones. For some, it’s as simple as balancing the budget; for others there is more to it. Ultimately, self-care is exercising your power by putting yourself first. How can you function properly in the world if you don’t allow yourself to be a priority in your own life?
Final Thoughts
It isn’t always straightforward or easy, is it? The path to looking after yourself. The rules will change as life evolves. What works for you in one stage of your life won’t work for other stages. Your constant throughout life should be striving for purpose. That doesn’t mean you will always be happy or that life will be easy. It will be challenging, it will be difficult, and some sacrifice will be necessary.
At times, you will feel like life, both present and past, is trying to derail you from your path. There are challenges to overcome, tragedies to recover them, and even societal pressures impacting you. Your motivations can create confusion, your brain will trick you into believing the values of others should be your values.
When you give of yourself too much, you will resent others. What starts out as a wish to truly help others ends up as a resentment-filled chore. This is something that we do when we feel uncomfortable asking for what we want or sharing what we need. We hide what we perceive as weaknesses by instead focusing on others. Not only does this leave you feeling unfulfilled, but it also places the burden on others as well.
While putting yourself first is important, it is possible to veer too far on the spectrum and take too much time. It’s all about balance. How do you know if you go too far in the wrong direction?
If you feel disengaged from others or you constantly seek out things in a bid to make yourself happy but come up empty, then you’ve missed the mark. It’s very likely you’re focusing on the wrong issues and investing your time in places that don’t provide you with meaning.
To put it in easier terms to understand, when you are exhausted, hungry or running late, then how will you focus on your day? You won’t be present as your friend shows off their new projects, nor will you be able to focus on them sharing important news.
You won’t be yourself when you aren’t being taken care of. Who will take better care of you than you? Does everything feel half-heated?
It’s probably because you’re miserable and exhausted because you are unfulfilled. One of the reasons that you are unfulfilled is that you aren’t taking care of yourself. By being selfless, you are robbing yourself and others of your best self.
Nobody will (or can) save you, just like you can’t really save anybody else either. It might be something that we are all slow to admit, perhaps because it’s the worst and the best of humanity. You have to carve out your piece of heaven on earth. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change yourself and help others by doing so.
No matter what you think of selflessness versus selfishness, you will eventually reach a point where you must look after yourself. If you don’t do so proactively, you will have to do so when you are left with no other choice to.
You wouldn’t demand your car to go when the gas tank is empty, why do you expect different from yourself? If you want to be a truly selfless person, then you must start with yourself. When you take care of yourself, you are more capable of taking care of others.
It isn’t selfish to put yourself first, it only makes sense. So, don’t allow other people to accuse you of selfishness, don’t accept that it’s egotistical to put yourself first. There is an unselfish side of putting yourself first, it’s all about striking a balance.