Thinking About Yourself Is Not Selfish

On many occasions, when we say that we think about ourselves, those around us may call us selfish. But what does it mean to be selfish? Perhaps we are using this adjective wrongly and, above all, unfairly.

Let’s reflect on this word, its implications and how we can spend time for ourselves without feeling guilty.

Being selfish is thinking about yourself 100% of the time, without thinking about others

To understand what it means to be a selfish person, I propose to look in the dictionary. There, selfishness would be an excessive appreciation that a person has for himself, and that makes him excessively attend to his own interest, without worrying about others.

Each of us has our own schemes (more or less fixed values ​​and beliefs that serve to interpret the world and make us have an idea of ​​how it works), and from there our thoughts start. So it is not uncommon for each person to apply this word based on this previous experience and on how he understands the word selfishness and its implications. In other words: each person has a different concept of what it is to be selfish.

For some people, being selfish can mean not having done anything for them and for others, or, in the most extreme case, not doing a favor that was asked of you for lack of time even though you were there whenever you could. In the first case the definition could be correct, but what happens in the second case?

How do we feel when someone calls us selfish without taking into account all the good we’ve done for them? Hopelessly evil, confused and angry even though we know it’s unfair. Before going on, let’s make this clear: if we’ve never done something for someone when asked, it doesn’t mean we’re selfish.

We can’t change other people’s schemes

There is a situation that recurs frequently: a person asks us to do something for him and we cannot give him what he needs at the moment he asks us to. Then this person calls or insinuates us that we are selfish and we feel very bad, not only because they judged us negatively, but also because there was a crossroads of interests where, in the end, the least favored were theirs.

Who is acting selfishly then? Who is thinking about themselves without taking into account the rights we have as a person?

There is a clear reality: we don’t have enough resources to try to change other people’s schemes. This means that if a person interprets that we are acting selfishly, without making an effort to understand our circumstances, we can ask ourselves two questions:

• Do we empathize with your problem?
• Despite not being able to be in the required situation and moment, do we try to offer an alternative?

If both answers are in the affirmative, always remember this fundamental freedom: we have the right to refuse a request without feeling guilty about it.

Furthermore, it is good to bear in mind that people make a serious mistake if they extend the subjective quality resulting from a behavior to their personality. For example, someone can act petty and not be mean, someone can bump into someone and not be clumsy.

To understand it better, let’s assume the following situation: imagine that every week you get up at the same time. Do all the activities you had to do and, by the end of the day, you will have done everything you should have done. Now imagine that one day you nap fifteen minutes longer than you should. Imagine that, for some reason, you can’t do everything you should have done, and at the end of the day, you haven’t done everything you should have done.

Are you an irresponsible person? Are you an undisciplined person? No, he simply had a bad day and it is possible that he acted in an undisciplined and irresponsible way. But beware, that you have done this in a timely manner will not make you a person with these characteristics.  In fact, even if you always want to do it this way, it doesn’t necessarily have these characteristics because the past is not always a good parameter for the present and the future.

Enjoy the winds that blow in your favour, but don’t let the wind rule

Do you feel like you don’t have time for yourself? Whenever something comes up, do the people around you want your attention and distract you from your goals? Do you dedicate yourself a lot to others? Do you feel like you are a sailboat at the mercy of the wind? It is always necessary to save a space for ourselves, and for that, we must learn two skills that are essential for our well-being: learning to say “no” without feeling guilty.

It is true that this is a complex and nuanced topic. That’s why we can’t create fixed rules of how it should be done, but focus on the importance of working on it. If you are one of the people who have always been available to others and putting your life aside, you should know that:

• Change is a training process. If we are adept at a number of customs, changing them will take time, patience and effort. Usually these habits are intertwined and changing one means changing elements of an entire chain. For example, adopting a more cordial attitude towards humanity will demand that we know how to converse, when we didn’t need to be silent before.
• Your surroundings may not understand you. It’s possible that if we get people around us used to hearing “yes” all the time, the first time we say “no” to a request it’s likely to come as a surprise. It is even possible that they may say that you have changed or that you are a selfish person. At this point we will always encounter resistance, especially if this change is supposed to end with someone’s comfort.

• Always objectively analyze the situation. If the request is not urgent, does not necessarily require your presence, if you empathized with the problem and offered you an alternative help at another time that is compatible with your activities and goals, there is no doubt: there is no reason to feel guilty.

Ultimately, thinking about yourself is not being selfish if you know how to keep a balance. If you really work on this part of yourself without heeding the concept and phrases that sink deep into our language about selfishness, you will strike a fair balance between dedicating time and energy to others and fulfilling your own passions, activities, and dreams.