This is a guest post written by John Anyasor, the author of HiLife2B.
Are you a giver or a taker?
Do you eat all the cake yourself or do you share it with others?
Everyone is a giver at their very core. We portray the world to be a place full of self-centered blowhards, but we couldn’t be further from the truth. Every day of our lives is spent giving in some way.
Each morning, we give our best effort to get out of bed. Come on, up and at ‘em. You have somewhere to be and a boss to milk for your yearly bonus.
Throughout the day, we are frivolously giving away our time to people and actions that we don’t need. The jobs we do (for most of us), classes we attend, gossip-driven friends we converse with, channels we flip through, emails we check, routines we memorize: you could live without them.
We give our hard earned cash (or cash hardly earned, for others) to the big buy-in-bulk stores that think they’re giving us exactly what we want. Two jumbo jars of peanut butter? I’m sure you only wanted one regular-sized jar. A massive big screen TV that will soon be eclipsed by a much bigger 3-D display? How can you keep up?
Regular conversations are given our best effort to maintain — mostly because we have nothing more interesting to talk about. My day was good. How about yours? Good. Oh, I couldn’t have guessed. Anything exciting happen? No? Interesting… same here.
Holding back our real feelings about life is highly encouraged and forced upon us. We give everything we have to not appear out of control when something bad happens. If someone crashes into our car, we’re expected to keep our cool, lest we be perceived to be crazy or immature.
You, selfish? I don’t think so
If anything, we aren’t selfish enough. We give away our time, our politeness, our money, our dreams, our confidence in the future, our real feelings, and our sense of adventure until it hurts. And what do we get in return? The delusion of happiness brought on by the normalcy of life.
We’ve been way too yielding. Have you ever asked yourself:
What do I want to do?
Is what I’m doing now truly satisfying to me?
Why am I giving so much and getting so little in return?
What people say is wrong: you can have whatever you desire. The catch is, however, that you have to be willing to be selfish enough to get it. It’s okay to give when you want to, but if you end up giving away everything you need just to please the world, you won’t last long.
You must keep yourself alive and happy in order to be able to give. The most abundant givers are the most initially selfish people. Don’t give when you have nothing to give.
How to be more self-centered
Not everybody can be self-centered. Some of us need to keep giving and giving until we can give no more. Some of us are too generous to stop giving now. For those you, discontinue reading this post. Your life would not have been changed anyway. Keep doing what you’re doing — you will get the same results.
But if you want to discover the benefits of selfishness in your life, read on. These timeless tips have proven to be very useful for me. I’m giving away this value, because I know what I’m gaining weighs more than what I’m putting in: the satisfaction of helping others change their lives for the better.
1. Eliminate the unnecessary
What mindless things are you putting your time in? Checking your email? Reading the local news? Engaging in small talk over at the water cooler with your less-than-exciting coworkers?
Eliminate these trivialities. They do not deserve your time, effort, or generosity. Focus more on what will provide value for yourself and others instead.
2. Start doing what you enjoy
The best things in life continue to move you long after you put them down. Do you enjoy reading or writing stories? Speaking in front of large crowds? Providing inspiration to the masses? Going to plays or the opera?
Go do it.
Stop putting off your gratification for matters of lesser importance. Work, taxes, bills, and routines; these are nothing in the face of doing what you love. Make time for these hobbies, since it is when you take part in them that you feel the most alive.
3. Focus on the direction you want life to take
You’ve lived long enough in this world to know what you supremely want for yourself. It’s time for you to start putting your efforts towards that end.
Do you want to end up traveling the world for rest of your life?
Do you want to become a wealthy CEO?
Realize that buying hand bags and gas-guzzling trucks will only keep you that much further away from your life’s dream.
Begin cultivating the valuable skill of saving. Label a jar called “For my life’s dream” and start with one penny. The amount of money in the jar will accumulate if you’re frugal enough.
4. Give selectively
The best givers are the most selfish: in other words, they give away the things worth giving.
Take Bill Gates for example. He was selfish enough to use his mind to jump-start one of the greatest computer monopolies ever known. Now that he’s gotten what he wanted, Gates is a giver. But you’ll never catch Bill Gates giving away 5 dollars to charity.
Gates is in the process of giving a large chunk of his wealth away to charity.
Be like Bill and give what is worth giving away. Don’t give something that nobody (yourself included) would accept.
You’re already on your way
The fact that you were selfish enough to finish this article means you’re already walking in the right direction.
Improve yourself and you improve the lives of others. This is selfishness at the highest level.
To learn more about how to improve your life, check out John’s blog, HiLife2B. Follow him on Twitter.
photo credit: harrietbarber
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I never really “got” this until I started putting it into practice by taking myself on dates as advised in Julia Cameron’s “Artists’s Way” Book. As I learned to listen to myself and treat myself well, the amount of generosity I felt towards others expanded.
Hey Jean, I’m happy to hear you’ve finally become selfish (in a good way). Also glad to know that you learned something valuable from Julia — treat yourself well and your happiness will show itself to others.
I might have to check out that book sometime.
Hi Arvind,
This post rings so true to me. I am a giver and neglect myself. If someone treated me the way I treat myself, I would intervene and be quite concerned. However, I am learning to treat myself the way I do with others.
CC
Hey CC! It seems a lot of you guys read similar great blogs
Based on what you’ve told me, you should treat yourself better. I know you mean well, but you must take care of you first before you can help others.
Hi Arvind, So true! We can’t be there for others unless we’ve first taken care of our own needs. I think one of the biggest obstacles is in our own minds though. We believe that we have to say yes to others all the time or we’re a bad person. It took me years to realize that paying attention to my own needs was okay.
Angela,
It seems that everyone has a lot of the same problems. I’m curious as to how this starts. Why are we SO giving? More specifically, why do we give when have nothing to give?
Hold off on the ‘yes’s’ for a while, and have the confidence to say ‘no’. Sometimes you have to wait until you can give to give.
This is such an interesting idea. I think it’s right, that we can give so much more value to others once we’ve learned to truly value ourselves. But, that takes some initial selfishness. This is something I need to spend some more time thinking about!
Topi
Topi,
It all starts with you. It’s in the same way as the saying “You must love yourself before you can love another.”
This is worth thinking hard about. Go for it!
Your post does make sense, however, I hate selfishness, and people that are selfish also. To be happy means different things to different people, and I will not be happy while being selfish.
Tatiana, I think you’re being a little close minded. Everybody is selfish. The fact that you commented on this post was selfish. Because YOU wanted to have your opinion heard.
It’s really not as bad as you make it seem.
John, selfishness cannot be a good thing, and can it be that you used the wrong word, and instead of selfishness you intended something else?
Hey Tatiana,
First of all, thanks for your question – maybe we can get to the bottom of this.
I’m just curious – why can’t selfishness be a good thing? I’ve already explained how it’s good in this post, but you haven’t really explained to me why it can’t be good.
Selfishness can be bad, but it can also be used for good – this was the main idea of my post.
I intended the word, selfishness. If you don’t think so, what word would you use?
hello,
tatania, john
i think the term you would be looking for would be –
self interested
Thanks John – self-interest certainly seems a more appropriate term to use:-)