Why Should You Admit To Being Selfish When You Are?
Everyone will be selfish from time to time – and admitting to it is empowering.
You most likely strive to be a decent human being.
It doesn’t matter if you have lofty goals and huge ambitions – or just want to live a life you’re more often content than miserable with. Odds are, you’re a decent person.
Sure, you’re flawed. We all are. Nobody is perfect, save that everyone is perfectly imperfect. That means you will mess up, fail, get it wrong, make mistakes, and possibly even fuck it all up sometimes.
Unless you knowingly set out with bad intentions, knowingly hurt or harm other people, intentionally take in a way you know causes someone else lack or scarcity – you’re not a selfish person. Nor are you a bad person.
While people tend to overuse selfishness and to see things as selfish that aren’t in the harmful/hurtful/intentional sense, everyone does act selfishly from time to time. You make choices and decisions that you know are selfish and will cause hurt and/or harm.
This is unavoidable. Why? Because nobody exists in a void. No matter how introverted you might be, you still interact with other people from time to time. That means that you will act in a way that you are aware is selfish.
There’s not much to do for this. Save admitting that you were or are selfish – and going from there.
Sometimes you need to be selfish for yourself
Your mental, emotional, spiritual, and even physical health is best known by and to you. You’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, you alone know what you need to live as best you can.
In all likelihood, you have relationships with people in your life that will change. When that happens, those relationships might fray, crack, and even come apart. You can do lots of work to keep them together – but eventually, that might no longer serve you or the other person(s) involved.
Then you have a choice. Say no, walk away, and make a clean break for your wellness and wellbeing? Or stick it out, keep suffering, and negatively impact your self-care?
The choice will not be consequences-free. Ending a long-term relationship, closing off contact with family, and choosing yourself over them (whoever they are) will cause hurt and harm. And you know it, and you know it’s selfish, too.
Yet sometimes, you need to put yourself first.
Why? Because you can’t be someone that you’re not. It’s impossible to live contentedly, and experience optimum health, wellness, and wellbeing when you are being someone that you’re not. Even for somebody else.
The line that exists with this kind of intentional selfishness involves good intentions. If you have spite, anger, hate, or any negativity in your heart and head – your selfishness doesn’t serve anyone. Negativity of intent is bad intent – and that’s not going to serve you, either. Why? Because what you put out into the Universe you get right back.
Selfish acts in the process of self-care are still caring. But you have zero control over the impact on others. The only control you have is of yourself.
Why does admitting to selfishness matter?
Have you noticed how few of the leaders in the world take any accountability or responsibility for anything? They’re great at blaming, but admitting fallibility and being accountable? Not so much.
Some forms of self-care come with acts of selfishness. Yet for your health, wellness, and wellbeing, they’re still necessary. You can’t swim in a new direction along life’s currents, or grow and evolve when you are anchored by a person, place, or thing that is weighing you down.
What’s more – neither can they grow. It might hurt to set a boundary where none existed before and cause harm when you stop catering to a narcissistic loved one. But so long as you stay in that bad situation – they can’t grow, either.
But nothing exists in a vacuum. There’s cause and effect, and the only person in control of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions is you. Nobody can think for you, feel for you, intend for you, or act for you. You’re it.
So, when you do something selfish – you must admit to it. Why? To be accountable to yourself for it.
The worst person you can lie to is yourself. Because you know you’re lying and destroying trust in yourself along the way. With that, you’re disempowering yourself.
When you are accountable for your actions – selfless, selfish, neutral, or otherwise – you’re empowered. That knowledge is part of mindfulness. And mindfulness is how you control the narrative of your life and the paths you walk along in it.
How does it empower you to admit to being selfish?
Here’s my experience with this.
I was faced with two events on the same weekend. One was a gathering of friends and chosen family I had paid for that I’d been looking forward to for months. The other was a last-minute family gathering that they’d had ages to plan – but didn’t – until days away.
Even after explaining the situation, rather than accept I didn’t want to lose the money I’d spent, I was guilted heavily, told that this was family and I should drop everything for them, and that I should do right by them and change my plans.
Were my feelings taken into consideration when they made last-minute plans with the foreknowledge that I had something to do at the same time? Did anyone care?
I admitted flat-out I was being selfish. And I did what I had already planned to do. It caused some hurt and harm just as I knew it would.
But I was empowered. Why? Because I didn’t experience the resentment, bitterness, and other negatives I would have if I’d given in to what I considered unreasonable. Yes, it was selfish of me. Burt my health, wellness, and wellbeing were maintained – rather than negatively impacted – because I made the choice I made.
Have you experienced something like this? If you have, you might have found not admitting to the selfishness caused a sense of disempowerment, of loss, of a lack of control. But if you did admit to being selfish, you probably felt empowered, in control, and better for the choice you made.
It’s seldom black or white.
Honesty is the best policy – especially with yourself
When you recognize and acknowledge that you are being selfish – not the negative, angry, ugly, spiteful selfish but self-caring selfish – you’re empowered.
From your empowerment, you can help empower others. We’re all perfectly imperfect. Sometimes that lovingly selfish act spurs a necessary conversation. Before you know it, you’re taking a wholly new generative approach to a broken situation.
Everyone will be selfish from time to time – and admitting to it is empowering. That’s because when you admit to your own accountability and responsibility, you’re being honest with yourself. And that is a huge element of conscious awareness, mindfulness, and all that goes into manifesting an incredible life experience.
How do you know loving selfishness from bad selfishness? Can you honestly say you were genuinely looking out for yourself – or were you spiteful, angry, hurt, or otherwise doing the selfish thing you did from a place of negativity? That’s how you can know.
And you are worthy and deserving of caring for your overall health, wellness, and wellbeing on any paths you choose to take in this life.
Have you experienced the empowerment that comes from admitting to being selfish?
This is the five-hundred and seventieth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
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