So many people in society these days push you to not be selfish. Yet I am coming to the thought that what society pushes for is not as good for you or me as they would like to think. Today’s culture wants you to consider everyone else’s feelings before your own. We should make exceptions to those who believe they have a greater need.
Whether it is the woke mob or even church. There are even preachings of being selfish and even greater if you are able to be altruistic.
Altruism – the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.
While selfish is defined as such,
Selfish – (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.
Which one sounds better? But is it really better? No, it’s not. Why, do you ask? Because it calls for you to happily sacrifice yourself. A great example of this is saying you have 3 cars one is yours one is your wife’s and one is your sons. Yet down at the end of the block You have a family of 4 who has no cars. Why no cars? Well, you can make your own reasons here. Yet the altruistic person gives up their car to the family who didn’t earn it. Their need is greater so you now walk to work or depend on your wife or son to take you to work.
While the Selfish person keeps their car and is now able to help that family out (if needed) because he chose to keep all three of his cars. He is able to do better carpooling and other activities because he is being selfish.
Yes, being selfish is actually better for you and society, and the reasons why are shown below.
Why be Selfish?
With this being the Relaxed Male you know I am going to work the 4 pillars of a relaxed Male into this one way or another. Yet all 4 pillars are about being selfish. Everything about getting rid of the nice guy in your life is centered around being selfish.
I talked before about your priorities in life, and how many people have their personal priorities all wring the put themselves last and everybody else before them. This does cause problems because all of your time and energy goes into helping others achieve their dreams and wishes while yours are left on the shelf never being realized.
How Does being selfish allow you to help others?
As the flight attendants like to express you have to put your mask on before you put your kids mask on. Why? Because you can’t help your kids if you are passed out or worse dead. You have to take care of yourself. Yes, your family may depend on you and your actions and that makes your taking care of yourself and focusing on your needs that much more important.
Can you provide for your family if you are bedridden? Yeah but it’s not easy, and you are limiting yourself. Can you protect your family if you are bedridden? No, you can’t. Can you achieve your dreams when you don’t have energy? We talked about that, the answer is no. You have to be selfish if you want to help others. You being selfish is the best way to help those around you.
The most loving thing you can do for your family and community is to be selfish in all aspects of your life. Make sure you make the most money possible by practicing the highest moral act of producing for your own profit.
Guard your time with extreme prejudice because that is a very limited resource. Once you spend a minute doing something that minute is gone forever and you don’t know how much time you have for your life. So keep people from wasting your time. If you find someone wanting to waste your time stop it at once. Yes, that goes for your boss too.
How the 4 Pillars require you to be selfish
Let’s look at each pillar individually and examine how they are selfish.
Man’s Mind
The Man’s Mind is very selfish. This is you. It is the emotions you feel the suffering you throw at yourself because you want to be seen as a nice guy. This is where you make plans to do stuff and dream up your life. Your mind is you. Yet many times we sacrifice our minds by not saying what we are thinking. We are afraid of what other people may think. We put others’ emotions before our own.
We worry about what someone may think and so we avoid doing what we want to do. We get frustrated with our wife because she doesn’t follow the covert contract we made for her. All because we don’t want to make her upset and we don’t want to face the rejection of sex by our partner. So we sacrifice our wants and needs because nice guys don’t want to rock the boat.
Nice guys will not set the needed boundaries to hold our time and energy for our own selfish interests. The nice guy will take on way too much and sacrifice his integrity as long as he can get those around him to like them.
Taking time to read is one of the big ways you can help build your mental pillar but if you are dropping the book to rush off for some fire you have no ability to put it out. How is that helping anybody? How are you able to learn some new skills if you are overloading your schedule? You can’t, you have to take a selfish interest in yourself if you want to be able to improve your mind’s pillar.
How selfishness helps with your mind
Being selfish allows you to have better boundaries. People cant just walk in and take from you your time and energy. You have the skills needed to say, “No, I’m not doing that” When you have those boundaries in place you are able to give yourself time snd space to actually breathe and relax a bit. You might even find that you are enjoying life a bit more.
You also don’t care what other people think. We often spend so much time worrying about how others will perceive us that we are shooting ourselves in the foot every time. So what if Carl doesn’t like your idea. What if there are a lot of snide remarks made about you living your life on your terms. Those remarks are not actually made about you that are made about what people think of themselves when they see you. When you spend time worrying about what others are going to think you are wasting time and energy on something you have no control over.
Don’t apologize for your success. Don’t apologize for the service or product you are trying to produce. That is an intimately selfish act that benefits not only you but the whole of the world. When you succeed the world is better. When you fail, you get smarter. Neither of these would happen if you didn’t get selfish about trying for yourself
Man’s Body
The Man’s Body is also a crucial pillar for achieving the responsibilities of a man. You have to be strong and have enough endurance to go when it is needed and fight at those times when it is needed. It is your responsibility to lead protect and provide for your wife and kids. If you are sacrificing your time for other people than yourself you wind up fat and out of shape. You are breathing heavily after walking to the end of the drive. So how are you going to fight off an attacker?
If you are giving all your time and energy to other people you don’t have time to go for that run or head to the gym and give your body even a full hour of attention. If you are wiped out from doing everything for everybody else you will not have time for yourself. If you are not selfishly holding on to some money how are you going to pay for a gym membership or other equipment?
Taking care of your body is an incredibly selfish act. It is all about you and getting yourself better. So be selfish and treat your body with the respect you deserve. You cant get yourself in shape because of someone else. You cant lose the weight you want to lose because of someone else’s will. It has to be your will and your determination. So to get into shape you have to be selfish. You have to actually start liking what you look like. A person who hates their body will not give it the respect your body needs to get into shape.
Man’s Soul
Take time for yourself to work on a project that means a lot to you. Now that is selfish. To be able to step away from your family so that you can improve your business. Is selfish, and rightfully so.
You have to want to be in a better place to pursue your soul’s desire. That is again the essence of being selfish. Your selfishness allows for your mind to bloom and expand to allow for the opportunities of thought to become active.
Don’t worry about what other people think when sharing your ideas. Those who hate the ideas would like any idea that’s not their own so speak your mind clearly and assertively.
Man’s Community
Being selfish also means being intentional with who you spend your time with. If they are not able to help you then why spend time with them. All relationships are a value-for-value endeavor. You are providing value for those around you and they are providing value for you. Yes only spend time with those who provide value for what you are trying to accomplish.
Also because you have the selfish value of protecting your time and attention with boundaries you are also able to have better relationships. Not only with the men in your band of brothers, but this also goes for your wife and kids. You start to have better relationships when they aren’t being ideally thrown to the side because someone else is trying to draw your attention.
You also let people know where they stand in your life. If they are in your inner circle then they are going to get the most accessible to you. While those who waste your time and energy get the dregs of your day.
Being selfish allows for those relationships that are important to you to know how important they are. To be selfless causes nobody to feel that they are special. They don’t know what value they are to you and you show them that they are of no value to you.
So when should you be selfless?
Never. You need to be ruthlessly selfish with your time energy and intention. If you sacrifice any of these you lose value in all that you have worked so hard to create. So you want your wife to find you attractive? Be selfish with your time. Give her all the attention when it is needed. Want your son to look up to you and come to you for your insight and wisdom? Then be selfish with your time. Don’t allow others to creep in and steal from you. You get what you give. All of life is a value for value proposition and to sacrifice it for the sake of being altruistic is sacrificing all that you truly value to those who don’t care.
Don’t just give haphazardly give everything with the expectation that you are going to get something back and your world will grow in ways you never expected it.
