Stepping into Selfishness
I’m selfish and that doesn’t make me a bad person. I’m selfish in self care and I don’t care what others think about me or my decisions to put myself over other. I must clarify that this comes to my everyday interactions with strangers, co-workers, family, and friends. I don’t mean to say that if given the chance to benefit greatly myself over ending world hunger I’d choose myself. I guess it would depend on what I would get offered, but I’d like to think I’m not as self absorbed to pass up the opportunity to make our world a better place. That being said when it comes to making myself comfortable and okay day to day over others in my life I always choose myself.
I don’t understand people who give themselves fully in all their relationships, and in return get overlooked by those same people they have helped. I learned this lesson early on in life and I have tried my best to make others aware of what I like to call the “one way, give all relationship.” I don’t do anything for anyone unless that person has been there for me in the past, no matter who the person is. This counts blood relatives and best friends. I’ll let you into a conversation I had recently with a very important person in my life.
Person: can you do me a favor
Me: no, I can’t
Person: why?
Me: because I can’t
Person: but it won’t cost you anything
Me: okay, but I’m not doing a favor.
Person: nothing will be taken from you if do me this favor, why won’t you, I can’t believe you…
Me: no, no, no *waving my head in disagreement*
I easily could have said yes, to this person. I would even guess many of you would think me rude for not helping. Yet, I knew that what this person was going to ask me would cause me anxiety and I would not be comfortable in the situation. They wanted me to do something they didn’t want to deal with. Why would I do this if they themselves were not willing to deal with it. Even more upsetting to me was the fact that they had asked a different person to do them this favor and the other person had also declined. Yet, when they asked me to do it they wanted to guilty me into do it once I had said no a few times. To me this is not fair. I am not obligated to say yes to anyone if my instincts are telling me to say no. It would have been easy to say yes to get this person to stop bothering me, but when you say yes to small favors people will always come back expecting you to do more and more. I have been there and I have been ignored when I’ve needed help myself. So, I changed my ways and decided it was in my best interest to say no more.
People are not perfect, and relationships will always have good and bad aspects no matter how long they have existed. If you can manage to surround yourself with positive, caring, and like-minded people you are sure to be one lucky person. Yet, we can’t always escape those people who demand more from you than they give you. I encourage you to say no more often to this people. If they truly care about you and your needs then they will understand, or at least get over your “selfishness.” The difference between those people’s selfishness and our selfishness is that we are taking our needs into account over not hurting their feelings; they on the other hand have no consideration to our feelings as long as they get what they want. As with my example earlier, I said no once and that should have ended the demand of the favor. Not only did this person continue to ask me to do the favor they got mad and even tried to guilt me into doing the favor. I stayed firm with my no, and didn’t do the favor. I am in good terms with this person and things are fine, but now they will think twice before trying to ask me to do favors. I am also a believer of if I do a favor for you, then you should do a favor for me. So, if I ask a person to do me a favor I am more likely to help them when they ask me. The particular person in my example doesn’t always help me out when I need it. To me it’s only fair that I have the right to opt out of helping them.
This is just how I feel after being overlooked in so many relationships in my life. I feel as though it took me a while to realize that by saying no more and not helping people it doesn’t make me a bad person. The people in my life who aren’t there for me when I need them don’t feel bad for it, so why should I? Is this a healthy way of thinking? I couldn’t say, but I will say I have felt loads better now that I don’t do things just to avoid saying no to people who ask for it. Maybe I am totally wrong about all this but I am happier with the decisions I make today then when I use to let others rule my time.
