The Art of Living Selfishly
publication date: Jun 24, 2009
By Melody Larson
 If you want to make a difference in this world, live with passion, and fulfill your purpose for being on this planet you must be willing to take responsibility for your life and stop living as a slave to your ‘shoulds.’ To do this, you have to do something that at first seems to go against everything we’ve been taught in our society: you have to become selfish. I’m talking deeply, gloriously, unswervingly, deliciously selfish. Through selfishness, you are able to give more of your Self, to shower others with your highest energy and your highest love. You have to put your own needs and desires above everyone and everything precisely in order to serve everyone and everything. In this sense selfishness is constructive rather than destructive. I’m not talking about destructive selfishness. Destructive selfishness is to seek ruthless ego satisfaction at the expense of others, or self-indulgence at the expense of your own integrity, or tired sacrifice and martyrdom in the name of selflessness but that is rooted firmly in the selfish control of others. None of these things are constructive selfishness. They are greed. Greed is always destructive. Constructive selfishness is about being yourself so fully that you can share yourself fully and beautifully with the world. Without selfishness, you will always put the needs, wants, and dictates of the outside world above your own. This keeps you unempowered. You sacrifice your Soul’s desires in order to feed the desires of your personality, which is never able to free itself from outside influence. Remaining unempowered in this way is the ultimate in destructive selfishness; by not fulfilling your purpose you withhold the gifts that you are here to share with this world. You are here to uplift humanity in your own unique way! You are also here to learn. You will achieve neither unless you embrace the Self within you, which is what selfishness really means. When you dance with the Self, joy becomes the primary rhythm of your life. Joy has a very hard time flourishing in the weed-strewn soil of conformity. In order to become empowered and therefore lead a joyful life, you must pull out those weeds and make space for your Soul’s desires to flourish. It involves ridding yourself of everyone and everything that does not please you or serve you. When you’ve cleared a clean, fertile space in your life you can plant the seeds of your authenticity. You can stop wasting your life force on image-making, material consumption, pleasing, and pretense, and begin using your life force to cultivate your uniqueness, your genius, and your passion. Selfishness is the only way to do this. You must dispense with those attitudes, beliefs, people, or activities that do not bring you joy and satisfaction. If you have accepted that the responsibility for changing the state of your life is yours, you can now begin to take some very concrete selfish actions. Becoming selfish is a process that involves simplification and internal validation. Begin by simplifying your life. What (or who) is keeping you so frazzled and busy that you don’t have time to listen to the still, guiding voice within you? What stuff are you accumulating as rewards and soothing balms for all that frazzledness? What (or who) are you using as distractions from your stressful, sorrowful, fearful, or dissatisfied state? When your life is filled to the brim with the unnecessary, there is no room for new energy to flow in. Instead, you are weighed down by the stagnant energy of your possessions, routines, commitments, and other ‘shoulds.’ They become energy drainers instead of energy enhancers. Removing all these harmful energies will lift you up to a new level of consciousness and your inner power will return to you. The immediate rewards are clarity, health, and peace of mind. Start by doing what I call clutter-clearing. The material world is easily evidenced by the eye, so your space is a very good indicator of stagnant energy. Physical clutter is a mirror of the mental and emotional clutter within you. Often when we are overly focused on the past or future instead of on the present, it will show up as clutter in our lives. When your space is full there is no room for new treasure to enter. When your mind and heart are hanging on to what was, or to what you hope will be, there is no room for your authenticity to emerge. Is your closet full of clothing that no longer fits? Are your cupboards full of items you no longer use? Do you have pieces in your home that you don’t even like that much because you feel guilty about letting them go? Are you a “someday I might need this” kind of person? You must let all of these things go so that the energy of both your physical and emotional space is uncluttered, clear, restful, organized, and ready for authentic living. See my bonus technique at the end of this article for how to go about clutter-clearing. Another reason we accumulate possessions is the myth that gratification can come from outside of ourselves. As we strive to validate our worth through material goods, we end up complicating our lives far beyond a cluttered up space. Authentic living means that you are able to distinguish the threshold of ‘enough’ from the endless yearning for more and more. The goal of life is not material progress. It is spiritual progress. I’m not suggesting that you live in a cave and subsist on roots and berries. There is nothing wrong with having a life of wealth and abundance. But wealth and abundance are the results of lovingly and creatively participating in life, not the means to it! Do not seek material and financial wealth as substitution for authentic engagement in life. When you can define what is ‘enough’ for you, you can free yourself from dependence on materialism as a healing balm for your dissatisfaction with inauthentic living. What comes with ‘enough’ is time, energy, and freedom. How much time do you spend doing work you loathe in order to earn a living so that you can accumulate things to make you feel happy, secure, and worthy? And when you find that they are not enough, do you push even harder, work even more, exhaust yourself even more, so that you can buy even more things that will bring more happiness, more security, and more self-worth? Doesn’t that sound a bit futile? What if you gave up the need for bigger and better? How much time and freedom would you reclaim for yourself if things or status were not what defined you? That time and freedom can be used to discover and live out your joys and your passions! That is why simplification is the first step in becoming constructively selfish. Without the time, energy, and freedom to devote to joy, you will never fulfill your life purpose. The way to break this cycle is to choose to seek happiness, security, and self-worth from within you. Choose to focus on internal rather than external validation. Internal validation means removing the social masks you’ve plastered to your psyche. It means giving up on image-making in favor of Self-expansion. It is exhausting to try to be all things to all people. You were never meant to apply your energy in this scattering way. You are meant to concentrate your energy into the singular expansion of your own genuineness and uniqueness. When you give up the effort of trying to be what society says you should be, you make space for your true gifts and talents to emerge. And it is those gifts and talents that the world needs! We are told how to dress, what to buy, how much to weigh, what to want, how much to earn, what is appropriate, what is not, what to believe, who to befriend, how to behave, who to love, who to hate…all determined by our upbringing, our society, and our culture. Becoming selfish means – excuse my rudeness – giving them all the proverbial finger. You are not here to please anyone but you! You are not here to become anyone other than you! Internal validation means becoming strong enough to defy anyone else’s rules, be they the rules of strangers or the rules of loved ones. It is not an easy thing to do but it is a necessary milestone on the path of authenticity. Start with removing the most impersonal influences and gradually move closer and closer in to the more immediate influences of your everyday social and personal sphere. In my opinion, the most pervasive and most harmful influence in western society is the media. If you want a jump start on internal validation, turn off your television. Television (excluding public stations) is today’s stage show hypnotist, today’s peddler of useless elixirs. Add radio, magazines, newspapers, etc. to your list. Free yourself from the image-making that the advertising world propels you into. Choose life over virtual reality! A final facet of internal validation is removing the negative influence of people in your life. This can be the greatest challenge in your quest for selfishness and it is also the most freeing. It is difficult to say no to people that want more from you than you can give—be it a boss, the PTA, a friend, a partner, or a child. It is difficult to remove yourself from social groups, memberships, or religious associations that provide a sense of belonging but that squelch your individuality and authenticity. It is difficult to walk away from a home environment or a loved one that is toxic to you or from someone that mistreats you. Nonetheless, re-examine your relationships. Look at your motivations for being in them. Is it to fit in? Is it because of a sense of duty? Is it because you don’t deserve better? Is it because you are afraid of being alone? Decide which relationships drain more of your energy than they give, and let them go. Those you decide to leave will tell you that you are selfish. Good! Becoming constructively selfish is your goal. Selfishness paves the way to serving others in the best way possible: by showing up in the world as who you really are and by fully, exuberantly contributing your unique passions, gifts, joys, and talents to that world. When you delight the world with your presence, you automatically and effortlessly delight in your own life too. About the Author Melody Larson is a rising voice in the human potential movement. She’s a Life Purpose Guide, Law of Attraction teacher, and the author of 2 books: the newly released Delighting the Soul and the highly popular The Beginner’s Guide to Abundance. For free excerpts and more, visit her website: http://www.delightingthesoul.com. |