Good Selfish versus Bad Selfish

What a funny topic of a blog post. Earlier you might have heard these words: Don’t be selfish. Think about others. Don’t think about yourself only.

Then later in life you realize your personal needs have been neglected. Your feelings are suppressed. You feel stressed and resentful. You develop anger and temper.

After understanding and analyzing the life situations you go through, you recognise the fact you don’t need to do everything. You can selectively choose the actions that serve you best. You can prioritize what matters to you and what doesn’t. You can choose the tasks you decide to do and let go of the tasks that others can do.

This is what I consider as being selfish but in a good way. This is where you pay attention to your own mental and emotional needs. This is where you give yourself priority and create a healthy balance in your daily life activities.

Now looking at bad selfish, how it differs? Well it means being selfish using negative intentions. This is where you favour your needs and priorities by taking advantage of the other person. A lot of mental manipulations can happen here like I need this badly, I promise you things would be alright or this is for the best of everyone.

Also bad selfish means the person is being selfish because of personal ego and pride. Examples of this are a person at work doesn’t share important work information fearing the colleague would take over his position, a supervisor uses her power and authority to control the team and manipulate their relationship dynamics and on and on scenarios like that.

Now after understanding the difference between good and bad selfish, what areas in your life where you notice these terms exist? Where do you find yourself more active? At the good or bad selfish? What self-reflections you can gain here? And finally which one you think could serve you best?