A Selfishness Checklist

Audio By Carbonatix

Let’s talk about selfishness. I am convinced that it is one of the single most damaging things for family life. And I say that because when one spouse stops focusing on the marriage and starts focusing on their experience alone, trouble isn’t too far behind. That’s where a lot of arguments and resentments and affairs get their start. Or when one parent decides to prioritize their own needs over the needs of the rest of the family, it leaves the other parent overworked and underappreciated, and it leads to the kids missing out on the huge value that an engaged parent brings to their development. When kids are selfish, the mood or tone of the home shifts and starts to be focused on complaints and criticisms and misses out on the reality that a family dynamic benefits hugely when people are mutually giving and receiving. 

Knowing how damaging selfishness can be, I want to share a few signs of selfishness. 

1. You spend almost all of your mental energy thinking about yourself, your situation, and your experience. When we believe that we are the “main character” in our life, then we spend almost all of our time and energy focused on ourselves. Obviously, there is a healthy degree of self-focus, because that’s required to make sure we’re getting enough sleep and eating well and exercising regularly. But I’m talking about something different here. I’m talking about a self-focus that rarely thinks about how we can use our energy and effort to serve those around us. A self-focus that is always and only thinking about me and my needs. 

2. You look at things that are happening around you and your main focus is on how it impacts you, not really noticing how it impacts other people. On some level, this is the basis of nearly every argument that takes place between people. Even when we’re arguing about an idea or a sports team, we’re actually arguing about that because of our connection to that idea or sports team. Because of how they’ve been meaningful or enjoyable for us. When our contributions to a conversation are all centered around our experience and how things impact us, our conversation partner is not very likely to feel understood or valued.

3. You think that feeling big emotions inside of you means that you have to explode or express all of those to the people around you. I know the first two points weren’t exactly easy, but this one is definitely the hardest…at least for me! I’ve grown a lot in my ability to stop doing this over the years. But most of us think that once an emotion is “big” enough inside of us, that means that we have to do something to let that pressure out. If we feel angry enough or frustrated enough or overlooked enough, then we act like we have “no choice” but to explode or to make a hurtful comment or to give somebody the silent treatment. But if we learn to manage our emotions ourselves instead of trying to make other people manage our emotions for us, we’ll be growing in this area, and we’ll see our relationships benefit from that growth. 

When we make our lives a little less self-focused and a little more others-focused, we’ll see the people around us come to life in a way we might not have seen before. When that happens, we’ll be winning more often at home.