Not many people will call themselves selfish. It’s viewed as something that’s wrong. In fact, this is taught from a young age, right from when you were told to “Stop being selfish and share your toys”. What they don’t tell you is that you have to be selfish.
At this point, you might be confused. That makes sense, after all, you’ve been conditioned to think that you should be selfless and put others before yourself and to be completely honest, I don’t think being selfless is a bad thing. Like nearly everything, it’s perfect in moderation. But, unlike your parents and anyone who existed before you, you are much more exposed to a competitive world.
This world demands the best, unfortunately. This means that in school, students are expected to sacrifice leisure time in favour of studying. This means that in the workplace, employees are expected to sacrifice themselves for the company. This means that we are always expected to sacrifice something in favour of another. This is unsustainable.
This causes an alarming number of youth to suffer from mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. After all, why wouldn’t you be worried if you’re not able to match standards? Why wouldn’t this upset you?
This is the heart of the issue: we are held to the unrealistic expectation of being perfect consistently. Of course, such a standard is impossible to maintain.
At this point, I’ve said a lot about why you shouldn’t be selfless but I haven’t spoken much about why you need to be selfish and I’ll do my best to explain. In order to succeed in whichever area you choose, you must dedicate time to practice and perfect that skill. For this, you will often have to put aside other activities which are less important. In this example, being selfish is expected, yet calling yourself selfish would still be looked down upon.
Of course, you can’t be completely selfish, that would just make you a douchebag. Instead, you should be selectively selfish, in other words, be selfish when it will truly benefit you.