Selfish, Self-aware, Selfless

Selfish, Self-aware, Selfless — it’s not selfish to work on yourself… it’s the only way to shift what isn’t working. It’s essential that we ‘get our noses on our side of the fence,’ do our work, and be real

Many are the excus­es for not mak­ing nec­es­sary shifts — and by nec­es­sary I mean use­ful and ben­e­fi­cial. Here’s where it gets dicey. Nec­es­sary to whom? Why, to your­self, of course!

Self-aware­ness is my pre­ferred term for “work­ing on your­self.” By this I mean that you are aware both of what you do that holds you back, and are aware of and do what brings you clos­er to wholeness.

For many, thinking and acting this way pushes a big red button labelled “selfish.”

I lis­ten to all kinds of excus­es for not work­ing on “self-aware­ness.” A big one is that doing this work is viewed as self­ish.

Being stuck means that the per­son will object to my insis­tence that they focus on them­selves — that they get their noses on their own side of the fence.

It’s funny. They really aren’t listening to themselves.

They go on and on about the flaws of oth­ers – the oth­er per­son is remote, uncom­mu­nica­tive, shut down, angry, what­ev­er. And then they pon­tif­i­cate at great length about all the things the oth­er person(s) need to do to “get better.”

Then they toss in how difficult it is to be with someone who won’t take their advice.

When I sug­gest that it’s NOT their job to fix (or even judge) oth­ers, that their job is to work on their own stuff, out comes the,

“That’s self­ish, and besides, I’m only telling them what to do out of care and compassion!”

They miss that they preach change to others, while adamantly arguing against changing the only thing they can change — their own understandings and behaviour.

It’s not self­ish to work on your­self. As a mat­ter of fact, you are the only one you can work on.

This may sound odd, but I find deal­ing ele­gant­ly with oth­ers is easy when I accept oth­ers as they are, and sim­ply work on my respons­es and reactions.

If I’m upsetting myself, that’s me, upsetting myself. To then shift my focus to the other person, and expect them to change so I don’t have to is not selfish — it’s arrogant.

What I pay atten­tion to is me — my sto­ries, my feel­ings, my avoid­ances, my judge­ments. I look at all of this whack stuff I do, and I own every bit of it. I own that I think it, I do it, I own my game play­ing and my drama.

By own, I do not mean blame.

Not my genet­ics, not my part­ner, not my cir­cum­stances. I don’t even blame me. Blame is just a fin­ger, point­ing. Accept­ing means, 

“Yes indeed, this is me, doing stuff
that gets me lousy results.”

After acceptance comes reflection

To reflect is to gaze open­ly at my choic­es, to com­pare who I am and what I am pro­duc­ing with what I desire, and to look for oth­er behav­iours that will get me where I want to go. 

It’s like dri­ving. I want to get from Water­loo to Guelph. I get there by accept­ing that I want to go here, reflect­ing on how, (con­sult­ing a Google map per­haps…) and then… wait for it… get­ting in the car and fol­low­ing the direc­tions! (HINT: you dri­ve east on high­way 7!)

Refection sets the walk in motion

Now, imag­ine.

Most peo­ple do this: they decide to go to Guelph. They think they are smart, and have it all fig­ured out. They decide to dri­ve West on high­way 7, and end up in Stratford. 

Of course, they blame every­one else, and the map they nev­er con­sult­ed, for their drive. 

So, they decide to try again.

They return to Water­loo, then dri­ve West again, think­ing that this time, because they real­ly, real­ly want Guelph to be there, it will be.

They demand that every­one accept that they are real­ly try­ing, and accuse all in sundry of being stuck in the belief that Guelph is East of Water­loo.

So they end up in Stratford again, yet refuse to question their method. Or, of course, change it.

Now, no one real­ly dri­ves like that (I hope) but many peo­ple live like that.

They end­less­ly repeat what does­n’t work, and blame “the car, the roads, or the per­son who taught them to drive.” 

Yet, all that’s nec­es­sary is Reflec­tion (read­ing an accu­rate map) AND dri­ving in and only in, the direc­tion indi­cat­ed on the map. 

This is self-aware­ness — where I am at every moment is deter­mined by me, and only me. One way or the oth­er, I got myself here. If I don’t like the “here” I’m in, I need to dis­cov­er anoth­er way of ACTING.

This is not selfish — This is self-responsible.

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As for selflessness:

I might briefly say that all that this (def­i­nite­ly Bud­dhist) con­cept real­ly means is that the action is all that there is. 

It’s not Ego-Wayne writ­ing, it just the act of writ­ing happening. 

The dance between the “per­son” and the activ­i­ty shows no divi­sion. The writ­ing hap­pens out of a choice to write, with­out agenda. 

These are the words my essence wish­es to con­vey. Why? To con­vey them. 

I’ve said that I can’t write a book that peo­ple like. I can only write a book. What peo­ple “do” with the book is out of my con­trol. What is in my con­trol is the words I use, and that I start it and fin­ish it.

This week, think about whether you are flex­i­ble enough to be self-aware, to turn down anoth­er road, and to eval­u­ate who and how you are based sole­ly on you. 

Ask your­self if you are ready to do your work, while let­ting oth­ers do theirs. Ask your­self if you are ready to engage with life ful­ly and with depth, from you.

If so, then get direc­tions as you need to, and start.

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