You are probably bored of hearing the words ‘self love’ and ‘self care’. We are obsessed with those words now, yet if you say the word ‘selfish’ suddenly you have gone too far.
Unfortunately, the reality is if you want to make time for self love and self care, you need to put yourself higher on your priority list. The practical (and un-Instagrammable) side of that is that for you to put yourself higher, someone else has to be lower.
If your version of self love and self care is ‘only once everyone is looked after first’, you won’t have any energy left and, therefore, we all need to be more selfish.
In our society, the greatest compliment you can give a woman is that she is selfless. When you are a woman with strong boundaries, you will often be told you are selfish. Start saying ‘no’ and you will start hearing more insults - and ‘selfish’ is only the start. Other common retorts are: aggressive, mean, harsh, difficult and a bully - all because you are harder to take advantage of.
Do you find it hard to put yourself first, or do you think people should be less selfish in general? Have your say in the comments below
The key to overcoming this is to realise that people who truly care about you care about your boundaries too. They want you to take care of yourself and when you are more selfish, they feel relief because they can worry less about you because they know you are looking after yourself.
The decision to be more selfish happens in small moments. It’s seeing that late-night email and deciding to not reply, and enjoying your evening because you deserve to rest and they can wait until the next morning for a reply.
It’s seeing the party invite that you know you ‘should’ go to and instead choosing to decline and being authentic to how you actually feel.
It’s saying no when your friend asks to borrow money, knowing they have a habit of not paying you back. When you have these decisions come in, it’s about taking a moment to pause and actually asking yourself, ‘do I want to do this?’
It’s time to stop the knee-jerk reaction of saying yes to be liked or to seem polite or simply because you feel you can’t say no. If you don’t make yourself a priority list, who will? The only way to practise putting yourself first is to actually do it.
It’s a new skill you're learning, so it will come with moments of discomfort and difficult conversations, but the reward you reap when being more selfish is the energy you will have in abundance.
It is really draining walking through life saying yes to any incoming request, so with the word ‘no’ at your fingertips more often, you get to make conscious decisions about what you do and don’t want to do.
Burnout is a thing of the past and the end result of having stronger boundaries is a life that you have actually chosen.
Michelle Elman is a five-board accredited life coach, boundaries expert and author of The Joy of Being Selfish (out now in hardback / in paperback from January 2022) and Am I Ugly.
