Thoughts on selfishness
Why it might be the greatest gift you could ever give us
CARE.CHECK*: Have you ever defined the word selfish for yourself?
What comes up when you hear the word?
Did you shiver when reading this letter’s title?
Do you use the word selfish often? About you, about others?
Can you tolerate thinking about it or does the idea feels unbearable? (and no, I’m not being dramatic, I’m giving you full permission to witness what that word does to most of us.)
Can you take a moment with your mind, your gut and your heart to ask them what you make the word selfish mean? And what could be rethought?
Please don’t skip this invitation. Please welcome the resistance and receive it as a sign that there’s something magical here to uncover.
I hope this week’s letter will feel like a loving stepping stone on your way home.
In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)
IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, you can use Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by a Care.robot.friend :)
Hi Care.Friend,
How is this week treating you?
And how are you receiving this week’s offerings—whether they feel needed, sweet, challenging or just plain wrong?
And on a bigger scale, what is your relationship with receiving?
If you’re anything like me, emotions such as terror, shame or grief might be surfacing, just at the idea of saying the word out loud.
Each year I ask Life to give me a word to contemplate, understand, and embody. And I trust (and witness) that Earth school will then deliver the curriculum I need to follow, for that word to consequently vibrate within me.
This year, the word that showed up was RECEIVING—and this has been one of the steepest learning curves I’ve had to experience in my life.
It mirrors the biggest lesson I encountered in 2022, my year of HUMILITY. I had thought that 2022 might be tough for my ego as I was expecting to “be put in my place” at every corner! But that is not at all what happened.
What my year of Humility required me to tend to, harness, and—let’s be honest—BUILD was my sense of self-esteem.
There’s no soulful humility without a full consciousness of our beauty and all that we have to offer. If we do not know how special we are, there’s nothing humble about knowing that we’re not more special than anyone else!
It’s not humility to deny oneself “just because”—it’s self depreciation, self abandonment and often, as Hannah Gadsby masterfully said in Nanette, self-humiliation.
And what I am learning in this year of Receiving is not so much how to let others love me, but that I need to love myself first, if I am to let myself be loved. I’m glad I didn’t know that going in! I would have convinced myself that it was not the priority right now…
But of course it was.
Of course it is. For me. For you. For all of us.
I have learned that self-love is the most important ingredient for the magic that we are to take form.
I am also learning that, just as it goes with feeling, you don’t get to edit what you receive or not.
There’s no soulful humility without a full consciousness of our beauty
and all that we have to offer.
Because you either feel or you don’t. We don’t talk about that enough.
You can’t filter only the comfortable emotions and leave all the others at the door. You feel them ALL or you go numb. Those are our only options and this is why understanding that uncomfortable emotions are just as magical, and often even more potent, than the so-called good ones is the most profound shift one can welcome.
This is why learning how to be with our so-called bad emotions, instead of running away from them, is the only way to truly experience joy, gratitude or awe. [I wrote about it HERE if that idea seems like a stretch.]
If we do not know how special we are,
there’s nothing humble about knowing
that we’re not more special than anyone else.
And it’s the same process with receiving: you’re either in a receiving mode or not.
Now you do get to choose what you do with what you receive! You do get to choose what you will accept to keep in your experience or not! But we do not get to say: I will only receive what feels good.
We need to receive and then filter. There’s no switching that order.
The only way to protect ourselves from receiving what’s unwelcome is to build a wall and keep everything out.
But I believe that the call of this human experience is on the contrary to learn how to receive it ALL, and learn how to say a very embodied yes to what is meant for us and a very clear no to what feels wrong.
Of course, it’s much harder than saying yes to everything (aka being wall-less) or no to all that comes (aka being walled up). But that’s the beauty of it. The magic. That’s where all the subsequent growth comes from... That’s the gift.
Because that requires intention and presence… That requires self-connection.
I need to love myself first if I am to let myself be loved.
And those are the first to go when we fall into survival mode! Because survival mode urges us to find easy way outs… and therefore guides us into All or Nothing approaches.
But they’re a very worthy reclaiming process to devote ourselves to—because they’re also the antidote to the survivalism we’ve all been unconsciously scripted into.
We’re not meant to live in survival mode, fighting our way through the darkness of our existence, we’re meant to remember that we do exist, and to come alive as the light we were created to bring forth.
And when we want to tend to our relationship with receiving, we must also look at our relationship with giving of course.
You can’t filter only the comfortable emotions
and leave all the others at the door.
You feel them ALL or you go numb.
So what is your relationship with giving?
Again if you’re anything like me, this one feels very safe. It feels easy, purposeful, validating. It feels normal. It LOOKS like what a good person does!
And if you lean in closer, humbly and honestly, it might feel reflexive, even?
Because here's the trick... When we don’t know how to receive, when we won’t LET ourselves receive, we’re not truly giving either.
We can’t.
Unbeknownst to ourselves, what we’re actually doing is keeping everything out, yet again. That’s why overgiving is always both the chicken mom and egg of underreceiving. But overgiving is trickier to unroot, because it’s a pattern that looks good and that is highly rewarded by others. We’re deemed self-less.
And interestingly, we’ve all convinced each other that it’s a compliment.
We’re not meant to live in survival mode,
fighting our way through the darkness of our existence,
we’re meant to remember that we do exist,
and to come alive as the light we were created to bring forward.
But it’s anything but when we truly think about what it means. To be without a Self... Intuitively, we’re touching on the hidden danger of it: Selflessness means emptiness.
AND NOT empty of fear, misguided thoughts or repressed dreams. That’s not the kind of emptiness we gain through overgiving. Ever.
Nothing can be spiritual when it doesn’t spur from inner harmony.
The emptiness that comes from this so-called selflessness is an emptiness of who we’re meant to be. Of our Self with a “S”. Of our embodied life energy. Of our expressed gifts. Of our manifested dreams. Of our Source and center.
Einstein is famously believed to have said that “we cannot solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created it”. This is why neither narcissism nor selflessness are functions of love. Both are responses from the mind to a problem that the mind manufactured: “Do I matter?”
Narcissism is not self-love. Selflessness is not love for others… Those patterns are not born from one’s heart! Both stem from an obsession—with either “the self (with a “s”) or “the other”—programmed into a disembodied mind. Both are disharmonious and flawed points of focus, that take us away from our hearts and drown us into our minds.
When we don’t know how to receive,
when we won’t LET ourselves receive,
we’re not truly giving either.
Now, part of it was originally fueled by the love that beats our hearts, of course, but then it got hijacked by the fearful mind.
How do I know that? Because TRUE Love is unconditional. Love doesn’t love only the others or only the self. That can’t be. Love loves everyone. Which includes, at all times, the vessel (you) and the mirrors (everyone else).
The emptiness, the egolessness, that heartcentered spirituality guides us toward is not a negation of our humanness. It’s a radical acceptance of it.
It’s not a negation of our needs and desires, it’s a felt and embodied understanding of the difference between
a GENUINE need—a yearning that comes from our gut and heart, and that was born through and in the name of Love,
and a FABRICATED need—a craving that was generated by our mind and spurred from scarcity, exhaustion and starvation.
Neither narcissism nor selflessness are functions of love.
And that’s why the narrative of selfishness is so perilous.
Because when we’re scared of being selfish, we cut ourselves from ourselves! But the love that we are and must embody to offer, can only be found on inside of us.
And we can only receive our inner gifts from inside too… which means we can only offer them to the world from the inside out!
Therefore, if I refuse to look beneath my skin, first of all I forfeit the responsibility I have to enlighten my own shadow… which means you will have to deal with the consequences of it one way or another! (and my body will be the first casualty) and second, I cut myself from the source that you needed me to be.
So I will have to extract from the outside world what I want to give you. I will have to drain someone or something’s energy if I am to give anything to you… I will have to die in your name instead of living alongside you.
I will tell myself that I live for you—and that means you will have to carry the burden of the indescribable sacrifice I’m making, whether you want it or not. That means that you will tacitly or overtly owe me, even if you never asked me for anything.
That also means there’s no me without you. That’s what selflessness means! And what could be more selfish than that?
Heartcentered spirituality does not guide us
toward a negation of our humanness.
It guides us towards a radical acceptance of it.
Indeed, Oscar Wilde wrote: “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” I love that definition so much.
Because it recenters the debate where it belongs. What is mine and what is yours. And there’s nothing selfish about us having what we have. We need to unlearn that.
And if I can only have what you also have, then I need you to have what I need—and your needs cannot be about you anymore. No matter what I tell myself! What I want for you is what I want for you to have, so that I can have what I want from you.
I know it seems complex and convoluted but that’s truly the way it works. If I render myself an empty pitcher in your name, I need you to be filled with water at all time to justify my way of life.
If I refuse to look beneath my skin,
I forfeit the responsibility I have to enlighten my own shadow.
When spiritual teachings are received by the ego—and not through the heart—we fall into fear, and ironically, we demonize the ego. That’s why Eckhart Tolle warns us that attacking the ego is never “spiritual”: it’s always just a sign that the ego has come back by the back door.
And that’s why I wanted to write today about the word selfish and how important it is for you to differentiate what truly IS selfish (only about you AND at other people’s expense) from what is self-care, self-responsibility, self-regard… self-LOVE (aka what might be only about you but takes nothing from others and what is the only way you’ll be able to be fully you, fully resources, fully alive).
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live,
it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
Oscar Wilde
Selfish. We all need to have an intimate relationship with that word so that we can know for sure whether something we’re choosing is truly “selfish” or not. No matter what anybody says. No matter what we think even!
And another important thing to remember as you dig into this work:
Spending your own time and energy on you is NOT selfish. It is NOT at the expense of others. [Others considering that your time and energy should be theirs first (and yours second) ARE the selfish ones… Read Oscar Wilde’s definition again.]
I know it’s a hard one to grasp and embody. I struggle with it everyday… But ask your gut. Ask your heart! Prioritizing you is always the answer, first (and foremost) because YOU. MATTER. and then, because that’s the only way we can ever truly show up for others.
Please contemplate this idea. Please meditate on it (meditate as in “reflect” on it and as in “meditate” after contemplating the thought to see what gets revealed and released).
We were never meant to give what we do not have. That only leads to exhaustion, starvation, stealing, death… lack. When and where have you ever seen Nature model that?
We’re meant to be who we are and to let that be the gift we offer. That’s how we create love. By embodying it.
So how do YOU define selfishness?
Have you ever tried?
It is one of the greatest fears the majority of us hold. It is one of the main fears people share with me in their coaching sessions. This is a fear that’s holding us all back from doing the work on ourselves that the entire world needs us so desperately to do.
We fear being who we’re not and we therefore stop ourselves from being who we’re meant to be. We fear being a problem and stop ourselves from being a solution. It’s maddening when we realize it.
This is not selfish to take care of ourselves… it is our job, our responsibility even.
And it is actually the only way NOT to be selfish.
We were never meant to give what we do not have.
I have never met someone who’s truly connected to who they are and to their desires, who authentically shows up for themselves and for their dreams, who takes care of themselves and honors their needs, and who isn't ALSO generous and loving.
What I have often seen, however, are people who follow other people’s definition of success, worthability, “goodness” or righthood (be it through a career, a certain amount of money, a certain kind of family… or caretaking), who believe that they’re who they were supposed to be, or that they’re “living the dream,” that they “made it” act in ways that hurt those that surround them—because even though it appears on paper like they have more resources than most or that they’re better than others, they are deeply under resourced in the ways that matter most: in body and heart.
When well-resourced, when centered, when self-connected (!), generosity is our default because love is our essence. So ironically, when giving feels like a must, a need, an obligation or a compulsion, it’s a sure sign we’re disconnected from what we’re desperately trying to offer.
We’re meant to be who we are and to let that be the gift we offer.
Selfishness is not the origin of our behaviors, it’s the byproduct. It happens when we drain ourselves; that’s when one becomes selfish (and that can therefore also happen when one has felt drained from birth). Selfishness is born out of survival mode.
And what’s fascinating is that a lot of us empty ourselves into others, without realizing that we’re doing it because we’re looking to get our own needs met (which is neither s.elfless nor S.elfless) AND without realizing that we’re putting ourselves in danger of being who we’re fiercely trying to avoid becoming! A selfish person.
That’s how we create love.
By embodying it.
Recently in a letter I downloaded from Love (learn more on that awe-inspiring practice on
’s substack), Love wrote: “You don't have to give, give, give. That's not generosity, that's exhaustion. You don't have to deny either how generous you are, whenever you didn't give what you didn't have. That's nonsensical.”When we truly understand, at our core, through our hearts, that we can only give who we are, we understand how crucial it is to become the best version of ourselves.
And we can only be for the world the diamond that we are if we commit deeply to the unearthing.
There is nothing selfish about self-care, self-connection, self-prioritization and self-development. It’s the most LOVING thing we can do. Which means for ourselves and for others—if it’s not both, once again, it’s not Love.
We fear being who we’re not
and we therefore stop ourselves from being who we’re meant to be.
So be “SELFISH” my dear Care.friend.
Be selfish if that means honoring you, honoring your spark and honoring your sacred dream. If that means you’ll feel nourished, cared for, inspired and creative. If that means I’ll get to see, meet, know and love the real you. If that means you feel alive, loving, loved and RESOURCED.
PLEASE, disappoint me when I expect you to be who I believe you to be and not who you’re becoming.
Please, PLEASE, choose you over me at every turn, and especially whenever I’m tempted to ask you to share with me what you need to focus on you only.
Please be “selfish” if that’s what selfish means.
Because I want you to love yourself as much as I love you.
Because I know that’s how you’ll truly love me too.
And because I promise you to do the same—so that we can meet each other fully resourced, full of those sacred gifts that we’re meant to spread into the world, together, in LOVE… in Self, in awe.
We can only be for the world the diamond that we are
if we commit deeply to the unearthing.
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo