Helping Others is the Fastest Route to Helping Your Self

I love hanging out with GenZenners (born between 1997~2015) when they can tolerate a Boomer like me. My two daughters are in that club, and I know a few in Tokyo too. 

There’s life in the old boy yet.

One topic that is popular amongst them is the right to be Selfish.

Upon seeing my current book “Enough About Me: The Unexpected Power of Selflessness” by Richard Lui, a GenZenner was moved to tell me that he was wrong. The road to happiness was through Selfishness. 

And I agree. 

Wait.

How we think of ‘selfishness’ is at the core. 

It’s easy to approach it as an either/or dualistic choice – either I am selfish or I am not - but if we know anything about Alexander’s Discovery and Practice, we know that separation of things leads to delusional thinking.

We are all Selfish – Nature wired us to be that way. 

However, there is a quirky thing that happens when the vulnerable around us are threatened. We cease to care about our Self, and start protecting another. 

Is that selflessness?

No, it’s another variation of Selfishness.

And my proof is simple – why do you cry at a funeral?

The departed don’t care. It’s over for them. So who are you crying for? We conveniently assign our tears to the love of another, and that is true. But what do we love?

We love how they make us feel. We love how we feel when we think about them.

And we mourn the loss of that. Not the loss of the person, but the loss of how the person made us feel. Knowing that won’t stop me from balling my eyes out at a funeral of a loved one! We protect others because we cannot bear how it would feel if they were lost to us.

This is selfish. And what a wonderful selfishness it is!

Let’s call it ‘selfish selflessness’ because it clearly benefits others.

It is a biologically-driven altruism based on a communal affinity.

However, it doesn’t work towards strangers. In fact, it gives us permission to despise and ignore vast quantities of people who don’t fit into our biologically-driven category of ‘loved ones’.

Alexander pointed this out in his books: we seek those who agree with us; we read articles that mirror our opinions; we strive to build a club of aligned ideas.

And that’s how we get into a pickle.

Because everyone outside that circle are ‘stangers’.

Which is why it would improve your happiness to update your idea of ‘selfish selflessness’.

Random acts of kindness is one way to explore the veracity of this concept. Smile at a ‘stranger’ as you walk along the street – love them for a second and see how you feel when they smile back; and when they don’t.

Doing what feels good to me will always drive my actions; yet when I conceive that my love towards a stranger can give me the same positive response I get from my love towards a loved one – the whole world begins opening up as my domain of love.

I wish I could live this more – I don’t very well.

But the act of seeing the limitations of my version of Selfishness is a tiny step towards making the world a safer place FOR ME to live in.

I don’t have a course about this, so no sales pitch today!