Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined our beliefs about relationships and focused on what having a relationship with our own self means and why it is the most important relationship that any human being can have. This week, I would like to take a step further and would like to examine the society’s very strongly held belief that it is more important to put others needs before our own.
Belief: It’s more important to help others first and fulfill their needs.
Amazingly, generation after generation has held this very strong belief that it’s more important to help others and love others and be kind to others and basically fulfill their needs before we should even think about our own. And even more amazing is that in some cultures it’s actually the way of life, the norm rather than an exception. And in these cultures, since this is the expectation, the people who actually dare to take care of themselves first before extending help to others are frowned upon. So, have you folks ever wondered why so many generations of humans have felt and still feel very strongly about putting others before their own self? Here is how I look at it.
Every human that has taken birth on this planet has been after one and only one thing – happiness! And in chasing after this most elusive thing, ‘happiness’, I believe that people back in the day came up with ideas and beliefs about where this happiness comes from and what it is that humans need to do to find this happiness. And in the process of figuring out how to become happy, they somehow understood that one of the ways to get to ‘becoming happy’ is by making other people happy, by doing whatever these others expect you to do so that when their expectations from you are fulfilled, they will be happy and hence you will become happy. Of course, this is just one of the many ways that humans believe that they can become happy. There are a lot of other things like buying branded stuff, going on expensive vacations, buying expensive beauty products, buying and showing off expensive jewelry, living in expensive homes, driving expensive cars etc. etc. that people believe also make them happy. I will talk more about this in one of my next posts but for now let’s just focus on how ‘making others happy’ plays out in our lives.
So, before I philosophize any further, let’s try to first understand the difference between the 2 approaches – ‘taking care of my own needs first and then helping others’ vs. ‘putting others needs before my own needs’. And let’s try to understand this through an example. Let’s imagine that you have a very dear friend who lives alone in the same city as you and this friend is single and has been going through a serious health crises. And you have a family with spouse and kids and may be you work outside of your home in a corporation. So, even though you would love to help out this friend by calling them frequently or may be even visiting them just so you can be there for them in their time of need, but because your own life is so busy, you are hardly able to find time for your dear friend. So, when you are operating from the mindset of the ‘putting others needs before my own needs’ approach, you will feel an obligation to help your friend and you may think ‘oh I should really help my friend because that’s what a good friend is supposed to do’. However, because of your own busy-ness in life and the fact that you can’t find the time to help, you will feel guilty about not being able to help. And this feeling of guilt may bring along other negative feelings like feelings of helplessness, feeling that you are not a good friend, feelings of fear about what would your friend think of you etc. etc. Thus, in this case, even if you somehow make time to be available for your friend, you will continue to feel all these negative feelings and this will prevent you from being fully there for your friend! So even though you may be desperately trying to help your friend and make them happy by being there for them, you instead would end up achieving nothing because you are operating from fear instead of the love that you have for your friend!
Now let’s understand how ‘taking care of my own needs first and then helping others’ approach would play out in this same example. So if you are operating from this approach, you would first acknowledge the fact that your own life is very busy and even though you love your friend dearly, you won’t be available for them most of the times. And you will also acknowledge and understand that helping your friend is not an obligation rather something you would love to do if you have the time. So in this approach, the kind of thinking you will have is, ‘let me take care of my own things first and as soon as I have the time, I will chat or may be even visit my friend, however, in the meantime, I will remember her in my prayers and send her healing energy through my prayers/meditation’. Thus, in this approach, you will not only be kind towards yourself for not having enough time for your friend but will also be fully present when you actually find the time and your friend will notice your help in the form of your complete and undivided presence! And this approach will be a win-win for both you and your friend since you will already be happy about being available for your friend and you will not be trying to make your friend happy first so that you can become happy yourself!
So folks, I know another aspect of this could be that your friend expects you to follow the first approach and wants you to drop everything you have going on to be available for them but I honestly think if this is a friend that really loves you the way you love them, they will understand and empathize with your situation and be grateful for whatever little time you are able to spend with them. But remember healing always starts with your own self, so, before you begin to blame other people for expecting things from you, you better start reviewing your own expectations from them! More on this next time.
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
