Putting Yourself First Without Guilt: Emotional Balance

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to see your needs as equal to those of your partner, family member, boss, client, or friend.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover how being a quote unquote good person can get in the way of living a balanced life, why taking care of yourself is actually a selfless act, and how to see yourself as an equal even when others have expectations. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

We’ve been trained since we were kids to try to put other people first. That’s what being a good person is in so many respects, according to our society, to our families, our parents. And maybe it’s a turnaround for where we started as kids, as infants and as small children. We did put ourselves first and that’s fine.

That was natural. But to be a part of a larger society, we have to start thinking about other people as well. But for many of us, we take that to the extreme and start going too far in that direction and forget about ourselves. So this. Meditation is something that you can use again and again in different situations whenever you have the thought that you’re being selfish for putting yourself first.

We’re going to question this thought, and I’d like you to start by finding a situation. And that’s what I mean by you can do this multiple times, because every different situation is going to give you a different experience as you do this work. So look for a time when you wanted to do something, and someone wanted to do something different, and you thought that Asking for what you wanted or putting yourself first would be selfish in some way.

It was not a good idea, it was bad.

And it could be that you did end up saying no to that, but you still felt guilty about it. then you can still do this work. All it needs is a situation where you were thinking, oh, this is selfish, or maybe this is selfish. You were doubting yourself.

I’m going to use a situation where my sister who I haven’t hadn’t seen for since before COVID. So it was, I don’t know, three, four years. And we wanted to get together. She’s busy. I’m busy. And she had this idea, we could go to a concert in another city, we’d both have to fly there, and and meet up there.

And as much as I wanted to see my sister, I really didn’t want to travel. It just didn’t feel right. It’s just a purely just, I didn’t want to travel, and I think it was because I hadn’t traveled at all during COVID, but I also just started to find that I prefer not traveling. Yeah, I had, I did say no, but I felt a little guilty oh, I should have, I shouldn’t have put myself first, or it was selfish to do so see if you can find a situation where you want to or you did put yourself first and then you feel a little guilty about it, and you can pause the recording if you need more time. So let’s question the thought. It’s selfish to put myself first. Be in your situation, for me it’s an email exchange, and I just said no, and I feel that little guilt.

In that moment, it’s selfish to put myself first. Is it true? And you do the same. In your situation, it’s selfish to put yourself first. Is it true?

And this is just a yes or a no. It may take a minute to get there, but I want you to be as honest as you can. If it’s a yes, that’s a yes, that’s fine. If it’s no, just make sure it’s an honest no. It’s

selfish to put yourself first. Is it true?

I’m going to go with a yes. That’s what it feels like.

So if your answer was yes, then go to question two, which is, Can you absolutely know it’s true? It’s selfish to put yourself first. Are you sure?

And again, it’s important to be honest. There’s something deeper inside that needs to answer these questions, not just your intellect, which can say, Oh yeah, no, it’s not true. You need to find that answer within yourself if it’s going to be any genuine inquiry. Can you absolutely know it’s true? It’s selfish to put yourself first.

For me, it’s a no.

So how do you react? What happens when you think that it’s selfish to put yourself first in your situation? What happens to you?

Look at the specifics.

How do you feel? What happens inside of you?

For me, it’s that guilty feeling, a little bit of shame.

And my heart, even physical heart, feels like it’s closing a little bit, feels tight. My shoulders slump a little bit.

I see images from the past of my mom, who apparently never put herself first ever. She was so selfless in many ways. And I feel like I fail compared to that standard.

I can see her disapproving, actually. I

can remember her saying to me that it’s selfish to meditate as much as I did.

So I feel that shame.

How do you treat yourself when you think that it’s selfish to put yourself first?

I treat myself like I’m less than. Like my sister’s more important, or our relationship is more important, than any of my wants, or needs, or preferences. I

treat myself like I did something bad.

And how do you treat the other person? It’s interesting. When you think that it’s selfish to put yourself first, how do you treat them?

I’m a little more distant. Because of that shame that I’m feeling, I don’t really want to connect. And I treat my sister like, like she’s judging me.

I treat myself like I’m the black sheep of the family. Heh. Heh. Yep.

So who would you be in the same situation if you didn’t have the thought that it’s selfish to put yourself first?

Imagine, you said no, or you wanted to not do something, or you wanted to ask for something, You wanted to put yourself first,

but imagine that you didn’t think that it was selfish to do to me, it feels like I am a kid again. I’m just asking without a filter, Oh, I want to go. Oh no, I don’t want to go. It feels really free.

And in this situation, if I didn’t think that it’s selfish to put myself first, I’d be almost proud of myself for standing up and saying my truth.

I would say that my relationship with my sister is stable. That I don’t have to prove anything, that it was a luxury, and it’s okay not to take the luxury. I’m a visit.

So who are you, in your situation, without the thought that it’s selfish? Put yourself first, in your situation.

And notice that guilty thing is not there.

There’s something relaxed inside,

a kind of integrity.

Kind of feels like I’m showing up, letting people see me,

kind of vulnerable, in a really good way.

But I only experience this if I don’t have this overlying thought that it’s selfish to put myself first. So this is how a thought influences your experience. When you believe it, then guilt and shame, and if you’re not thinking it, there’s a freedom, there’s an innocence, like a child, there’s an enthusiasm,

yeah, I think I mentioned it, like I kept a little distance from my sister after that, I didn’t really call her as much, didn’t connect as much, I think without the thought of I would be reaching out in other ways, just calling, or texting, or connecting in other ways, because there’s this feeling of connection, like I’m actually, what I see is she invited me, that’s so cool, and there’s no guilt, it’s just this free feeling of, yeah, I honored myself, and we enjoyed the thought of it.

How would you turn the thought around? It’s selfish to put myself first. What’s an opposite?

Let’s try, it’s not selfish to put myself first. How could that be? It may look like that by the way we judge everyone in our world. Is it? Is it possible that it’s not selfish to put myself first?

I guess it’s integrity, and integrity is not selfish.

It does center around the self, but not in a bad way.

So what does that word selfish mean? Selfish is a judgment. It’s a label. Oh, you’re selfish. You’re bad.

And we’re saying, okay, it’s not selfish to put myself first. It’s not bad. There can be something good. about putting myself first that doesn’t fit that label.

Like, when is it appropriate to put myself first?

They wouldn’t label that as selfish. You put your oxygen mask on first, right? It’s putting myself first, but it wouldn’t say it’s selfish.

So in your situation, how is it possible that Putting yourself first is not as selfish as you were thinking.

In a way, I’m giving myself to my sister. I’m saying, this is where I am. I’m just not feeling like traveling. And that’s intimate. That’s not selfish. That’s a gift. Like saying, hey, you want to know who I am? I’m here. Unguarded. It’s vulnerable.

So it’s not selfish to put myself first. It has the potential of joining us, connecting us.

We could go even further. Another version of this turnaround would be, it’s selfless to put myself first. That’s like the extreme version here. But is there any possibility for truth in that turnaround? It’s selfless. Yeah, because look what happens. If I don’t put myself first, I get so many accolades, I get so much approval,

others. My sister would have been so happy,

The whole family would smile on it. So if I don’t put myself first, I don’t get all those things. I don’t get all those, all that approval. So in a way, it’s selfless to put myself first. It takes courage to put myself first.

In fact, what am I trying to do when I’m trying to live in my integrity?

I’m listening to something inside of myself. I’m paying attention to that. I’m trying to live by that. And

I can’t control that.

That’s something inside that says, no, I’d rather not travel. I can’t, I, I don’t know where that comes from, but I’m listening to it. It’s starting to feel like selfless service.

the way a disciple would serve a teacher.

So this is interesting. It could be selfless to put myself first and risk humiliation, but honor this something that’s coming up inside and follow it.

We could say there’s another turnaround. It’s selfish to put others first. And I think it’s similar to what we were just seeing.

I get things by putting others first. I get their love, I get their approval.

It’s so easy to be serving others so much, but all the time getting payoff. I’m the best servant. I’m the one who sacrifices myself. I’m great. It’s ego. Or it can be.

So can you find in your situation? Any hints of that where it might actually be selfish, others first, the other person first. Like, where you’re getting something for that I’m the one that sacrifices, I’m the martyr.

Not to mention, I get you to like me.

So this work plays with all different sides of this, and it’s just not quite so cut and dried when you look at it. In this episode, we looked at how being a quote unquote good person Can get in the way of living a balanced life because we as individuals are also a part of life And if it’s too much imbalanced in the direction of taking care of others putting others first Then there’s no one here to take care of me.

We’re depending on others to do that So in the name of balance, we’re looking for a way of not giving up taking care of others Not giving up putting others first sometimes, but also putting ourselves first sometimes as well. It’s only fair. It’s only balanced. We also looked at why taking care of yourself is actually or could actually be a selfless act.

And for me, that was really eye opening because it shows that I’m actually serving something other than what I normally think of as myself. I’m serving something deeper inside of myself. And if I’m listening to that and following directions, taking directions from that’s actually selfless service.

And I think that’s a really cool way of looking at that. So yeah, I didn’t want to travel. And what does it have to do with me? And then finally, we looked at how to see yourself as an equal. even when others have expectations. And I think the key to that is looking to ourselves and seeing that there’s something there that is worthy of being served.

Something that is worthy of being spoken and is not a bad thing at all. In fact, it has a lot of good in it. So letting that come out, being vulnerable with it, exposing that, it feels like we also are equal players just like everyone else. And it doesn’t have to be all the time, but it’s nice to experience that feeling that it’s okay.

to listen to myself. And listening to myself may also tell me to not do something that I want to do and to put someone else first. So I’m still listening to myself. And so in a strange way, we’re having to play with what is myself. And what I think this is pointing to is a deeper sense of self, which really is selfless.

And it’s good to be in touch with it. So thanks for listening, thanks for doing your work, and I look forward to next time. In the meantime, have a great rest of your day.