Ep25 Don't Call Me Selfish or Else - Dr. Dar Hawks

Are you tired of being labeled as 'selfish' just because you prioritize self-care? 

Dr. Dar, in her enlightening podcast episode, delves into the misunderstood world of people pleasers and givers. 

She explores the origins of the term 'selfish' and explains why it's essential to find harmony between giving and receiving. 

This episode is a call to action for all empathetic souls to own their kindness without guilt and to navigate the delicate balance of self-love and altruism.

Transcript

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Today, I'm talking about the word selfish, why it triggers people, pleasers and givers, why we're accused of being selfish, how to overcome it, and what to say to people who call you selfish. Hence, the appropriate title I gave this podcast is don't call me selfish or else I feel like I have to explain that title. So what that means, or what I meant when I named this podcast, was, if you call me selfish, I'm going to answer that with a logical, self honoring response instead of getting all defensive or upset or emotional or sensitive about it. Don't worry, I'm going to share with you some words to say if someone calls you selfish. First, I want to say that being a people pleaser or a giver is not a bad thing. I invite you to stop feeling bad about wanting others to be happy or wanting to have a, feel good, happy world, and for wanting to be a contribution or create value towards creating happiness and joy. I invite you to stop saying I'm a recovered people pleaser or I'm, a recovering people pleaser. Unless you have been clinically diagnosed by a mental health professional to be codependent or to have a personality disorder. People pleasing is not a bad thing. We need more of us in this world. We need more of being a stand for kindness, generosity, caring and giving and empathy. Society can't just teach about altruism, giving and servant leadership, and then on the other side, demean people for being that way, and you have a choice whether to accept the label of being a people pleaser as a bad thing or a good thing. Let's own it. Let's own it as being a good thing and stand up to people who use it as a negative thing. I believe that people pleasers make the world a better place. We think about others through deep empathy and we care about our world. I believe our world would be more loving, kind and peaceful if people pleasers had not been demeaned and instead the focus had been on healing the extreme competitive, competitive nature without consideration for others mindset. If the focus had been on healing these other clinical terms used in individuals who are codependent, narcissistic, or those who have other mental or emotional or personality disorders. These terms have now become mainstream, but, only medical and mental health professionals are technically able to diagnose them. But my gosh, everywhere I turn I see people using these terms frivolously, without fully and truthfully understanding or having the training about what they are and are not, or having licenses to use them. These are disorders to indicate when a human being is mostly operating that way, mostly operating as, someone who tramples on others all the time without regard for self, someone who, doesn't take care of themselves to the point of detriment and martyrdom. These are extreme words, extreme descriptions of human beings. But I'm here to tell you that many or most, dare I say, humans are not selfish 100% of the time. Let me say that again, most humans are not selfish 100% of the time. We are not codependent 100% of the time. But again, in honoring of the mental health professional, industry, I'm no longer going to use that word codependent, because it is a professional term, not a personal term to be used frivolously every day. Back to the word selfish. We all exhibit and have selfish qualities and moments. My question is, why can't we have a balance of both? Both being a harmonious balance of being selfless and selfish, a balance of being altruistic and selfish, a balance of giving and receiving that's a topic in and of itself, of another podcast, and a balance of self care and giving. These are all examples of a balance of both selfishness and people pleasing. We do, after all, live in a yin and yang world, where we need balance and harmony between the two, between the ying and the yin and yang, between the masculine and feminine qualities. But notice what our world has done. There's a focus only on the qualities of feminine or masculine or selfishness and altruism. We're not looking at it holistically as a delicate and harmonious balance of both. And the reason why is, when the imbalance occurs and the focus is on one or the other instead of both, well, it creates industry and it creates profit. So my invitation to you is to see the delicate balances of both bothness in your life. an example could be left brain or right brain. The personality assessments and training and many corporations and questions are you type a or type b? Are you left brained or right brained? Well, the m majority of us are both. We're both. We need both. There has to be both. There's a universal law of polarity that states that everything in the universe has a dual nature and then that duality appears to be opposites of each other. The m emphasis on that word appears to be opposites of each other. Selfishness alone in its entirety creates an imbalance. People pleasing alone, in its entirety, creates an imbalance, right? So when you look at the opposites of selfishness and people pleasing, yeah, they are opposite. And it creates this polarity. It creates this, I don't know, this not feel good state, right? When you're 100% selfish and you're only looking at that word by itself, and you're only looking at people pleasing by itself. But at the end of the day, we need a harmonic balance of both, which is, to me, what the universal law of polarity is about. It calls out that there is love and hate, but they're the same sides of the same coin. For example, let me take food, for example. If I'm tasting something that doesn't taste good, that is an expression of dislike, and then if I'm eating something and it tastes really good and I like it, that's an expression of liking it. We need the law of polarity to discern what's best for ourselves, what contributes to our feel good vibe, what contributes to us being at our best, highest selves in any given moment. But without that other side, that other side of dislike, we wouldn't know what like is. And so it creates this delicate harmonic balance in our lives and in what it is to be a human being. With the laws of polarity and duality, both must be present for harmonic balance. The problem is that society has created a problem to fix mindset and approach in everything that got created within the last 5000 or more years. This problem focused mindset creates unhealthy imbalances, which then creates problems to fix, which in and of itself is an unhealthy imbalance. Being selfish alone is unhealthy and results in a focus on self without any consideration for anything other than self. Being selfish and altruistic without being selfish results in focusing on the outside world and giving without any consideration of your own needs and self care to the detriment of self. Can you see what I mean about needing a healthy balance of both? There can be a harmonic balance between self care, altruism, and selfishness and giving. I happen to call it reciprocity. Listen to my podcast where I talk more about the number one core value all people pleasers must have. to learn more about this notion of reciprocity, the number one way to tell if you're around givers and people pleasers is to start talking about how someone was being selfish, or how someone called you selfish. You will start a rant fest, or you will create a fest of protective nature where everyone's coming to your defense or to protect you. We get triggered by it because we are such givers. We are so empathic. We understand emotion and we understand sensitivity, and we're always thinking about others and their perspectives and feelings. It's hard to comprehend how we can be called selfish as the givers of the world. Now, when I say always thinking about others, I'm not saying 100% of the time, but it is an ingredient in our processing. It's in our nature to contemplate the impact to others as we make choices for ourselves. If we're called selfish, oh, my, does that create a churn of, not feel good and defensiveness in us. So to shift this, to shift our attitude, behaviors, feelings, emotions, and thoughts about the word selfish, I want to share what I've learned about the origins of the word selfish. Are you ready for a huge mindset? Shift. The word selfish was allegedly first coined in the 17th century in a publication called Hackett's life of, Archbishop Williams, circa 1693 in England. At the same time, synonyms for the word selfish included self seeking and self ended. There's also a word called self full, meaningful of self, selfended meaning. Only focus on ending in the self and self seeking, which is, I think, a good word. It indicates self awareness. To me, the timing of the creation of the word selfish is suspect. To me, as it happened, in the midst of focusing on masculinity, patriarchy, and the diminishment of femininity, we're still seeing remnants of that today. The timing of it did not get created in a healthy and harmonic balance between patriarchy and matriarchy, having the bothness of them, the best of both worlds. This notion of human beings being one thing or another thing has created a robust medical, mental, and pharma industry to solve problems in humans, all created by not having a harmonic balance of duality or polarity. You see, the left brain is logic oriented, and it's designed for problem solving. The masculine focus also is very much logical. And so when we take out the femininity or matriarchy completely and focus just on one side of the brain, well, this is what you get. That's another rant I could go on. I'm going to stay focused on this path that we're on, that I'm on with you right now. I also find it interesting that the word selfish started showing up around the same time in various religious contexts, which also created the space for it to become mainstream. I'm also not going to go into that now either with you, but I feel like you probably are resonating at this point with me. In 1864, Charles Darwin coined the term survival of the fittest from his immense observations in nature, from the mindset of the left brain and masculine nature, his observation was that only the strong or fittest survive. However, there are plenty of examples and scenarios. Jane Goodall, for example, who showed and demonstrated from bringing her feminine nature into it, looking at gorillas and how they do live in community as well. Unfortunately, this survival of the fittest theory started being applied to humans, which created an unhealthy, competitive environment in business and at home, lacking in the harmonic balance between competitiveness and collaboration, masculine and feminine, patriarchy and matriarchy. The harmonic balance between both. It had to be one or the other. Why? Why not a harmonic balance of both? And there are many of us who have been teaching and coaching and talking about harmonic balances of both so that we can be healthy, high performing, compassionate, loving and competitive and collaborative human beings who thrive. So because of the focus on just the competitiveness or just the masculine qualities, this resulted in many of us who are people, pleasers, givers and service providers. It resulted in us going into survival mode. In a world full of competitiveness and competition, it didn't feel good to be in a hundred, percent or even a 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% competition, oriented world. So that created us staying in this survival mode, trying to just make it another day in a space where collaboration was lacking or less. So being in unhealthy survival mode instead of thriving as a human being, honestly, is selfish, solely selfish. It has to be, because we're doing all we can to make it one more day for food, shelter, safety, our own well being and livelihood, and that of our families. Once we get out of selfish m survival mode, once we get out of survival mode, then we can shift into that giving space once again. But I'm here to let you know you're not a problem to be fixed. You're a delightful soul and just lovely human being. Let me say that again. You are a delightful soul and an absolutely lovely human being. The other thing I found interesting during my research on the world, selfish and its origins is it's riddled with masculine energy from those who have written and spoken about it, and not in a good way. When you look at the psychological and mental and medical health models today that are very prevalent. They were created out of a masculine mindset and problem to fix approach by masculine energy. And it's high time that we bring the feminine principles back into it, the nurturing principles into it. Those take a little bit more time and ultimately they will create way more profit than the soul orientation of running numbers. Humans being human beings through like numbers as quickly as possible to get a higher number through for profit. Healthy selfishness is about self care, self appreciation, self esteem, self love, all of these self words, and it's about taking care of your own needs and requirements in your life, work and relationships, but not primarily or constantly or consistently. Healthy selfishness is about keeping your selfness in mind as you contribute to the world, society, your communities, and to those you love. Healthy selfishness is about contribution with others, not contribution to others. There's a big distinction. Contributing to others is unhealthy because it results in an imbalance. Contributing with others is a harmonic balance. I hope you can tell and feel the difference. Unhealthy selfishness is only caring about yourself without consideration of others. Lacking empathy, compassion, kindness and care for others primarily, constantly or consistently, most of the time with the law of polarity and duality that I mentioned earlier, selfishness and people pleasing put together result in a healthy, functioning human being. You ensure you are self caring and you're also giving and being a people pleaser in a healthy harmonic balance. But because the materialistic world needs problems to be fixed for profit, in a left brained, masculine, energetic way, the focus becomes on just one or the other, which creates another whole industry of solutions for profit. But what results is more damaging with the labels that don't consider the whole person, just some behaviors they exhibit at some exhibit sometimes, or behaviors they exhibit frequently. You see, in my work, I look at the whole nature of the people I work with. I don't just look at the one aspect of them. Sure, they come to me with one complaint or one issue, or they're wanting to look at themselves more holistically. But I don't focus on just that one thing. Because you are so much more than that. One time one person called you selfish. Maybe there were more times, but each one was one time when we called someone selfish. Are we really saying that they're 100% selfish, their whole being in nature? No, we're not. We're saying their choice or behavior in that particular situation, specific situation or example is selfish. So let's start being honoring of that with our words. Instead of making grandiose claims about the whole being of a person. Point to the example or situation and say, instead, I think that's a selfish way of looking at it or behaving or thinking. I'm going to give you a few more words later on to share if someone calls you selfish. We're taught to be altruistic and think about others, our families, and our community in our lives when we're very young. That conditioning and programming starts when we're children. And, for example, when we don't look out for our other fellow students or siblings or do what our parents tell us to, we can be called selfish. It's a very damaging label and accusation for those of us who are people, pleasers, givers, empathic, emotional and sensitive feelers. But my question is, when we're labeled that, are we 100% selfish 100% of the time? No, we're not. And the bottom line is this. Those accusations are lobbed at us because at the core of that issue, of the issue in that situation are these three things. Number one, we're not wired exactly the same way. The person who's calling us selfish is. We don't think, act, feel, and behave exactly in the same way or see the situation the same way. Each person in that situation is a unique being, and each person in that situation has the free will to choose. But those differences of not seeing things in the same way creates misunderstanding. Consequently, if one person cannot accept that another does not see it or do it the way they see and do it, it's considered selfish. The second thing at the core of issue of being accused of being selfish is that one person wants the other person to do what they say or want or demand. The third one is a person wants to control what the other person does or says to benefit themselves solely. Let me be clear. When you're being called selfish, and you are a giver, people pleaser, helper, service provider, who's also an empath, sensitive, animotional, any one of those words, it usually means that you're not doing what that other person wants, demands or commands. You are not serving their needs or requests or demands, period. And that is when the giving and taking relationship can become damaging. In the clinical sense of the terms, it's, manipulation or controlling. That harmonic balance I spoke about earlier becomes unsettled. So let's call it for what it is. People who call other people selfish are not getting what they want, demand or request from that person. And that's really all it's about. When we look at human behavior, regardless of their age or generation, once a human goes into survival mode, we are going into self preservation mode, and it's designed to be self focused. So we have to know and be clear about our own needs so that we can manage and handle them. But people who call us selfish aren't getting their needs met, and so they get selfish, and they're used to or have a pattern of behavior where we've trained them to know that they can rely on us to help them and be of service to them. But the one time we start saying, no or not now, it creates a problem because they're not accustomed to that from us. So we have to improve in how we respond when we say, no, don't worry, I'm going to share a little example with you later on how to do that. I also want to point out that when a people pleaser, a giver, accuses someone of being selfish, which we do, it's because we don't understand why that person cannot see, think, feel, or do what we would do. You know, that kind, compassionate, instinctive, intuitive, feeling, rich, honoring, and caring thing we get triggered when others don't do what we would do to be kind or compassionate to others, or when they can't see what we see, when they can't see that saying something or doing something is going to hurt someone's feelings. And then we set ourselves up for an upset, because there are many people who are not just like us, they don't think like us. And we all express giving in our own unique ways. People who are not people pleasers give in a different way. And we have to learn how to appreciate their way, just like we need them to appreciate ours. And when we don't, that creates problems to be fixed, which creates another industry. And that cycle goes on and on and on. If we don't look at it holistically, here's what the unbounded spirit says about selfishness and the history of it. Before the neolithic revolution. That is the widescale transition of many human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement that took place some, 12,000 years ago. Humans lived mostly in nomadic huntergatherer groups of up to 150 members. Back then, the world was sparsely populated, food was abundant, and it seemed unlikely, it seems unlikely that they would fight against each other for resources or really for any other reason. This doesn't mean that they never fought, but it does suggest that, generally speaking, they peacefully coexisted without the need for competition and organized violence. The case that prehistoric humans lived mostly at peace is also supported by anthropological research. Anthropologists who lived with and studied closely some of the world's few remaining immediate return huntergatherer groups, meaning groups that don't store food but consume it soon after obtaining it, like prehistoric humans did, have found them to be highly egalitarian, altruistic. Such groups don't accumulate property or possessions. They share resources and have no hierarchical power structure. Side note there are examples of communities like that in our world today. They just haven't thrived. But we as people, pleasers and givers, have sought out those communities. Back to what unbounded spirit says. In such a social environment, humans don't feel the need or desire to compete against or oppress each other. And when they do, which did happen, albeit rarely, the rest of the group fought against them or ostracized them. As you might imagine, this defense mechanism makes it even less likely that someone who would want to compete against or oppress other members of the group for doing so would mean risking their very life. It doesn't make sense that the current word or term selfish and how it's used would have given humans an evolutionary advantage. It gave. Side note it gave capitalism and materialism an advantage and competitiveness an advantage. Quite the contrary. Back to unbounded spirit and what they say about it. Quite the contrary. Altruism would have given humans an evolutionary advantage. Helping, collaborating and sharing resources seems to have been the best way to keep oneself alive and safe. So if that's the case, then what could explain for the selfishness that pervades modern society? To answer this question, we need to go back in time again and look at the conditions that turned human selfish to the times when the word selfish was coined. That's my side note, that last statement. As humans were settling in agricultural societies, they gradually started to behave very differently compared to huntergatherers. They began to privately own land, which, by the way, was inconceivable to huntergatherers who saw the land as a sacred gift of nature to be shared by all, as well as animals and other resources. Side note look at what's happening to our lands, public or private today, the taking masculine energy, just look at what's being done versus the altruistic balance of both and what could happen back to unbounded spirit. This, as you can understand, led to social and economic disparities between humans. Resources weren't enough for everyone anymore as they used to be. Until that point in time, naturally thrown into an increasing environment of scarcity, humans felt more and more compelled to act selfishly in order to survive and to gain competitive advantage. Fast forward a few thousand years and the same competitive ethic exists. To this day and arguably more than ever before. Modern humans, that is, humans like you and me, live in conditions of scarcity, where nearly everyone is forced to compete for money and resources. In this world, we're taught from a very young age that there are winners and losers and that, if we want to be on the winner's side, we must be very competitive. Only this way, we're conditioned to believe, can we find success in life. I have to say that I teach the other side the bothness of it. Back to unbounded spirit. Add to this our materialistic culture, wherein people are judged based on their possessions, and it becomes crystal clear why humans today behave mostly in selfish ways, especially in organized systems. Of course, that doesn't mean humans are inherently selfish, because we've seen for nearly the entire span of human history, they had been mostly altruistic. Human nature is extremely malleable, and the environmental conditions human live in largely shape how it's expressed. Put people in a competitive environment, and they'll most likely act selfishly. Place them in a collaborative one, and they'll mostly act altruistically. Put differently, within each human lie two potential psychological and behavioral aspects, a selfish and an altruistic one. And the side that becomes manifested is the one we cultivate through the environment we live in. It is in our hands, therefore, to design a social environment that helps us to develop the behavioral traits we want to see in ourselves and others, rather than those we don't. If you want to read more about, this, writing from the, unbounded spirit, their website is HTTPs theunboundedspirit.com. Selfish. For me, the bottom line, the core issue, the core concern is around selfishness. is really materialistic. It's systemic. I can tell you that I have lived in this materialistic, patriarchal time for half my life now. And I have always been collaborative. I resisted competitiveness. My family life, sibling, interactions was competitive. It didn't feel good. It affected my health and my well being. Then I got into the workplace, and I was always collaborative. But over time, I would not be the winner. In the context of how today's society defines selfish, I mean, defines success, that competitiveness, that winning nature, because the people who were giving out the rewards saw success as competitiveness, not as collaboration. But today I'm here to tell you and share with you that I was the winner. I was the role model. I was the one who taught others how to be collaborative, how to create sustainable environments and communities in these organized systems. And I've received feedback from the people that I've interacted with over the years about how they valued my way of being. Sure, I didn't get the monetary rewards and the promotions, but I can tell you my contribution to society and to the people that I interacted with was much greater for me as a people pleaser and as a giver and a collaborator and as a coach. That is way more rewarding than any amount of money or material, things that I could have received back to me. The bottom line, the core issue, the core concern, around selfish, pure selfish behavior, is a lack of self love. It's a lack of self appreciation and self awareness, in addition to scarcity, that's generated in a world of competitiveness that then creates problems to fix in people through products and services for profit. Here's what Scott Barry Kaufman says in his article on the taboo of selfishness. Unhealthy selfishness is motivated by neuroticism and greed. For this person, his needs are insatiable, and he rarely receives any long lasting satisfaction. When we look closely at people who are motivated by unhealthy selfishness, we see that they do not really love themselves deep down, and that they do not have inner security and inner affirmation or inspiration. The person with this form of extreme selfishness is only interested in oneself, wants everything for themselves, and is unable to give with any pleasure, but is only anxious to take the world outside of himself, is conceived only from the standpoint of what he can get out of it. He lacks interest in the needs of others or respect for their dignity and integrity. He sees only himself, judges everyone and everything from the standpoint of its usefulness to him, and is basically unable to love. He also says, in today's society, we are seriously liking in self love. If we want more peace, we need to think more seriously about creating the conditions that allow people to develop their unique intellectual, creative and emotional capacities, and the freedom to assert the totality of their being and the opportunities to satisfy their basic needs. This will lead to a reduction in hatred and a reduction in the drive to destruction, both to self and others. So we don't need to look any further than the political climate, in the desperate grasp for authoritarianism. I also want to say that my perspective on this notion of dislike, for billionaires isn't that we dislike that they're billionaires. It's that we dislike that they're not social oriented. They are only interested in themselves and their own material gains. And the human beings that have harnessed wealth, who are billionaires, who are not that way, I think we need to revisit really honoring them and appreciating them. There are many millionaires and billionaires who focused on, creating wealth so that they could be altruistic and give. So let's not pack all billionaires and millionaires and 100,000 heirs into one bucket. That's bad. It's the. In order to. They're building wealth in order to how they finish that other sentence, the rest of that sentence, and how they show up in the world for the rest of that sentence. That matters to me. Now, I want to unpack the origins of the word selfish and the meaning of it. Now, if you take the word self, it means the set of someone's characteristics, such as personality, and ability, that are not physical, and make that person different from other people. So it's not so much how they look. It's about their characteristics of their personality and their capabilities that are different from other people. I'm using the Cambridge dictionary, by the way, for these definitions. Now, let's look at what the prefix ish means again, from the Cambridge English dictionary. Sorry, it's a suffix, not a prefix. Ish is a suffix that. It's used to form adjectives and nouns that indicate what country or area a person, thing, or language comes from, like the word Spanish or English. But there's also contrary words, like the word Indian or African, that don't fall into that ishness, right. That also form adjectives that are adjectives and nouns that indicate what country or area, person, thing, or language comes from. Ish is also used to form adjectives that say what a person, thing, or action is like. Like the words foolish or childish or selfish. Dare I say? Ish is also used to form adjectives to give meaning to some degree. We use it when we're uncertain of an exact nature, measure, degree, or quantity. We say sixish to indicate a flexible time of day to meet, or oldish if we don't know the person's age exactly, or middle ageish or feverish if someone's forehead or cheek feels warm and moist, but we don't know the exact temperature. Now, let's put the words self and ish together, using what we've learned about the two words separately, and this is where the mindset shift occurs. So, given the word self means the set of someone's characteristics, such as personality and ability, that are not physical and make that person different from other people. And given that ish is a suffix that we add to words to create an adjective, then technically, selfish means the person being called selfish is different from the other person who's calling them selfish. Wow. Could that really be all that selfish frickin means? I said frigging. I wanted to say the other word, but I'm very honoring of, all people around. Language and words matter. This word selfish was created in the midst of religiousness, industrialism, and patriarchy. It was a world that required conformity. Because in a logical world, things are one way or another. They're not both. They're black and white. They're not gray. And when conformity wasn't present, that resulted in punishment or suffering. If you're different, notice authoritarian regimes. There are many countries we can look at where authoritarianism creates conformity. And it's a very one sided, masculine, energetic world, in those areas of the. Of the world. Now, as promised, here's what I suggest you say to someone who calls you selfish. Excuse me. Thank you for noticing. I want you to know that I hear you call me selfish about this specific situation. I understand what you're asking or wanting right now. However, I'm just unable to commit to that at this time and unable to give it my all or my best side note. You do not have to explain why. You do not have to say you're sorry. Even if they ask why or continue to push asking why. You see, we as people pleasers, we're very direct, and we answer directly. So when we're asked a question, we want to answer that question directly. But we need to learn not to do that. Instead, ask this question, what are some ways that you can get that addressed? what are some ways you can get that addressed? Or what are some ways you can address getting that handled without my involvement for now and start that dialogue. If they stay in the why? And if they stay pushing, wanting to know why, you're not answering why, say this. I'm choosing what's best for this situation for myself right now. And ultimately, it will be for you too. I know it's not exactly what you prefer or want, and what you want or asking is really out of alignment for what I need or want to do right now. So let's focus our energies instead on some ways that you can address getting that handled for now. My final thought for you is this. Thought and invitation is this. I want you to think that, really understand that words have meaning and energy. They can be weapons of destruction or creation, and as people, pleasers and givers, the altruistic, the caring, the kind, compassionate, emotional, sensitive, and empathic people. I invite you to be honoring of these words going forward, especially the word selfish, and start educating the people in your life about the word selfish. Please share this podcast and blog post with them. Oh, and take my feelgood quiz because it's all about the five ways human beings interact with each other and why conflicts happen when we interact. And you can do that by going to Drdar. That's drdar.com.