Perhaps you have had someone tell you that you are selfish because you make a concerted effort to take time out everday to do things for yourself, for your enjoyment or your betterment. Well that is a gross misuse of the word "selfish," since selfish means to be overly egotistical and only care about yourself and your advancement.
The word selfish has received a lot of negative connotations but luckily we now have a vast amount of words that include the word "self," that can override the word selfish, and quite frankly we can banish selfish from our vocabulary forever!
Self is truly important as we find out more and more everyday. You can not give yourself positively onto someone else, or to some thing without being an ideal self ... yourself. If you are to love someone else, you need to love yourself first because that shines onto the other person. Loving yourself means taking time out to care for your mind, body and soul. The effort you put into doing this on a daily basis will shine out in the world amongst those you are with, and whatever it is you are doing. As you go through your day, your thoughts will tend to stay positive and now you can shift your focus off of yourself and onto someone or something else without feeling bogged down with your issues. You can give without self-restraint!
If you are creating a wonderful self, you bring more positive self qualities to the surface, such as being self-disciplined and self-educated. You have lots of self-esteem, self-expression..... self-respect. Now those are huge attributes! When you care for yourself, you become, self-satisfied and self-supporting since you don't need to seek answers or feel helpless! You tend to exercise more self-control knowing that self-importance comes from self-love!
When you don't care for yourself, quite the opposite happens which opens you up to self-criticism, self-denial, and possibly being self-centered because you seek self-pity in your sadness which leads to self-recrimination! All of this is a recipe for self-destruction!
So the next time someone mistakenly tells you that the care you give yourself is self-centered behavior, smile at them and just say, "thank you!!" Your light, your health and your energy will shining through! Perhaps it will be self-explanatory to others that the better person is the person who takes the time out to learn, to grow and to care first for themselves and then happily for others!
Be good to yourself!
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