Be Altruistically Selfish

There is a great episode on one of my all-time favorite shows “Friends.”  In the episode Joey debates Phoebe on whether good deeds can ever be selfless.  Phoebe says, that many people do good things and they are selfless, but Joey begs to differ, saying “there are no selfless good deeds, ever.”  He goes on to explain that if you do something nice and it helps someone and that makes you feel good, the deed in itself was not selfless.

 

Rather than talking semantics of whether doing something nice for others is selfless or not, it is certainly something we should do more often.  If more and more people go a little bit out of their way to simply do nice things for each other, there will be a monumental shift in our attitudes and the global attitude on the planet.  Imagine a world, where we work hard on a daily basis to do nice things for people.  They then react by paying it forward to others and so on.  This will have a dynamic shift in our planet and the way others are affected and it could create a very euphoric world.  

But you may say, it is hard to continually go out of your way to help others or to be nice.  Sometimes you may not be in a good mood, and that also makes it very difficult for you to be nice or happy.  However, if you follow my method of being “Altruistically Selfish,” every good deed you do, as selfless as it may appear, will also have its rewards.  You just have to learn to recognize the feelings you receive from doing

nice things for others.  

The confusion may lie, with the thought of expectation.  For example:  You hold the door for someone, and you expect them to say thank you, or hold the door back.  If they fail to do so, for whatever reason, and there may be many, then you may be disappointed.  Your expectation of the reaction to your good deed, causes you pain or aggravation.  So when looking at this, you may want to rid yourself of expectation and just look for the happiness it brings you, when in return, it is bringing the person happiness as well. 

Thinking this way is healthy for you and is very rewarding.  I also want to touch on forgiveness.  When we forgive someone who has done something wrong to us, we tend to see this as a selfless deed.  We are forgiving them for the wrong doing, releasing them of the pain.  While this may be true for those that truly realize what they did is wrong, then we also do forgive for ourselves. Forgiveness, as it may be looked at as a good deed, it is also another Altruistically Selfish deed.  Of course I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it relieves you of the pain, anguish and continual stress that you may carry around with you, when you harbor ill will toward someone. So when you forgive someone and let go, of that emotion, you not only do it for them, you do it for yourself as well. 

I know this may not be as easy as it seems, but you must remind yourself, forgiveness and Selfish Altruism has a direct benefit to you and those around you.  If you are happy, then those around you are happy too.