Why You Should Look Out for Your Interests

"You have to be your own best friend, advocate, and manager because others will merely run you without consideration... Do yourself a favor, and be selfish."

Why You Should Look Out for Your Own Interests

Purposeful Selfishness Is Important

If someone were to ever ask why you should always look out for your own interests the answer would be simple: because in the end all you have is a duty to yourself. However, that does not create enough material to constitute a complete blog post. 

So, I'm going to give three reasons why it is important to look out for your own interests. 

1. People Create Expectations Based on Your Generosity (Some of Which Are Unreasonable)

I'll preface this concisely: There is nothing wrong with being generous. However, there are times when being generous makes you a target. Generosity is a trait that is in short supply. Even in being in short supply, many people take advantage of generosity in a way where either a generous person gets sick of giving or they become selective in who they give to. 

From personal experience, there have been many times where I keep giving and giving. At some point, my giving to other people created the expectation that I was always going to be generous. When I ceased to be as generous or conditions changed in a way where I couldn't be generous, others would get upset. In essence, my generosity created spoilage. Now that I recognize the spoilage, I choose not to entertain certain responses when I flatly say "no" to helping or assisting in some way. 

More striking is when people know that you have nothing to offer or your stock of resources (tangible or intangible) is low, but still have an expectation that you must assist. It is one thing to ask for my assistance, rather than anticipate that I am going to render it as a matter of course all the time. When people assume that there is a duty where there is none, that's when lines must be drawn. 

The solution to this problem is stop being as generous and stop taking on things as a matter of a duty. In the law, the concept of duty only attached when one consents to it either actively or passively. When you say you're going to do it actively, then you have actively accepted the duty. By rendering without even saying something in the negative, you have passively accepted the duty. Even placing yourself in situations where you have certain responsibilities to render aid, it is passively assenting to perform based on a duty. In saying all the former, you have no duty to assist anyone.

When you act without a duty to assist anyone, you don't need to be generous. When you are not generous to people all the time as a matter of habit, there is no expectation that can reasonably arise to render assistance or aid someone. 

2. People Are Ungrateful Towards Your Efforts

It is a fact of life that we are going to get screw over by someone at some point.  It's also a fact of life that there are going to be other who complain about how you have performed a task for them. Both are blatant demonstrations of how someone has failed to take consideration in your efforts of providing assistance.

This point is important because it is aligned with the first point. People not only have expectations of whether the assistance is going to be rendered; they have expectations about the way how the assistance is rendered. Hence, beggars end up being choosers. The simple fact of the matter is, no matter how much or in what way you provide continual assistance to others in a kind of there are some friends or associates that will complain. 

There are even some people that may not complain, but will attempt to undercut you by falsely taking credit for saving themselves. These people are de facto ungrateful. Undercutting someone's charitable efforts is a demonstration of how contributions are "not good enough" to serve the aims of what someone wants. The screw-over is when people claim that you've done nothing for them, you have. What the reality is: they've taken all your work and best efforts and then try to pass them off as their own. 

At this point, the solution to the problem is once again either not rendering aid as a duty or only rendering aid in a way that makes it undercut-proof. Undercut-proof assistance is essentially providing the tools for someone to help themselves but not performing the favor in a way that leaves you on the hook. 

3. You End Up Burning Out

While this appears as a symptom of assisting other people for long periods of time. Burning out is common in contemporary society where people are tasked to wear many hats at one time. However, for the generous empath, the risk is higher for burnout. When you feel like there is a duty to assist people all the time, at that moment you have set yourself up to be drained and to be used. 

There is a saying that uses the expression of "pouring into someone." This metaphor is accurate because when you render assistance and look out for the interests of others you are "pouring yourself into someone else." However there comes a point where the well, reservoir, or glass runs dry from having to pour into others without reciprocation or recharge. The drain of resources such as time, energy, morale, and even money leaves a person feeling like they cannot offer anything else. 

Here, the scarcity of resources creates a situation where someone is unable to provide assistance. The inability to assist is not because of willful want to not help; the inability to assist comes from there being no resources to assist with. Currently, the attitude I have adopted is "if I'm no good to myself, how am I good to anyone else." The rhetorical question (note the period rather than the question mark at the end) demonstrates a point. How can you pour into someone else if there is nothing left in the glass? 

I've learned that despite best efforts, you cannot pour into someone else if you have nothing left. It's the rule of exhaustion. Once something is gone from a space, it is gone from the space. Hence, the solution to this problem is that when you have nothing left to give, stop giving. If you feel the need to continue assisting or helping others, recharge yourself. However, even when you recharge yourself, make sure that you budget yourself and resources more efficiently. 

Budgeting yourself and your resources more efficiently means not overextending yourself. Being more efficient for yourself means saying "No." It also means that some people are going to be upset with you because you are not readily available all the time. However, it's okay. If people get upset because you say "No," they do not care about you or your well-being. 

In Conclusion

If people get upset because you withdraw from providing full assistance all the time or because you say "no," it's because they do not care about you. Further, people feel as though you should be a machine because you've created an expectation. Rather than continuing to spoil others, spoil yourself with the ability to recharge and re-invigorate yourself. 

When you look out for yourself, you'll be both better to others and better to yourself. In the end, it is a net win for everyone. 

ifw (c) 2017