The public story of selfishness tells us that we are – all of us – already far too selfish for our own good. It sounds compelling (self-flagellation usually does), but the reality may be somewhat different. Whatever the risks of excessive self-absorption, the real danger for most people is precisely the opposite: that they constantly put aside self-exploration and authentic inner development for the whims of so-called respectable opinion and socially sanctioned duties and commitments. The chief problem is not that we’re too selfish, it’s that we’re poor versions of what we might be because we’re not selfish enough.
As a result, most of us spend our lives seeing people we have nothing in common with; working at jobs that don’t make sense to us; sucking up to colleagues we hate; parroting opinions we’re suspicious of…and wind up, at the very end of our lives, wishing we had had the courage to live more authentically.
A priority, while time allows, is therefore to acquire the skill of being politely but energetically more selfish. We should, from today, focus on what feels meaningful to us. We should ask ourselves what we will wish we had done when we are on our deathbeds – and do it now.
To help you reclaim the forgotten art of selfishness and honour your authentic desires in the here and now, we’ve designed a short exercise – taken from our book The Confidence Workbook – that we call What Do I Want?
