Is It Selfish to Work On Yourself?

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

There’s Nothing “Selfish” About Working On Yourself to Live a Life that’s More REAL…Here’s Why:

One of the strangest but most common barriers I’ve seen people encounter when they’re trying to move on from the past and grow real is the (limiting) belief that it’s somehow ‘selfish’ to show up for themselves.

It usually shows up a bit like this:

They start thinking about their life consciously, setting and protecting healthy boundaries, exercising, spending time alone when they need it, no longer chasing other people’s approval, pursuing goals that actually matter to them, and overall becoming more honest about what they want, what they don’t want, and the kind of person they want to become.

It’s all going great until, almost inevitably – perhaps as a kind of ‘test’ from the ego – a little voice appears:

“Isn’t this SELFISH?”

Sometimes it isn’t even a “little” voice – sometimes, it’s a whole choir and it starts to weigh them down:

This is almost always because they’ve been conditioned (usually, in childhood) to believe that being a ‘good’ person means constantly putting themselves last, keeping everybody else ‘happy’ first and foremost, suppressing their own needs, and making sure that nobody ever feels uncomfortable because of their growth (even though human beings are literally built to be uncomfortable sometimes and will eventually feel discomfort no matter how much or how little somebody else grows).

This idea of “selfishness” can become incredibly insidious and toxic because if you believe that showing up for yourself is selfish then the end result is always the same:

You just end up feeling guilty for being yourself.

This is ‘bad’ news because it means you’ll feel guilty for taking real action, guilty for pursuing your goals, guilty for expressing your values, guilty for changing, and guilty for wanting something different from what other people want for you.

Eventually, this can all add up to the point that you become so afraid of being “selfish” that you spend your entire life abandoning yourself in order to maintain the illusion that you’re being a ‘good’ person.

That’s not realness, though – it’s just conditioning.

Luckily, you can unlearn it.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

It's not selfish to be true to yourself (it's why you're here in the first place).

Selfish Isn’t the Same as Self-Care

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the word selfish gets lumped together with things like being egotistical, self-centred and self-obsessed and – to be totally honest – there is a kind of selfishness that isn’t particularly healthy which is when we’re coming at life from a place of EGO over REALNESS.

Being egotistical in the sense that I’m talking about here means behaving as though you’re the centre of the universe and that your interests, needs, and opinions matter more than everybody else’s.

In a way, self-centredness and self-obsession are cousins of this ego-driven way of being because they both serve to keep you trapped inside yourself and putting your own emotions, opinions, problems and desires constantly on a pedestal.

This kind of selfishness can be extremely destructive but here’s the important distinction:

This isn’t what happens when you work on yourself – in fact, it’s almost the opposite because the kind of egotistical selfishness described above is ultimately a symptom of being UNREAL instead of REAL.

When somebody is carrying unresolved shame, guilt and/or trauma (the Unholy Trinity) then they can become disconnected from their realness and so – instead of being able to accept themselves as a whole human being with all of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ that this entails – they construct an ego to protect themselves.

This creation of the ego also ends up creating the Shadow Self – which is all of the ‘parts’ of ourselves we had to send into exile to keep the illusion of ego in place.

These ‘parts’ never go anywhere, though – they just linger beneath the surface of our lives in the Shadow Territory waiting for an opportunity be given expression:

The ego says “This is who I have to be” but the shadow says “But this is what I’ve actually got going on underneath” and so the two end up locked in what I call the Shadow Dance.

The more somebody identifies with the ego, the more desperately they have to keep the shadow out of awareness and because the ego is the opposite of reality, this creates a strange situation where a person becomes increasingly committed to an illusion of themselves whilst simultaneously running away from reality.

That’s where genuinely destructive selfishness can emerge:

What Ego-Driven Selfishness Looks Like

Ego-driven selfishness is ultimately an attempt to keep the shadow self at bay and it can show up in a number of ways:

An Unhealthy Obsession With Goals in an Attempt to Fill the Void

The most common is someone becoming so obsessed with their goals that they stop caring about the people around them – in these cases, they’re so desperate to achieve [whatever their goal is] because they believe it will finally fill the Void (the restless feeling that they need to somehow become ‘more’ in order to feel complete) and so relationships become obstacles, people become resources, and everything gets sacrificed at the altar of results over relationships.

People who are ego-driven like this value ‘success‘ over connection, ‘winning’ over being present, and whatever destination they’re trying to reach over the people they’re supposedly trying to share it with.

Self-indulgence and Putting Emotions On a Pedestal

Another way that ego-driven selfishness shows up is that people become obsessed with their own emotions:

Every feeling becomes an emergency, every minor inconvenience becomes a profound psychological event, and every single interaction gets filtered through “How does this make ME feel?” or “What does this say about ME?”.

Because they’re so fascinated by their own internal world, they can end up boring everybody else to death with it whilst never really changing anything and moving forward (because the ego just wants to stay the same and keep the shadow locked up).

The Need to Be ‘Right’ Even in the Face of Reality

Then there’s the person who has to be ‘right’ no matter what:

Their opinions aren’t simply opinions anymore but extensions of their identity and ego and so questioning an opinion feels like questioning the person themselves.

(Because they don’t know that opinions are something that we have, not something that we are).

Consequently, they don’t listen in a conscious way or take on any contrary evidence that reality might be offering them from one moment to the next – instead, they argue, defend, and lecture whilst collecting ‘evidence’ that proves they’re ‘right’ whilst completely ignoring anything that might challenge their worldview.

An Addiction to ‘Problems’ and Drama

The ego also brings us an endless parade of people who seem to need an endless supply of problems:

There’s always drama and so there’s always somebody who’s done something to them, some new crisis, and some new reason why they need attention from everybody and anybody who’ll give it to them.

The problem in this kind of case isn’t actually the problem but the problem is that the problem gives them an identity.

Chasing Some ‘Good’ Thing as the ULTIMATE Thing

Finally, a very common trait of the ego-driven person is the tendency to put something on a pedestal and treat it as the ultimate thing (when it’s just a ‘good’ thing because the only ULTIMATE is life itself) and then become selfish in their pursuit of it.

This could literally be anything but some of the most common things that get treated as the ‘ultimate’ are:

Money.
Status.
Sex.
Achievement.
Recognition.
Power.
Fitness.
Success.
Even personal development itself.
Etc. etc. etc.

The object of desire changes from person-to-person but the underlying dynamic remains the same:

“If I can just get [X] then I’ll finally be enough“.

This is just another attempt to fill the Void – except it’s futile because the Void is ultimately a disconnection from truth and realness and so the only way to ‘fill’ it is to find something TRUE and REAL instead of the ego.

All of these examples are genuine ego-driven selfishness and they show precisely why working on yourself isn’t selfish.

Let’s get into it a bit deeper:

Stop Making Other People Responsible for You

There’s another way to look at all this this that can help us to understand this idea of “selfishness” even more:

You don’t work on yourself so that you can care less about other people – you work on yourself so that you can stop making other people responsible for the ‘parts’ of you that you refuse to take responsibility for.

Here of some examples of what happens when you DON’T take responsibility for these ‘parts’:

You might expect your partner to calm you down.
You might expect your friends to constantly reassure you.
You might expect other people to make you feel worthy.
You might expect somebody else to ‘fix’ your loneliness.
You might expect your boss to give you the validation you never learned to give yourself.
You might expect your family to finally give you the approval that you’ve been chasing since childhood.
You might expect a relationship to heal wounds that existed long before the relationship began (and then call it “love” when it’s actually dependency).
Etc. etc. etc.

In all of these examples, the person dealing with you isn’t being allowed to simply be themselves because you’ve (probably unconsciously) given them a job:

“Make me feel safe“.
“Make me feel important”.
“Make me feel attractive”.
“Make me feel successful”.
“Make me feel understood”.
“Make me feel like I’m enough”.

When they inevitably fail – which they will because they’re another human being and not a magical emotional support vending machine – resentment and drama start to creep in because you feel like they don’t care about you, they’re not giving you what you need, and they don’t understand you (after everything you’ve done for them!).

This is perhaps one of the great ironies of being unreal:

You can become incredibly demanding of other people whilst believing that you’re the ‘selfless‘ one.

You keep ‘giving’ but secretly you’re keeping score; you keep ‘sacrificing’ but secretly you’re expecting repayment; you keep suppressing yourself but, eventually, you just resent everyone for the fact that you suppressed yourself:

You never said “No”, you never set the boundary, never admitted what you wanted, never took responsibility for your own growth, and then somehow it’s everybody else’s fault.

You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup

The old saying that “you can’t pour from an empty cup” becomes incredibly useful here because it reminds us that you can’t consistently give something to other people if you have nothing available to give:

If you’re exhausted, dysregulated, disconnected from yourself, and drowning in unresolved emotional baggage all the time then you’re going to struggle to show up for people in a healthy way.

Making sure that you actively spend time filling your own cup means that you can give yourself what you really need and ensure that you have a solid foundation from which to show up for others (and to have the energy to do it in a real way).

Just look at what happens if you DON’T spend time actively filling your cup:

You’ll be more reactive.
You’ll be more defensive.
You’ll be more easily triggered.
You’ll be more likely to get involved in pointless drama.
You’ll be more likely to seek applause, appreciation, and approval (instead of giving it to yourself).
You’ll be more likely to project your unresolved ‘stuff’ onto other people.
Etc. etc. etc.

In short, you’ll be more likely to turn relationships into attempts to get something that you’re not giving yourself (which just makes life more unreal for everybody involved).

Filling your cup isn’t about becoming ‘obsessed’ with yourself either (that’s ego) – it’s just about creating the conditions that allow you to actually show up.

Think about it and it becomes pretty clear why this isn’t “selfish”:

If you look after your physical health, you’ll generally have more energy to give.
If you regulate your nervous system then you’ll have more capacity to deal with other people’s emotions without being dragged into them.
If you process your past then you’ll be less likely to make your present relationships pay for things that happened years ago at the risk of destroying or losing them.
If you pursue a meaningful vision, goals, and habits then you’ll develop skills, confidence and qualities that you can eventually share with the world.

The point is never “How can I GET more for myself?” but something along the lines of “How can I become more of myself so that I have more to give?”.

That’s a completely different orientation because it’s REAL.

Regulate. Integrate. Accelerate.

If you want to start making all of this practical then a useful framework for filling your cup that’s worth remembering is:

Regulate, Integrate, Accelerate.

1. Regulate

It’s always worth starting from the bottom-up which means getting to a place where your nervous system is in a regulated state where you can actually function.

This doesn’t need to be complicated and for most of us it just means slowing down a little so that we can get out of fight-or-flight mode – for example:

Go for a walk (this is literally a ‘non-negotiable’ for me every day).
Exercise (another non-negotiable because it makes your body and mind more resilient to stress over time).
Do some yoga (especially yin yoga which is one of the most regulating things I’ve ever found).
Spend some time in nature.
Take some space away from people.
Breathe (especially through your nose).
Sleep properly and for long enough.
Stop filling every available moment with stimulation (put your phone down, meditate, etc.).

Sometimes the most real thing you can do is simply stop all of the ‘doing’ and all of the frenetic activity that seems so important but really isn’t (because it’s just an attempt to fill the Void).

The point is that it’s going to be much harder to do anything real (including feeling your own feelings) when you’re dysregulated so make a conscious CHOICE to get yourself back in the room first and foremost by taking a strategy of regulation first.

2. Integrate

When you’ve started to create more regulation for yourself then you’re ready to actually give yourself the space to feel what needs feeling (when we’re not regulated then the feelings we’ve been resisting like shame, guilt, and/or trauma are experienced as a literal ‘threat’ instead of just emotional discomfort which we can actually handle).

“Feeling your feelings” doesn’t mean that you need to become obsessed with your emotions or that you put them on a pedestal and treat them as the gospel truth or turn them into your identity – it just means that you allow them to BE so that they can move on (because emotions are “e-motion, energy in motion”).

For example:

You can feel anger without being an angry person.
You can feel grief without becoming permanently defined by grief.
You can feel shame without believing that shame tells the truth about who you are (it doesn’t because shame is literally just what arises when we’re disconnected from the truth).
You can acknowledge the past without continuing to live inside it.
Etc. etc. etc.

Integration is about becoming whole rather than remaining fragmented which means that it’s about bringing the ‘parts’ of yourself you’ve rejected back into awareness so that they no longer have to control you from the shadows.

3. Accelerate

Finally, with a foundation of Regulation and Integration you can start to Accelerate towards your real vision (“Accelerate” because if you’re more regulated and integrated then you have less inner friction that’s going to block your path).

What this looks like will be different for everybody but it always involves taking real action (action that’s an expression of the realness you’ve tapped into as you became more regulated and integrated).

This could look like:

Developing the skills you know you need.
Having the difficult conversations you’ve been avoiding.
Creating something.
Building something.
Getting stronger.
Learning.
Travelling.
Changing careers.
Starting the business.
Writing the book.
Making the art.
Ultimately: becoming the person you know you can become.

The important distinction here is that you don’t do these things because you secretly believe that achieving them will finally make you ‘worthy’…that’s just another attempt to fill the Void – instead, you do them because they’re an expression of your realness.

This is the difference between ego-driven ambition and real action – one says “I need this so that I can finally be somebody” whereas the other knows “This is who I am and who I’m becoming and I’m going to express that through my actions”.

The Less You Need From People, the More You Can Give Them

All of this talk of “selfishness” brings us to what is perhaps the biggest paradox of personal growth:

When you take responsibility for yourself in a REAL way then you actually become less demanding of other people which allows you to give and receive more from them.

This isn’t because you don’t ‘need’ anybody else – we’re human beings and we’re interdependent so it goes without saying that we need other humans to share our lives with and all thrive on connection, intimacy, friendship, love, and community.

There’s a huge difference, though, between needing connection and demanding that another person complete you or meet needs that only you can meet for yourself (as a fully functional adult human being):

When you take responsibility for your own emotional life then you can listen to somebody else without immediately trying to make their experience about you.
When you take responsibility for your past then you can stop punishing your partner for what somebody else did.
When you take responsibility for your boundaries then you can say “No” instead of secretly hoping people will notice how much you’re sacrificing.
When you take responsibility for your goals and how you approach them then you don’t need everybody around you to validate them.
When you take responsibility for your self-worth then you can appreciate somebody else’s love without becoming ‘addicted‘ to their approval.

The bottom line is that when you take responsibility for your own life – which some might argue is “selfish” (even though it isn’t if you’re being real and filling your cup) – then something wonderful happens:

Other people become human beings again because you free them to just be whatever it is that they are.

They don’t have to be your therapist, a substitute for the parents you never had, your validation machine, or somebody that’s finally going to ‘save’ or ‘fix’ you.

They don’t have to become a receptacle for your shame or feel any pressure to make all your dreams come true – they can simply be themselves because you’re simply being YOURSELF.

That’s what real connection looks like and it comes from filling your cup and putting your own relationship with yourself and life first and foremost.

It’s not two incomplete people desperately grabbing pieces from each other – it’s two whole human beings bringing something REAL to the table.

Realness Creates Generosity & Reciprocity

When you’re real, you don’t have to waste all your energy on attempting to maintain the ego and it’s self-image:

You don’t have to constantly prove that you’re ‘successful’.
You don’t have to ‘win’ every argument and be ‘right’ all the time.
You don’t have to manufacture drama to feel important.
You don’t have to make everybody agree with you.
You don’t have to turn every conversation into a referendum on your feelings.
You don’t have to make another person responsible for filling your Void.
Etc. etc. etc.

Realness simply means that you step up and start participating in your own life as it actually ‘is’ without trying to change things just for the sake of the ego…

This opens up an enormous sense of freedom because you’re not trying to be ‘important’ or anything that puts you in comparison to others – you’re just allowing yourself to BE and acting from this place whilst allowing others to do the same.

This is why REAL ALWAYS WORKS – because it’s about becoming more whole and wholeness naturally creates more capacity for connection (because wholeness is connection: with yourself, the world, and reality itself).

The irony of all this is that the person who is terrified of being “selfish” can sometimes become incredibly self-centred because they’re constantly monitoring themselves and so they end up being more fragmented:

“Am I doing enough?”
“Do they like me?”
“What will they think?”
“Am I being a good person?”

All of this is still ego but realness is the thing that gets you out of that loop because you can finally stop asking “How do I look?” and start asking:

“What is real right now and what does reality require from me?”

Sometimes, reality requires you to help somebody whereas other times it might ask you to walk away, take a rest, say “No” to something, or go take some time to go work on yourself in your own space.

Sometimes, the real thing to do is to do it for yourself and at other times it might be to serve other people – the answer isn’t always about putting yourself first or putting somebody else first but about responding to reality rather than obeying an old, shame-based or guilt-based script all the time.

Stop Feeling Guilty for Becoming Yourself

If you’ve been conditioned to believe that working on yourself is ‘selfish’ or ‘wrong’ then you might need to challenge this conditioning directly so that you can bash the gremlins in your mind and find your footing in something real again.

You can start by asking yourself some simple but powerful coaching questions:

Where did I learn that my needs don’t matter?
Who benefited from me believing this?
What happens when I start doing things that are actually important to me?
What am I afraid other people will think?
Am I genuinely hurting somebody or am I simply making them uncomfortable by changing and growing REAL?

That last question is particularly important because it brings our attention to a brutal truth about life which is that not everybody will celebrate your growth:

Some people are comfortable with the version of you that abandoned yourself and want you to stay that way (so they don’t have to look at themselves and grow too).
Some people benefit from your lack of boundaries (so they don’t want you to put any in place).
Some people prefer you when you’re seeking their approval (because it makes them feel powerful or helps their ego to stay in place).
Some people liked you better when you were easier to control (and so they’ll try and make you go back to being that version of yourself).

The point is that it’s perfectly natural that your growth into realness may create friction and pangs as things start to shift but that doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing something ‘wrong’ – in fact, it’s much more likely just evidence that old relationship dynamics no longer work because they’re unreal.

The answer isn’t to become ‘selfish’ but to become REAL because when you grow real, you don’t become less caring – you just become less obsessed with yourself because you no longer need your ego to constantly prove that you’re somebody or something you’re not.

Give up the myth that it's "selfish" to receive your own love and affection.

The Final Word: It’s Selfish to Be Unreal When You Could be REAL

So, yes, there is such a thing as selfishness but there’s also the paradox:

It’s selfish to be UNREAL.

What this means is that it’s selfish to live from shame, ego and the desperate need to fill the Void, it’s selfish to make other people responsible for the ‘parts’ of yourself that you refuse to face, and it’s selfish to value ‘winning’ (or whatever) over relationships.

It’s also selfish to make everything about your feelings, to refuse to listen, manufacture drama for attention, or to turn money, status, achievement, or [whatever else] into your personal god.

All of these traits come from ego but showing up for yourself and being real is different because you don’t work on yourself and your ‘stuff’ so that you can care less about other people:

You work on yourself so that you can stop making other people responsible for the ‘parts‘ of you that you refuse to take responsibility for.

You Regulate so that you don’t have to make everybody else manage your nervous system on your behalf.
You Integrate so that you don’t have to make your present relationships pay for your past.
You Accelerate so that you don’t have to make other people responsible for giving your life meaning.

This is the real purpose of “filling your cup” – putting yourself back on the path to wholeness so that you can finally bring something whole into your relationships.

It’s not about sitting there and admiring how full it is (ego) or becoming another self-obsessed person with a colour-coded morning routine and seventeen different supplements that you love talking about because it makes you feel knowledgeable and superior (also ego) – it’s simply about being full so that you can POUR.

The goal of realness is never to become a person who only cares about themselves but to become so aligned with your wholeness that you finally have something real to offer everybody else and this is why it’s never selfish to be REAL.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

P.S. If you’re on a journey into growing real but you keep hitting up against your own shame or guilt then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you move in a real way.

Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.

It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.

Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.

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This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).

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Real Always Works

There’s Nothing “Selfish” About Working On Yourself to Live a Life that’s More REAL…Here’s Why:

Are You Selfish? What We Cover in This Article

Selfish Isn’t the Same as Self-Care

What Ego-Driven Selfishness Looks Like

An Unhealthy Obsession With Goals in an Attempt to Fill the Void

Self-indulgence and Putting Emotions On a Pedestal