I’m guessing you might be a little triggered by the title. Because perhaps, you immediately got a sense of “that sounds so selfish” and it’s just another influencer out there stressing it’s all about “me, me, me.”
But, stay with me for a moment … as I want you to consider something.
What if this culture of nice and the incessant need for people-pleasing are robbing of us our greatness? What if by putting everyone else’s needs first, you actually are giving them all the residual crap leftover, and not anything close to the best of what you have to offer?
Because, I would argue that:
It’s not selfish to put yourself first. In fact, it’s actually selfish when you don’t.
Ok, before you go and sound the alarms, hear me out.
We live in a culture that expects, make that demands, that we give, give, give and we do more, more, more. My question is, at what cost?
The level of mental illness, depression, loneliness, exhaustion, addiction, abuse, obesity, and suicides are at an alarmingly all-time high.
And, those numbers continue to escalate.
Give, give, give. More, more, more. Do, do, do. It’s an endless cycle of depletion that is draining us of our very life force. It’s stripping us of our brilliance, our energy, and our gifts.
Yet, god forbid we take a moment to catch our breath.
For, there still is a very prevalent stigma that slowing down is a sign of weakness. Yes, we subscribe to the fact that prioritizing our own self-care somehow is a function on not being strong enough, grateful enough, or some other flavor of not being enough. It gets hammered into us day in, and day out.
And, I call bullshit on all of it.
Most people are doing everything they can these days to just be upright, let alone give the best of themselves. People are tapped out, depleted, exhausted, burnt out, and losing a sense of hope for the future.
It’s costing us far too much to stay stuck in these cycles.
Let’s use the analogy of a bank account, shall we? We all know that we cannot make a withdrawal if the funds are not available to us in our account. We also know that we can’t spend the money set aside for our mortgage or rent, our groceries, and any other of life’s daily expenses that need to be paid. We need to live within our means, right?
Yes, how many of us actually do?
These days, we put everything on credit … which usually creates a bigger cost to us down the line, especially after all the interest builds up. We spend we don’t have, further depleting both ourselves and our resources.
And, we keep spending. Though, we also know that if you continuously max out your credit, then you find yourself stuck not being able to make the payments (another cost), the interest keeps compounding (a whole lot more cost), and more times than now, you feel the weight of impending debt and no sign of light on how to get out.
Often the debt collectors start coming after you (another cost), or your credit limit is either reduced or cut off altogether. It’s no different with your bank account. The same narrative applies if you overdraw your account too much, the bank will eventually shut your account down.
The exact same thing is happening to the bank account of YOU.
You keep taking withdrawals when your account is depleted and there aren’t any funds available. You are putting your account in the red, and trying to crawl your way back from near bankruptcy.
Let’s explore this a little further … as I don’t even want you to take a withdrawal from just a healthy account. I want you to consider a bigger, more expansive, and powerful picture, instead.
Because those resources need to be for you first. Just like having the money to pay for your mortgage, your groceries, your utilities, your kid’s school, as so forth, you need a reserve of energy for you that is your baseline before you even consider giving your energy to others.
When you take care of you … all will be taken care of.
Meaning, you need to pour from the overflow.
Having a full cup is not enough. The cup being full has to be the bare minimum to support you first. It’s your baseline, your foundation, and it’s your only way to play full out and show up at 100%.
You having your cup full to start with needs to be a non-negotiable.
The bank account of YOU needs to operate from a place of stability and sustainability. If you are the foundation of you is not stable and you, yourself, are not sustainable … there isn’t much left to give anyone else. We need to stop playing the martyr and being so self-sacrificing.
We need to stop scrimping and saving from a place of lack, and a space that leaves us constantly feeling tapped out.
You CANNOT pour from an empty cup. You also CANNOT give anymore that what you have in the bank. You also CANNOT give 100% to anyone if you don’t have 100% to give. Again, this can ONLY happen from the overflow.
The only way you can give the best of what you have to offer, the best of you and your gifts, is to make sure your account is healthy AND thriving.
I’ll give you another visualize I use in my presentations, as it leaves an image you likely won’t forget.
Imagine you have a well of water. If you’ve ever been around a well, you know it has some kind of pumping mechanism to pump and replenish the water in order to be able to drink it. The pump is there to keep the water flowing, otherwise the water becomes stagnant and toxic.
Which is exactly what happens if the pump breaks down and the well starts to dry up. The water is no longer flowing, and the water and inside the well becomes toxic. But, before the well completely dries up, it goes through various stages in it’s transition.
First, there is a layer on the top that is a bit green and mossy. This is where there still is some water moving, giving room for some interesting things to begin growing on the surface. So, we scoop up that layer and we hand it over to our community and we say, “Here you go, this is for you.”
Then, we reach down a little bit more into the layer that’s starting to get a little thicker, and has a stench that is beginning to emanate from it, and we scoop that layer up and serve it to our clients and say, “Here, ideal client of mine, let me serve you.”
Now, as we reached deep down and scrape out yet another layer, we find ourselves scooping up this gross, nasty, dark sludge-like substance that smells awful and we get ahold of it and we giving it lovingly to our family and we say, Here, family … this is for you.”
And, last but not least, we dig into the very bottom of what’s left in the well and we find nothing but disgusting tar-like sludge. That’s what’s left for us.
Every layer, even the first, is tainted.
We have zero capacity to give any clean water to anyone. And, the more we dig down, those closest to us suffer the most. It’s like a reverse concentric circle, where we give the best of what’s leftover to the world, then to our jobs and clients, then to our families, then to ourselves.
We have it all backwards.
Think about when you toss a rock into the river. The concentric circle is suppose to flow from the inside out.
Leading to the supposition that when you take of you, all is take care of.
Instead, of the notion (that also doesn’t serve us, and keeps up stuck in the dynamics of people pleasing and imposter syndrome), that “when I take care of me, then I can take care of you.”
Image if, even that isn’t really serving you, and that you really don’t have to take care of anyone. Imagine if you let that obligation go.
Fundamentally, you don’t. Yes, I get you might be raising kids who are still dependent on you. Imagine if you could model what’s truly possible in putting yourself first. You would teach your kids the skills of self-sufficiency, as a result. You would help them learn to rely on themselves. To know their own strength.
Of course, you can provide guardrails and direction, but imagine if you practiced more of what Wayne Dyer used to teach and practice “non-doing and non-interfering”. Allowing the nature of things to simply flow.
You see, we all come into this world with our own Soul Curriculum, including your children. And, we have challenges and things we are meant to bump up against. By allowing space for the non-doing and non-interfering, we then begin to break the cycles of codependency so many of us (myself included) were raised in.
Instead of creating a culture that feels quite entitled, and where too many people shirk their responsibility, we would each be contributing to growing emerging leaders who stood in their own integrity and accountability.
There is an energy shifting.
When you look at the Human Design of the planet, you can see that we are moving out of what has been called the Cross of Planning, an energy that’s been around since around 1615. It’s been a very strong “we” (often imbalanced masculine) energy. One where the industrialized revolution came about, and one where we’ve been taught to seek external validation and approval, rather than trusting our own intuition and knowing.
We now are moving into a new, more expansive energy. In February 2027, we will begin to shift into what is called the Cross of the Sleeping Phoenix. This is a more individualized, healthy divine feminine energy (which will help us create balance with healthy divine masculine energy … as we need both) that requires us to go within. It shines a light on how tapped out we really are, and that we need to take care of leading ourselves first.
And, it is already asking us to explore how we define selfish.
In fact, it’s giving us the opportunity to redefine it, and to reassess what being selfish really means. Again, I will offer that you’re actually being selfish when you don’t make yourself your first priority. I’d go as far as to say it’s pretty arrogant … to think we are beyond taking care of ourselves, or that we somehow are superior and don’t need to rest.
We are all designed for rest. Just as we are all designed to work. But, that work is a function of our innate wiring and energy, and our ability to restore and replenish properly.
We need to shift from self-sacrificing into order to please everyone, do for everyone, and think we are here to fix anyone. Instead, we are being given direction to see how powerful we can truly be when we focus on leading ourselves. That when we take care of ourselves, all will be taken care of.
It reminds me so much of the work of the Tao te Ching (translated as the “Way of Integrity”), where: “the Tao never does anything, yet through it, all things are done.” The Tao also speaks to how there is no need for governance when we choose to govern ourselves. That when we do so, it “believes everything could live naturally and in harmony.”
It also shares that leadership is fundamentally about “seamless integration, fluidity, and the art of influencing without exerting force.”
For, when we are in integrity and harmony with life itself, we all win. Imagine if we lived our lives aligned with the Tao. The opportunity is to recognize what being in integrity means to you. The only way this can happen is if you create space for yourself to ask that question.
Your self-care is absolutely critical in providing that space. We need purposeful time to rest, recharge, reflect, restore, replenish, recalibrate, reset, renew … (all the “re” words), rediscover and remember who we are.
My guess is the well of YOU either has gone dry, or is getting pretty damn close. The bank account of YOU has been overdrawn for a while now and is at risk of being closed permanently.
It’s time to right the ship and get yourself into a space of being healthy. From there you can create the overflow and truly be of service to others.
Self-care isn’t a luxury, a nice-to-have, or an option. It needs to be a non-negotiable, a priority, and an absolute.
For, when you take care of you … all truly will be taken care of.