Why Focusing on Yourself is one of the BEST things you will ever do!

Focusing on yourself is one of the best things you can ever do for yourself. It’s a major component of creating a healthy relationship with yourself and others. If your relationship with yourself and your inner dialogue is not somewhat ‘healthy’ it will impact your relationship with others negatively. A healthy relationship with yourself equals a healthy relationship with others and relationships are LIFE. But what is holding us back from focusing and choosing ourselves? And why should we focus on ourselves?

The fear of being BAD

Growing up society has taught us to be there for others, to ‘do’, to be of service and to not be self-centered. Not being self-centered has been praised and parents may have shown how proud they were of you by being so helpful. There is nothing wrong to help someone but when we do this out of survival and the need for approval we tend to neglect ourselves. We neglect our own wants and need. In essence we have been taught to give ourselves up for the sake of others. And over time this is not going to make any individual happy.

There is a subconscious fear lingering around for being self-centered. We may feel afraid to be perceived as a narcissist or as someone who only thinks of themselves. And if we are afraid of that, then we are also afraid to be seen as ‘bad’. This is a big reason why people won’t choose themselves over someone else.

Meeting your parent’s needs meant they were happy and that meant you were safe. You learnt that you got approval from being ‘good’ and being the ‘helper’ in the family. And not getting that approval brings up survival stress and this is causing us to run far away from focusing on ourselves.

*If someone is actually in need of help, please do help!

Everyone has narcissistic tendencies

If we look at society at large we are living in a narcissistic society. One major example is how most people act around money. Everything needs to be cheap but if they sell a product themselves it should be sold for the highest price possible…

Almost everyone has some narcissistic tendencies, big or small. Notice that sensation right now that’s in resistance to this idea. It’s the ego resisting being seen as bad, cause it’s so addicted to being good. Having narcistic tendencies doesn’t make someone a bad person and it doesn’t make someone a full-on narcissist. It means you have been hurt and you have experienced trauma.

It’s important to be aware of our narcissistic tendencies to see if we are actually being self-centered and could have acted in a more loving way where both parties could have benefited in the situation. If we become aware of this then we can make a different choice.

Note: if you do act out of only self-centered reasons then underneath it won’t feel good. It will leave you feeling bad about yourself. If you don’t feel this negative effect on your emotions then you are not attuned to your emotions enough and practicing empathy will benefit you. It does takes practice and time to notice these nuances within your body.

You DO care for others

We are not narcissist when we focus on ourselves! And it doesn’t mean that you are a person that only thinks of themselves or only cares for themselves. In fact, when you care about yourself and attend to your own needs, you can only show up better for others. The result will be having healthier relationship with others which will actually make others feel good in return. Focusing on yourself actually serves others.

Focusing on yourself shows you care for yourself. And how you treat yourself is how you treat others right? This means you DO care for others when you focus on yourself. And you DO still care for others when you choose to do things for yourself solely. And this is not to exclude people from your life but to actually include people in a healthier way into your life.

Another thing that can ease your mind is this, when we look at children they naturally want to help. It’s in our nature to care for each other and help each other. And what is not natural is to give ourselves up when taking care of another. It is natural to have an equal balance between caring for yourself and others. There is a time to focus on yourself and there is a time to focus on helping others.

Coming home to yourself

Now we know the reason why we tend to care for others more so than focusing on ourselves. And we know that focusing on ourselves is not making us a bad person. Instead focusing on yourself serves others as well. Now let’s take it a step further and look at the reason why focusing on yourself is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

It’s an important life practice to connect with yourself and to come home to yourself. Your life is between you, your higher self and source basically. This connection important for your health, it’s important for your happiness, your relationship with yourself and others (as mentioned before) and it’s important for the collective at large to come home to yourself. How you feel impacts the collective in ways we don’t realize. And becoming a self-actualized individual who can take responsibility over themselves, knows their boundaries and is not afraid to express them, IS one of the most important things you can do for yourself and society.

The True Mission

The true mission here is to retrieve your soul fragments. Which means the process of bringing back other aspects of yourself that got fragmented due to trauma. This is also called integration. And so, the mission is within. The mission is your connection to source or God (whatever word you prefer). Anything that doesn’t strengthen your connection to this higher aspect of yourself is a distraction. And that means almost everything you see and do in this world is a distraction or a consciousness trap, including people!

It’s just a matter of time before people realize that focusing externally isn’t truly making them happy in the long run. You can be in your twenties, thirties, fifties, seventies when you turn your focus around or you may never get this. And there is no judgement since everybody is on their own journey and there are things we do want to do in the external. But not everybody chooses to ‘wake up’ from this artificial reality and no kidding… since it’s highly uncomfortable!

If you imagine that the outside world is only an illusion, then question yourself: how do I get out if this illusion? How can I see beyond it?

The only answer will be to go within.

Get Yourself Together

Focus on yourself before anything else. Get yourself together first before being there for someone else. If you need to take a break from life and you have the resources to do so, then do it. Go find yourself. Take a long vacation. Don’t read other people’s books, don’t watch other people’s videos or podcasts, don’t scroll through social media. Unless they truly help you find yourself. But they can be another conscious trap keeping you from yourself. The people you follow may be in a consciousness trap themselves and they don’t realize it. So be highly aware of who you follow and what is distracting you from yourself.

The quickest road is to connect with yourself and strengthen your sense of self is by canceling out all the external ‘noise’ and go into nature instead. It’s scary to feel an emptiness or boredom at first but it’s worth it.

You will come home to yourself.

Until next time.

With Love, Naomi

P.s. you may also want to read my other blogs related to this topic ‘The Shadow Side behind helping OTHER people’ and ‘Are we programmed to love someone else more than ourselves?‘ and ‘How to built capacity to HAVE yourself AND others at the same time?’

P.p.s. You may want to watch this video from Gabor Mate about attachement and authenticty which supports the importance of focusing on yourself. I consider this to be a reliable resource to help you reestablish your connection to yourself.

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