Doing What’s Right for You

Doing What’s Right For You Is Not Selfish

Becky Schenk, wife to Raymond Schenk, was born and raised in Burleson County and is a mother of three children, Austin, Alyssa and Easton. She loves reading, listening to spiritual or motivational speakers, networking and volunteering. Becky is a Licensed Realtor at ORO Realty in Caldwell and may be reached at 979-587-0059 or becky@ororealtytx.com. Becky would love to hear from you and receive feedback on her writings.

I’m watching you. Have you noticed? Someone is always watching. You, me, them. We all do it. We feel judged, we judge. And so depending on our maturity level or our age, our environment, our belief system or experiences, sometimes we let this impact our lives in negative ways. Then we overreact to relatively small nuances or we simply do not say anything and let that fester in our lives. Over time, this causes so much mental anguish and stress that it comes out in physical ailments or sore attitudes towards others. And you’re not that person, which causes even more anguish. At least that’s how I react. Maybe you do too.

We are happy people. We want others to be happy. So how do we do that? And could it be coming from judging?

Unfortunately, our judgment often comes from a negative place. You don’t really want that ugly feeling everyday, do you? Maybe we don’t know a person well (don’t judge a book by its cover), we can’t identify with his behavior, or that person somehow threatens how we perceive ourselves. I try hard not to judge, and have been doing so less and less, but I still have a ways to go.

Do I still have your attention? This is where we decide together that the word “selfish” is not necessarily a bad word. You, as well as I, are going to decide that we are going to be selfish. Why? Because we need to take time for ourselves and learn to embrace ourselves as we truly are. We are going to be “selfish” with ourselves and figure out why self-love is so important and powerful. If we could learn to love ourselves, we could make our world a much more compassionate and much less judgemental place because we would no longer need a reason to put someone else down just to raise ourselves up. Would we still be so judgemental towards others? Would being judged bother us as much if we knew we had taken the time to be “selfish,” to love and appreciate who we are? Most likely not.

No one said it will be easy. And make sure to give people time for them to be selfish. They may be looking inward too. We all have an opportunity to make an impact and inspire others by the way we live. We are all human and we can’t always be on cloud nine, but we can do our part and reach out to that person next in line. Share your happy thoughts. You never know who that might touch because you decided to be selfish and do the work on yourself first so you could be happy. Remember, you can always judge positively. Create the life you wish to live and live the way that feels best to you right now. There’s a trade off, for sure, but you’ll see how doing what’s right for you now can help lead you to amazing people and experiences later or even tomorrow.

In the end, our lives are our lives, and we have to live with every decision we make. So go ahead and do what’s right and be selfish by preparing ourselves.

“Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.” -Unknown

People say 60 is the new 40. The cop who just pulled me over didn’t agree.