The Value Of Selfishness

Why It Is a Winning Trait

It is not often that you hear that selfishness can be a virtue, but undoubtedly it can be. Thinking of yourself and what you want out of life is something that can add immense value to your life and the lives of other people. I have read and listened to many writers on the subject of success who start by asking you to answer the question of what you personally want to get out of life.

Often they advise something to the effect that you make a list of all the things you want and then prioritise this list according to the importance of things to yourself or according to whether you want it in the short, medium or long term. Once this is done the task of working out how you are going to get these things begins. It would be amiss to first think about what business you want to be in without first thinking about why you want to be in business at all: to get the things you want in life.

Indulge yourself in your dreams
This self indulgence into our dreams and desires has immense value for many reasons. Of greatest importance is the fact, as eloquently pointed out by Earl Nightingale, that “You will do more good for the rest of the human race, enthusiastically going full bore after the things you want, than in any other way, because the only way you can get the things you want is by providing service to others, and the more intense and enthusiastic you are about it the better will be your service.”

Entrepreneurship is selfish
Entrepreneurship is, for the most part, borne of selfish reasons. Whether as an entrepreneur you are in it to make more money so you can buy the things you want in life, have more free time on your hands so you can relax more and enjoy life more or to be your own boss so you can live life on your own terms, it all boils down to the fact that your own desires are your primary concern in becoming an entrepreneur.

“You will do best that which you want to do in the pursuit of your personal goals. In so doing you will be providing the maximum service to those you need to help you,” adds Nightingale. You must please those people or they won’t give you the money you need to get the things you want. Every good entrepreneur knows that it is their ability to satisfy their clients’ needs that makes them successful. Therefore it only makes sense that in pursuing our own desires we are inevitably satisfying some else’s needs or wants and making life better for someone else.

You are capable of achieving what you desire
The activity or business you engage in order to meet those desires comes later in the equation. The interesting thing that happens though is that the business we get involved in in order to meet our desires is often one that blends our strengths, experiences and abilities best. That is if we have taken the time to really analyse our strengths and abilities before launching out into it.

Rarely do people think of doing something that is beyond their ability to attain it. As the saying goes, if you can think it, you can achieve it. Our minds seem to have a self regulating mechanism in this respect – you will never truly desire something that is beyond your subconscious assessment of your own ability to achieve it.

Get your creative juices flowing
Getting your creative mind at work is another good reason to indulge yourself into thinking about what you want. Think of it as clarifying to yourself what success means to you in personal terms. It is a known that that the more detailed a picture we can draw in our minds of what success would mean to us the more likely we are to achieve it. Vague statements such as “I want to be successful” or “I want to be rich” do not make the grade because they do not provide sufficient detail for our minds to get to work.

A clear picture of your success makes your mind get to work in the background, beyond your conscious attention, to come up with ways for you to achieve what you want. Then one day, unexpectedly it would seem, you come up with a brilliant idea that moves you forward. It may appear that the idea just sprung up out of nowhere, but the truth is that the mind works for you even when you don’t know it is. You just have to feed it the right things. “Garbage in, garbage out” is the rule by which the mind works.

Avoid taking selfishness to extremes
There are those who would seek to take the value of selfishness to extremes. They are people who think nothing of cheating others, misrepresenting their services and goods, or even selling things such as drugs that destroy other people’s lives rather than adding value to them.

It is possible to get wealthy and to get the things you want in that way. But why would you want to do it that way when there are so many other more productive and beneficial ways to get what you want?

The desire for your own things must be balanced by the right consideration for the well being of others. It must be balanced by the right moral and ethical standards. For me, that ultimate standard is God’s word. In being an entrepreneur you must do nothing that contradicts God’s word.

That is the only absolute moral standard there is and something that will keep you grounded and on the right path. Of-course, staying within the law is a close second to this, but remember that there are things that the law permits which are not right with God.

Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich urges that you “Give every man more in use value than you take from him in cash value; then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction.”