00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 522 of the inspired stewardship podcast I'm Robert Farrington from the college investor dot com. I encourage you to be inspired to become a better steward through financial wisdom by listening to this show the inspired stewardship podcast with My friend Scott Maderer that self-centeredness. To me, that's not selfishness. Selfishness has a bad reputation, but the truth is, you have to take care of yourself if you really want to serve others in the long term. Part of seeking the good of others is to seek your own care not necessarily your own good,
00:00:52 but your own care. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship. Podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship Podcast will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in today's spiritual Foundation episode about investing in others.
00:01:29 I talked to you about why there are two different types of selfishness. Why there are also different types of selflessness and why this distinction is important.
00:01:42 First, Corinthians Chapter 10 Verse 24 says No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.
00:01:50 And there's, you know, tons of passages like this in the Bible about how we should be looking to serving others and taking care of others and making sure that we take care of others first.
00:02:06 And that is good advice. It's not only something that is godly, but it's something that even modern research shows that having gratitude and serving others helps us it all of these sorts of ways and makes us better people and gets us further ahead.
00:02:24 There's there's all sorts of tangible benefits to these sorts of things, but one of the things that I think runs into problems is this idea of not seeking your own good,
00:02:40 which I agree with. But then we kind of translate that, and we say things about people being self-less instead of selfish,
00:02:51 and we talk about people being serving instead of self-centered. We used these words in different ways, but they mean different things,
00:03:04 Or at least I think they should. You're not seeking your own good is very different from being self lists.
00:03:18 Selflessness is often held up a CZ, this sort of ideal situation. Never thinking of yourself, never taking care of yourself,
00:03:26 never putting yourself first, never doing anything for yourself but always serving others first, always taking care of everyone else,
00:03:35 always being the one that nurtures the one that takes care of people, the one that serves others. This idea is held up as some sort of perfect ideal.
00:03:46 But the truth is, when someone is that way, when someone is a completely selfless two, things happen one often they end up enabling other people in ways that actually isn't helping.
00:04:01 That other person that actually isn't seeking that other person's good but instead is harming them. If you look at it over the long term,
00:04:11 and the other thing that happens with self selflessness is we begin to look and burn out ourselves. We begin to run out of energy.
00:04:22 We begin to at some point just become frustrated and tired and angry because we often see all of the things that we do and how,
00:04:32 over the long term it doesn't really help others, and I would talk as well about the word selfish and self-centered.
00:04:43 See, I think that their truth is there is a difference between those two words. Selfishness is about taking care of yourself as well as others.
00:04:56 It's about making sure that when you do good for others, you do it in a way that is sustainable over the long term.
00:05:05 You do it in a way that make sure that your needs are actually taking care of at some level.
00:05:11 Now that doesn't mean that you look for the good of yourself at the expense of others. Nor does it look that you look for the good of yourself only,
00:05:21 but instead that you begin to examine how the long term needs of others affect your own needs and how you can step back and take some energy for yourself and build up some time for yourself.
00:05:36 And it's okay. See Self-Centeredness is when you tend to look only to yourself when you tend to look to yourself first and only,
00:05:46 you take care of your own needs at the expense of other people. You don't look to serve other people in a way that builds them up.
00:05:55 But you look for a way that you can be served and built up that self-centeredness. To me,
00:06:02 that's not selfishness. Selfishness has a bad reputation. But the truth is, you have to take care of yourself if you'd really want to serve others in the long term.
00:06:15 Part of seeking the good of others is to seek your own care not necessarily your own good, but your own care.
00:06:25 This distinction is important because again, over time what happens is I think sometimes people will throw it at you.
00:06:33 They'll say you're being self-centered when what you're really doing is taking a step back in taking care of yourself,
00:06:40 getting some rest for yourself, getting some energy for yourself so that you can step back and serve others Well,
00:06:48 I know I've had that used as a guilt technique. Whenever somebody wanted me to do something for them,
00:06:55 they tell you you're being selfish and self-centered, and they say it in a negative way when in reality,
00:07:00 sometimes what you're doing is being able to take care of others, because you take that half a step back and breathe for a minute.
00:07:10 It's also what allows you sometimes to see the fact that the help that they're asking for is not actually help.
00:07:17 That helps them over the long term, but instead is help that is just serving their short term needs and in fact,
00:07:25 may end up damaging that person over the long term. That breathing that taking that moment to recognize what is really the way that we can serve the good of others here.
00:07:40 What is the more successful, more godly, more long term way that we can have an impact that helps others here?
00:07:50 But if all you look at is being selfless without any consideration for your own needs at any time over the long term,
00:08:00 that simply doesn't help. It doesn't really serve others for the good of others. So I ask you,
00:08:10 in what ways are you being selfish in a good way? And in what ways are you being selfish?
00:08:17 That is really about being self centered and, by the same token, examine how you're being self lists and make sure that it's truly serving others over the long term.
00:08:30 In this way, we can indeed not seek our own good, but seek the good of others. Thanks for listening.
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00:08:54 But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode,
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00:09:30 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world.