Aug 31 2009
How to Find Peace in Your Daily Life
Almost all of us know someone who is generous to the extreme. These individuals will give what they’ve got, even if it means they won’t have anything left for themselves. For many, this emotion is genuine kindness; for others, it’s a way to punish themselves.
What’s the real difference between selflessness and self-denial? The difference can be readily seen in the resulting feeling which the person receives from giving, and in the particular lifestyle of the person who’s giving – not in the actual act itself. For instance, let’s say that you have lunch at work with a co-worker. As you sit down to eat and begin talking about some new career opportunities, she realises that her lunch is back at home on the kitchen counter. You offer to share your lunch with her so she doesn’t have to go without.
Here’s another example. A friend asks if they can borrow a dress because they are going out on a date. As she searches through the clothes in the closet, she comes upon one that she thinks is fantastic, but it also happens to be a brand new dress which was just recently bought. With a half-hearted smile, you hand her the dress and say, “It’ll look good on you. I don’t know when I’ll ever get to wear it on a date.”
As you can see, the difference here has nothing to do with the actual action. In both situations, the giver shared easily enough. However, the individual who shared their lunch is left with a feeling of pleasant satisfaction, while the individual who was lending the dress was reinforcing negative feelings about herself through her sacrifice. One is most definitely not the same as the other.
Selflessness in our character comes from a place of security. In essence, this gesture means that we’re comfortable ‘in our own skin’. Self-denial wells up as an answer to insecurity. We don’t deserve to be happy, so we give away things as a form of self-imposed punishment.
Giving our time and our talents are also forms of selflessness. Our character is not diminished by the gift, but we are uplifted because someone else will benefit from our generosity. We don’t have to put ourselves lower in order for someone else to feel better.
Self-denial is the opposite. With everything that is sacrificed, the person feels worse. It’s an increasing debt in which punishment never ends. If this is the case for you, it’s time to seek advice. There is a reason that you feel less than deserving of the good things in your life, and it’s certainly not a mistake or an accident – which is what you may be thinking.
Denying yourself the right to live your life is a serious problem, which usually stems from past experiences where you were possibly made to feel that way. In the absence of anything else to the contrary, you carried that character flaw throughout your life. What could be more wrong than to continue to view yourself in such a negative light?
Are you giving out of your generous nature, or are you punishing yourself for past mistakes? If you feel that your behaviour stems from self-denial, take control and talk it out with someone you trust – for as long as it takes, until you come to a real solution.
Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the Learning 2 Live Enterprise, an online Lifestyles resource which explores various aspects of business and pleasure, comprising an array of Lifestyle topics which cover Relationships, Health, Wellbeing, Career, Travel & Coaching, and more. Alan has a great deal of hands on experience throughout a wide variety of business disciplines including Coaching and Mentoring, Change Management and NLP training techniques.