{"id":11805,"date":"2019-10-21T21:49:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T03:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=11805"},"modified":"2019-10-21T21:50:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T03:50:36","slug":"sometimes-the-unselfish-thing-is-to-be-selfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/sometimes-the-unselfish-thing-is-to-be-selfish\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes The Unselfish Thing Is To Be Selfish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My parents did an amazing job of instilling the desire in me\nto serve others, to focus outward, to be unselfish.  But what I\u2019m beginning to recognize recently\nis that sometimes the most unselfish thing we can do is be a little bit selfish\u2026Let\nme explain: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, it\u2019s easy for me to take care of other people. What\u2019s\nnever been easy for me is taking time out to take care of myself.  All my life I\u2019ve considered taking care of\nmyself to be selfish and taking care of others to be unselfish, so I\u2019ve focused\nthe bulk of my time and attention on helping others. But what I am finally coming\nto realize is that if I want to be around to take care of others I had better\nstart taking care of myself.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate let me ask a few questions that were recently\nposed to me:  When is the last time you\nwent to your doctor to get a checkup? Have you even taken the time to go get a\nflu shot yet? When did you last see your dentist?  When was your last eye exam?  Ladies, when was your last mammogram?….I\ncan tell you what my answers to those questions was when I was asked them a few\nweeks ago \u2013 Far too long ago, no, forever ago, don\u2019t remember, not sure\u2026..why\u2026.because\ntaking time for those things seemed selfish when there are so many things I need\nto do for other people that I haven\u2019t gotten to yet so how can I justify taking\ntime out for me? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the reality is that if we don\u2019t take the time to take\nbetter care of ourselves we may not be around or able to take care of the others\nat all.  Which means if we really want to\nbe unselfish we have to take a little time out here and there to be selfish and\nmake sure we are healthy and whole as we can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you take care of yourself, you are saying to you loved\nones, \u2018I love you enough to want to be my best for you.\u2019\u201d – unknown<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week I\u2019m trying to do better at being selfish and take\ncare of myself so I can be around for years to come so I can do a lot more unselfish\nthings for others. Today I spent almost five hours at the dentist office\ngetting old fillings filled. And I can honestly say it was PAINFUL being\nselfish today\u2026literally\u2026my mouth is killing me tonight! But its needed to get\ndone for far too long\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that after my appointment was over I still made time to be unselfishness by driving two hours up and back to Utah State University to do a mentoring session with the girls in the Amy Rees Anderson Entrepreneurs Program at the CGO . We spent a few hours talking about goal posters, life balance, making tough decisions, keeping perspective, etc.\u00a0 And let me tell you = that was WAY more fun than being in a dental chair!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might feel better to be unselfish, but remember that sometimes the most unselfish thing to do is to be a little selfish and take care of YOU!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book \u201cWhat Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life<\/a>\u201d ) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My parents did an amazing job of instilling the desire in me to serve others, to focus outward, to be unselfish.  But what I\u2019m beginning to recognize recently is that sometimes the most unselfish thing we can do is be a little bit selfish\u2026Let me explain: You see, it\u2019s easy for me to take care […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20024,395,20279,22176,19007,22173,22171,22170,22172,22167,22174,6717,2584,1625,5372,21991,22165,22175,5133,3358,3356,22168,22169,6770,22166],"class_list":["post-11805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-goalposter","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-amy-rees-anderson-academic-entrepreneurs","tag-because-i-love-you","tag-center-for-growth-and-opportunity","tag-dentist-appointment","tag-get-an-eye-exam","tag-get-your-flu-shot","tag-get-your-mammogram","tag-goal-posters","tag-kee-pyourslf-healthy","tag-love-yourself","tag-selfish","tag-selfless","tag-serve-others","tag-take-care-of-you","tag-take-time-for-you","tag-to-live-a-long-life","tag-unselfish","tag-usu","tag-utah-state-university","tag-way-more-fun","tag-when-did-you-last-see-the-doctor","tag-work-life-balance","tag-you-have-to-take-care-of-you-so-you-can-take-care-of-others"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11805"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11809,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11805\/revisions\/11809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}