being selfish vs putting yourself first: how to trust?

Many of us find it hard to trust people for one reason or another. Most of the time is events in our lives that have made it hard for us to trust others. In other cases, the thing that makes it hard for us to trust others are our childhood wounds.

When we don’t trust others I think we also don’t trust ourselves. I also feel that there comes a bit of selfishness in the act of not being able to trust other people.

So what can we do to be more trusting and what does it imply:

Here is a conversation I had with myself recently:

“Is trusting people selfish? Or is not trusting people selfish?

“When I trust someone I am opening myself to be hurt. I am being vulnerable I am accepting my fate whatever it is. Will this person betray my trust? I don’t know. So then being selfish is not trusting others, it is keeping yourself away from people and closing off just in case people can hurt you. It is creating a shell around yourself that can’t be broken unless healing happens.”

I decided to dig a bit deeper

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary “being selfish” means to be concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself. If you are excessively concerned with the fact that people can harm you and that you can’t trust anyone doesn’t that makes you selfish? I believe being selfish is very different from putting yourself first. Putting yourself first would involve trusting people and setting boundaries that allow you to do so.

You will never really know who will hurt you and who will not, but it comes to the fact of also being able to trust yourself enough to deal with the emotional fallout and pain that can come with someone betraying your trust.

So that is why I feel trusting is selfless because you are vulnerable and that is the less selfish thing to do as it allows you to connect with the world on a deeper level, trusting, without shielding yourself from others.

So how can we be more trusting of others:

Apart from trusting others, we need to learn how to trust ourselves first. We need to be able to trust that we can survive and thrive even when others hurt us. Even when we selflessly trusted people and even when we forgot to put ourselves and our boundaries first.

These are three important things to do in order to selflessly trust others and selfishly trust ourselves first:

1. Ask yourself what are your emotional needs. How do you want to feel daily in your interactions with other people? How do you want to feel in your interactions with yourself?

2. How can you reflect these feelings into actions and reassurances that you can give to yourself?

3. What are 3 things that you do for yourself daily that make you feel taken care of?

Once you know these things you can make a support system for yourself. This system will eventually grow to include people that you start trusting and with who you have set firm boundaries.

By tristing you are being vulnerable, you are being open to being hurt. But you are also being open to being human and creating important connections that can shape your life in beautiful ways. Don’t be selfish, allow yourself to trust and be trusted, break that shell and start healing.