When looking at personal development and growth it is commonplace for me to concentrate on myself. My needs and wants take the centre stage and I devote time and energy into wanting to improve an area of my life that I believe needs fixing. At the present time I find myself focusing on the food that I eat, ensuring that it is within the rules I have learned from my bright line eating courses, desperately wanting the excess weight I have gained since I moved to be released so that I may truly be myself. Thoughtfulness directs all this energy to another realm, one that is outside of myself. It encourages me to think of others, brings tenderness and love to their needs instead of my own. I understand this to be the best way of actually helping myself to heal. It catapults me out of my spinning mind to consider what others may think and then to be of assistance to them. It is a way of helping myself that is often misunderstood in our world and rarely encouraged. There is such an overwhelming emphasis on thinking about our own selves to the exclusion of all else. We do not live on this planet alone and what I think, say or do has the effect of impacting others. I get caught in the vortex of self interest because that is actually how we are wired. It is "kneaded into the clay of our beings."A vital ingredient that causes the display of selfishness and greed if left unchecked. How then are we to moderate it, if it is the very essence of who we are? This is the growth that I believe we are called to do to develop those qualities of the human spirit. Those qualities that are so very rare and precious that oftentimes it appears that they do not belong in the world that we have constructed and people shun the very thought of expressing them for fear of appearing weak or unworthy of belonging among the masses. Yet it is these qualities that the world needs right now to work against the negative forces that have us so firmly in their grip. Just think, if we were to express kindness guided by empathy and give importance to the needs of others, would the atrocities that are ingrained in our history have found room for expression? So I am seeking to concern myself with doing a kind thing for someone I encounter today offering up some love to them to brighten their day better. It may take the form of being deliberate or random but what is certain is that it will benefit us both!
Exactly. We were created to be connected - intimately - with each other. Those connections are what give us strength. When we avoid or deny those opportunities to connect meaningfully we deprive ourselves of the compassion love and support so essential to our well-being.