Winning At Home: Thinking of others
When you wake up in the morning, is your first thought about yourself? If it is, I want to challenge you to work to reshape your thinking to be much more others focused. Imagine putting on a pair of glasses and seeing the world through different lenses.
Of course, changing your first thought in the morning won’t be that simple, and it won’t be that immediate, but you can work to change a selfish pattern of thinking into a way of seeing the world that considers other people and their wants and needs.
The truth is that we naturally think of ourselves first. Especially if you’re in the earlier stages of life, it’s pretty normal to wake up in the morning to the thought, “How can I make myself happy today?” This me-first mentality is normal, but it’s important that we grow past that perspective as we mature. If we never work to move past this way of thinking over the course of our lives, we’ll find ourselves with a teenager-like mentality—even when we’re 60 years old!
We’ve all seen that behavior, and it’s not pretty. Of course, we can easily see it in other people. But the painful reality is that we also see it in ourselves sometimes. As we move into the Christmas season, I’m looking forward to having all six of my grandkids at my house where we will celebrate together. And I know that it’s all but guaranteed that with that many young kids, there will be some gift envy and some “me-centric” thinking. We’ll have some impatience and jealousy. We’ll have some tears over kids being told to wait until they get home to open their new toy so they don’t lose any pieces.
As we all know, that’s just part of kids growing up and learning to let go of selfish thinking patterns. But they’re kids, so it’s a teaching moment rather than a disaster. What would be a disaster would be if any of my kids who are in their 20s and 30s were the ones reacting that way. By the time we’re adults, we all know that it’s important to let go of these selfish ways of thinking.
But what many people do is try to minimize selfish behavior without ever really addressing the thoughts and impulses behind the behavior. And being internally focused on yourself while trying to externally present yourself in socially acceptable ways is basically a recipe for frustration, anxiety and burnout. You eventually wear down and act in alignment with your thinking.
The me-first mentality, even if it’s not translated into action, keeps us selfish and focused on what we want. To really see the world in a new way, we have to work to change that perspective, not just the behavior. The best (and hardest) way to root out selfish thoughts is to work to put yourself in the place of the people around you.
Imagine what they might be thinking and feeling as you interact with them. When you realize that every single person has a different life than yours with different stresses and different joys, it helps to shift perspectives.
It certainly won’t be easy, but when we break the cycle of constantly being focused on what we want, we are free to love and focus on others. That helps our family, marriage and relationships with our children, which in turn, helps us to win more often at home.
— Dan Seaborn is the founder of the Zeeland-based group Winning At Home Inc., which supports and nurtures marriages and families. Email questions or comments to hometeam@winningathome.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Winning At Home: Thinking of others
