How to be Selfish
(And other uncomfortable advice)
By Olga Levancuka
Copyright © 2012 by Olga Levancuka
Smashwords Edition
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Cover Design © Reyl Design Group 2012
How to be Selfish
(And other uncomfortable advice)
PART ONE: WHY DO YOU NEED THIS BOOK?
PART TWO: MY WEIRD AMAZING LIFE
PART THREE: THE BIG SCARY TOPICS
Religion
Your beautiful body
Money
Emotions are contagious
Childhood pain
Social media
Energy
PART FOUR: CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER
PART FIVE: SUCCESS IS CONTAGIOUS TOO
PART SIX: EMOTIONAL EXERCISES TO TRY
A note from the author
Acknowledgements
Also by this author
PART ONE: WHY DO YOU NEED THIS BOOK?
An introduction
Have you ever owned a hamster? If so, you probably watched it running on a wheel, round and round, going nowhere and not realizing it.
Can you relate to that? That feeling of being trapped? That feeling that maybe there’s a bigger world out there? How do you step out into it?
People run on wheels too, non-stop. Unlike hamsters, we don’t have owners who buy our wheels for us, but we do all get gently squeezed into wheels that we didn’t ask for and that perhaps we don’t even notice.
The first wheel, at school, sets us running and running and running… Until one day we are ready to go to university or start working. Then we get a job… and we are running and running and running and running again. We’re told we have choices, yet the pressure to do what we’re supposed to, to do what a ‘good little boy or girl’ would do, is so strong. Do we have any choice at all?
The wheel you climb into is often influenced by something outside of you - whatever your parents told you, or whatever you have learned is the socially acceptable path to take.
And there it is - a job, a family, kids at school… running and running and running and always wondering, ‘is this all there is?’
That’s how my mother lived, until one day she was given five days to live and almost died in surgery. That’s how suddenly we can get thrown off the wheel.
Are you perhaps ready to try something more dangerous, something less comfortable and less predictable? Are you ready to find out what you really want, and how to get it?
Even though everyone – your parents, your teachers, your God perhaps - tells you not to be selfish, you still want so much. So what now? Perhaps it’s time to try the unthinkable. Perhaps it’s time to experiment with selfishness.
What is selfishness?
Does selfishness have negative associations for you? Does it conjure up an image of someone mean, like a fairytale ogre perhaps?
I’m here to tell you that there is another way to be selfish. Selfishness is about helping yourself, yes. It’s about satisfying the deep desires within you that cause so much heartache.
However, being selfish can also be the best way to improve the lives of people around you. Being strong and joyful and sure of yourself is a gift to the rest of the world, as well as to yourself.
I’ve never lived for others. You might say I’m selfish. Do you know what I’ve discovered? By living my own life with joy, I’ve enriched the lives of so many around me! By contaminating them with my happiness and success, people around me have been inspired to follow their own dreams.
If I spent my life feeling guilty and beating myself up for wanting too much or taking up too much space, would that really help the people I love? If I try to live through other people, isn’t that a burden that I’m placing on them?
You do not need to take on someone else’s problems to help them. That way, you deny them their own experience, even if that experience means pain. By appreciating them for who they are and treating them as an equal human being, while living your own, full life … boy, you’ll touch their hearts and inspire them to move mountains.
What will this book do for you?
If you want a one word answer - nothing! Because the changes that you make to your life after reading this will be entirely up to you.
You won’t be alone. I am here to help you. Imagine, as you read, that we are just having a conversation over a cup of tea. I’ll be sharing some very personal stories and telling you about my (often strange) life experiences and what I’ve learned from them.
You will bring your own life experience to everything that you read here. All our lives on this planet are so different, perhaps you and I will have hardly any experiences in common. What we do have in common, is that we are facing the same challenge: the world is full of people telling us what to do. I am planning to help you tell them where to stick it, and how to find your own unique way through all the obstacles that life throws at you.
What will we talk about?
In this book, I’m going to bring up all the topics that you’re not supposed to bring up at dinner parties. The awkward, difficult, controversial, personal ones. That is…
Religion
Karma
Body image
Money
Emotions
Childhood pain
……and a little bit on Energy.
I am going to show you a new side to these themes, and force you – gently ;) - to sort through what you think about them. I mean, what YOU, your precious self, really thinks, not what you’ve been told to think all your life by your parents, by society, by the media, or by whoever has been drip-drip-dripping ideas into your mind without you noticing.