Happy People Put Themselves First

(A small excerpt from my book Heightening Your Happiness – Chapter 8)

We are often taught at a young age that we must put others before ourselves. I know my mother always took the smallest piece of meat for herself, and if there wasn’t enough of anything, she was the one who went without. She didn’t seem to mind. Putting the rest of us before herself was just what she did. As children, we learned from her example. We were also directly taught to put others before ourselves. If we were playing with friends and a fight erupted over a toy, my mother always told us to let the other child have a turn first. One of my clients told me that as a child, at church, she was taught J.O.Y. That stood for Jesus first, then Others, then Yourself last.

Some things we pick up consciously and others are so unconscious that we aren’t even aware of our programming. Go back and take a look again at how Dr Bruce Lipton explains this in the Preface at the beginning of this book.

In essence, for the first six or seven years of our lives, our brains are in download mode. There is no filter for the information to go through. We have no way of consciously determining whether what we see, hear, or experience is good or bad, right or wrong. We just download the program and keep playing it for the rest of our lives. EFT is the best way to change or rewrite over those programs (see Chapter 12).

“Since the subconscious programs operate outside the range of consciousness, we don’t experience ourselves playing out these behaviors.” Dr Bruce Lipton

If you have downloaded the program “Don’t put yourself first,” then you may be living quite an unhappy life. The truth is the opposite of what we have been taught. We are supposed to put ourselves first.

Whenever you fly on an aircraft, you receive a pre-flight safety demonstration. In the demonstration, you are told that if an oxygen mask drops in front of you, you must fit it to yourself first, before helping a child or anyone else. There is a good reason for this. If you haven’t got enough oxygen, you can’t possibly help anyone else. Everyone suffers. It is the same in life. When we have enough, we can give to others. Enough money. Enough time. Enough energy. Enough love.

Imagine that your life is like a glass full of water. The water represents enough. Let’s say enough energy for this example.

You have enough energy, so you give some away, doing things for others. The level drops and you have less energy. You give again, maybe to the same person or maybe to someone else. The level drops again. The more you give, the less you have. When your level of energy gets fairly low, the body gives you signals. You might feel tired, overwhelmed, irritable, or resentful. The body is communicating to you that you need to stop giving and refill. Refilling only happens when we stop giving and have “me” time. We are refilled when we put ourselves first and do what we need to do to feel more energetic and happy again. When we have refilled enough, we can start giving again. We are giving away the excess. It is like when we give money to a charity. You wouldn’t give away your mortgage money or your food money. That would just be stupid. You give away the excess, over and above what you need for yourself.

The problem is that many people don’t stop and refill when they run low. People who can’t put themselves first and can’t say “No” just keep right on giving. That’s when the body goes BAM! It stops you in your tracks, perhaps by making you sick or even depressed. When your car is getting low on fuel, you get a warning light. That is your cue to refill. If you don’t, you will run out of fuel and stop dead in your tracks. If you really don’t listen, the body can stop you dead in your tracks too.