What is Selfishness?

All self-interest, it seems, leads— if you allow it to— it leads to a more refined understanding of what makes us happy.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. So a lot of the work that we do in these courses has been around finding our wants, finding our needs and our wants, and asking for what we want and getting what we want, and just really living into our own self-interest and loving it and trusting it as good. And a lot of this seems to conflict with a lot of the programming that we've gotten from parenting or from society around selfishness and not being selfish. And being selfless. And I'm curious to dive into, in this episode, the line, if there is a line, between healthy self-interest and what we call selfishness. How do you define selfishness?

I have a probably a pretty, uh, ludicrous definition of it, but it's what your parents told you you were when they wanted you to do something else. I think that's really what selfishness is. Every time I've watched a parent call somebody selfish and, and and then they become adults and then they think they're selfish. It's always because the parent wants them to do something else, and so, or they're not doing what they want, right? So it's almost a projection of selfishness from the parent. To even call your kids selfish is a selfish act, you know, if you're defining it the same way, because a kid's whole job is to learn how to assert their will and to get their wants and needs met. Of course, like there's no 2-year-old who's like, "Let me think about world peace." The 2-year-old's like, "Cookie, I want it." You know, that's the job of a 2-year-old. So it seems to be that that's what selfishness is. It's the things that your parents wanted you to do for them that you didn't do. That's my definition of it in the more ludicrous sense. Another way to look at it, or like maybe a more, all self-interest, it seems, leads if you allow it to, it leads to a more refined understanding of what makes us happy. So if you allow yourself to explore your wants and your desires without a whole bunch of guilt, without a whole bunch of like, "Oh, I've made a mistake," just simply like, "Oh, I explored that desire and that didn't actually feel as good as other ways of interacting," then what it actually leads you to is like a deep level of altruism which also has its own selfishness in it, meaning that altruism feels good. There's a great feeling, physical, in helping other people. There's a great emotional, mental feeling of being selfless. So I don't really see a difference. I see it more as an evolution. And the more that we allow ourselves to follow our wants, the more we become selfless in the standard way of looking at it, but it's just really refining how to be really good at being selfish.

Yeah, I'm thinking about this idea of becoming really good at being selfish, and a thing that comes to mind is just some ways that people are really successful at getting what they want, but often at the expense of other people not. And so, like, in the parenting example, I can imagine a parent who calls their child selfish as a way to teach them how to operate in a group. Like, this is something that society labels as selfish. If you are going to eat all of the cookies, you're not gonna have any friends. And also it might just be a way to help somebody. Let's say there's a child, there's, there's multiple children playing together and one of them is 5 years older than the other one and is just way more capable in terms of their nervous system and their size. Mm-hmm. And their sophistication at getting what they want.

Yes.

Even subtly manipulating the younger one. So it could also be used, I could imagine, by a parent to try to find harmony in a, with increased awareness of what's going on with the kids, trying to find harmony in a group.

And so, yeah, you're pointing out something really beautiful. And I think it's kind of the same thing that the Buddhists in some way are pointing out where they say, you know, like craving and aversion where it's like, the root of all pain is desire, yet, you know, a Buddhist monk gets up and walks, there must be some desire there, eats, there must be some desire there, or meditates, there must be some desire there. So what's the distinction? The question is, what's the distinction that we're making? And what we want to be able to do is have some moralistic response to that, which is, you know, don't eat all the cookies in any situation, don't eat all the cookies. We can all construct some idea where the best thing to do for the group is to eat all the cookies, or the best thing for the group is actually deep self-interest, because if you can't take care of yourself, then how does the whole, or how does your community take care of itself? So it's this constant thing, and that's, I think, the evolutionary journey that we're talking about. So if we, allow ourselves to constantly find out what our deepest want is and explore that deepest want, then it leads us to a deeper and deeper altruism. It leads us to deeper and deeper care of other people. It leads us to greater and greater compassion. So I'm saying that the mechanism to teach compassion and empathy and altruism is to support somebody's wants, to allow them to explore them and to find the faults in them so that they can find the deeper want instead of the shallow want that feels like crap, right? The heroin addict wants to do heroin, but it feels like crap. You know, you might want to gorge yourself on cookies, but it feels like crap. And then the deepest level, what actually is it? Does it feel better in the moment to eat all the cookies, or does it feel better in the moment to share? But if you're doing it out of a moralistic sense, if you're doing it because you're trying not to be selfish, then it's worthless and you don't actually get the benefit of it. You know? And you don't learn to do it because of the pure love of doing it. You're doing it out of just a form of self-preservation. So it's just a horrible way to teach it. That's what I'm pointing to.

This is pointing to something that comes up in a lot of the group dynamics in the courses where if you are if you have some desire from your self-interest and then from this moralistic standpoint, you're withholding that desire, that it actually builds some form of resentment towards others. And another thing that can happen then is in groups, imagine there's a plate of cookies and so frequently in groups, the last cookie will just go uneaten because everybody will not allow themselves to have the want for the last cookie and assume that the cookie is for everyone else. Therefore, the cookie goes uneaten. And this kind of thing is a metaphor for something that happens so frequently in groups and in leadership and in companies where everybody's thinking something that they want the group to have, some wisdom that they want to bring in, and they're afraid it'll hurt feelings or just be seen as selfish, even if it's just their own want. Like, "I want this meeting to end. I'm bored." That might be something that everybody is about to say, but nobody wants to be rocking the boat. Or offending.

Exactly. I mean, that exact example has happened with me so many times. When people start to realize that their wants are the company's wants, that their needs are the company needs, like the needs of the individual parts of the organism is the need of the organism, that exactly happens. And you'll see it. You'll see somebody go, "Wow, okay, this meeting's boring. I really want to be more interested in this meeting." And all of a sudden, like 10 people smile. They're like, "Yeah." And then all of a sudden the meeting can shift into something else. But that would be a selfish thing to say. Right, so people don't say it. That would be rude, so people don't say it. That would be self-interested, so people won't say it. But it's actually the thing that everybody wants to hear, or at least a good portion of people want to hear. And that is the example in everything. Oftentimes when there's a marriage and they're in trouble, it's just they've stopped telling each other what they actually want, right? They're just constantly trying to accommodate each other. And so their wants aren't being met. And the other thing about that that you pointed to subtly is that whatever the want is that you have, if you sublimate it, it comes out in different ways. So what you start seeing is where there's a whole bunch of wants that have been subjugated in an organization, it becomes very political.

And gossipy.

And gossipy. One of the things you see that creates that political culture is that people don't know how to succeed. They don't know what it is that means they've succeeded. They think the only way to move up through the ranks is to please the people above them. But the other way that it happens is that people aren't clear about what they want, and it's like, it's seen as selfish or greedy, and so it becomes a lot more political, especially at the leadership level. Like, if the leaders can't be clear about what they want, then it— wow, it gets really funky really quick inside of an organization.

An example here would be if there is a leader of an organization who is owning what they want, but their wants are coming from a place of fear. And what they really just want is for everybody to do what they say because they're afraid of how things are going to go and they're afraid of trusting other people's intuition and other people making decisions. Then from that position of power, they can want everybody to listen to them and not recognize maybe that they have a deeper want, which is, you know, I think all of our deeper want is to be in a group where everybody's getting their needs met. And getting what they want. But we don't see that when we're in fear. So when, when we have a group where there's a, a power imbalance or a hierarchy, how would you approach this as either the person in the position of power or a person not in a position of power with regards to getting needs met without having this concept of selfishness as a form of control?

Yeah, that's a great, great real-life example. So it actually happens in two ways. So let's take the one you explain, somebody who's out of fear and what they actually want on some level that they probably can't even recognize is they just want everyone to do what they say. First of all, if they can recognize it and they can say it, everybody's going to feel more calm. Like, hey, this is an organization where I just want people to do what I tell them to do. If you're down for that, stay, and if you're not, go. But that's what I want. I want to be that kind. There are definitely CEOs who run their companies that way. There's definitely people who want to be in companies like that. Wow, it's efficient. One guy tells me what to do. Boom, I know how to succeed. Boom. I just was talking to somebody on the plane the other day who said exactly that. I love working for this person because it's just like everything's efficient. They just tell you what to do. So that, that's one thing. But if they can't say it or they can't own it in themselves, it'll get really weird and wonky inside the organization. The other side of that is you have, say, somebody CEO who wants everybody, who wants collaborative, right? Or she wants collaborative. So they're completely not owning the things that they want to just say, do it this way. So, and so that creates a whole bunch of weirdness too. So let's say 80%, they want collaboration, but 20%, they just want it done their way. But they won't say, I just want it done this way on this one for me. And they're always trying to be collaborative, that creates a tremendous amount of guck in the system too, all sorts of politics. And I'll actually do work with CEOs and with their team, and I'll say, okay, just tell them exactly what you want in the word, like in a complete asshole way, and then do it in a not asshole way, and then do it like when you're hedging, you don't wanna tell them, but you're telling them, and you just see the CEO recognize at that moment how much of a relief it is to their people when he's just telling them what to do, or she's just telling them what to do, or when she's being clear that this is one of those places where we collaborate and I don't want to tell you what to do. That clarity of want is so useful for the people, um, who are working with you. And they can say no. Hopefully you can trust your leadership team to say, yeah, no, I'm— I don't want to do it that way. I hear you want me to do it, but And so when all the people are owning their wants, it's super functional. That self-interest is what drives really good collaboration. If everybody's got their roles and they have self-interest in their roles and the roles are well-defined and they're the right roles, then that's what makes a great company happen.

Yeah, so something that brings up is if, like, let's say it's a company or let's say it's a community and I step into a group of people And let's say that group has a stable dynamic where people are actually anticipating each other's needs and they're doing this fairly well. Maybe they're not owning their needs fully. And then I step into the group and I'm just like, I know what I want. I know how to say it. I know how to ask for it. And I trust people to ask for what they want. And it just turns out that I'm projecting that everyone else in the group is as comfortable with their wants as I am. And it takes some time for me to realize that Actually, people are starting to give up what they want. They're hiding their wants. They're giving me more than they actually want to give. And then that's building resentment. And I could imagine it goes the other way too. If I don't feel comfortable in my own wants, I might just project that if I were to assert my wants, everybody else would give in when they don't want to. And that wouldn't be what I want. There seems to be some space in here for our own projections to kind of lead our behavior and also be incorrect?

In all those ways I've seen it happen. So somebody thinks that everybody should handle directness, and either people give in or people think you're an asshole for asking directly for what you want. Or oppositely, some people think that they'd be an asshole for asking directly, and people get really pissed at them for being uncertain or for not being direct or straightforward or being political. So yeah, you see it in every— way. And there's just signs that are really good. If someone feels resentful, it means that they're not going— they're not following what they want. They're not holding their boundaries. They're not saying the things that they want. They're not getting their needs met. So resentfulness is a really good way to find that indicator, the indicator of one of the sides of it, right, where people are giving in. And then the other side of it is you'll get dismissed, If you're starting to really ask what you want and people get resentful, you'll see their anger or dismissal from them, and that's another good indicator. But what you're basically asking in some level is something to the effect of, hey, if there's an organism that's operating healthy in a healthy way and they get into a whole bunch of other organisms that are operating in an unhealthy way, there's gonna be some friction. And I'm gonna say yes, there's gonna be some friction. But it doesn't change the fact that everybody being clear about their wants is the healthy way for an organization to exist, particularly if they're owning their wants and they're also constantly refining their wants. That's part of the evolution. If you're not refining your wants, then the evolution isn't gonna happen. So maybe the first thing you say is you're like, what I want is I want this lover who has like the perfect body. And so that's the thing you think you want. Maybe television has taught you that. You go off and you Follow that want and you might find out, oh wow, it's the perfect body is not all that. That's like really cool for the first couple times of being, of lovemaking. But after that, I actually just want someone who's really sensual in their body. I really want someone who can accept pleasure and who loves pleasure. And then that might become the new thing that you want. And then you follow that road down until, wow, actually I need real love connection, for my love life to be great. And so you're refining your wants through that session, through those things, you're refining your wants. And for us to jump away from a want like the body to a want like loving connection, then you're just constantly gonna still be wanting the body and you're never gonna be able to fully dive into just the connection. So it's really important to just move through the wants and to— it's just like you watch a little kid all the time. You see these kids and they're saying, you know, they don't say anything, but they want to walk, they want to talk. These wants drive their evolution. And it's the same thing all the way through life. And it's not— our evolution slows because we start questioning our wants, because we start feeling guilty about our wants, because we're selfish in our wants. Or we stop refining them. We're like, "Okay, yeah, we're just going after money. Money, money, money, money, money." And until all of a sudden we're like 60 years old and we're like, "Holy crap, this doesn't make me happy.

I guess I want something else." Yeah, the thing that I see you speaking to here is that there's this stair-stepping down deeper and deeper into our wants. And the process you just described is actually— it's not trivial. That's some major life changes. To be, hey, I'm going to try dating a partner who is— I'm going to search and find the person with the hottest body and then go through the period of a relationship with them that I discover that I actually want something else, which then involves being honest and vulnerable, moving on, or just being messy and avoidant, whatever that is, and then moving into the next deeper want. So this process you're describing is a transformational process that is scary. Especially if you're bringing it into a community or a family or a company that you feel very attached to. And so I'm curious how to facilitate internally this process. If somebody's listening to this episode and they're like, "Okay, I want to move into my wants more deeply," what's the way to approach this that facilitates this personal transformation in the least damaging way? In the groups that we're in. And I'm imagining an example being like approaching my company and saying, hey, so I realize that for years I haven't been asking for what I want and I've been really trying to get the, you know, the group intelligence to bring up what it wants and my wants haven't actually been present. So I'm going to experiment with bringing my wants into this more. And also I really wanna be able to trust people to say no.

That sounds like a pretty cool way to do it. I mean, also on top of that, you could say things like, hey, how do you How do you want to hear my wants? How important are my wants to hear for you? So you can actually get the feedback. They're like, yeah, we've been waiting for you. Please tell us what you want. And you can ask them how they want to receive it, how they want you to deliver it. All that stuff is all flexible and can be something that, that agreement makes the whole thing easier. The conscious, so the principle there is that you bring it forward in a conscious way, in a meta-context first, so that people know what's coming, know how it's coming, and you're listening to them in the process of it and making sure that you're finding a way that works for you and for them. That's the trick.

Yeah, it seems another component is just being prepared for major changes. If you're going through this process, your wants are going to change significantly, and that, that might mean owning it as that occurs and people being disappointed with you. People's wants other people's wants around you might change.

Yeah, so the weird thing is, if you ask 20 people, say, how many of you would want to be with somebody who's doing it because they feel obligated to be with you? Like, 19 out of 20, maybe 20 out of 20 is going, no, I don't want it. So it's actually really interesting if you say to somebody, like, I'm doing this out of obligation, and that's not fair to you, and it's not fair to me, and this is what I actually want. There's usually a tremendous amount of understanding there. There's a lot of fear to say it. You know, people are very scared to say what they want. And it's because they were— we were all told as when we were young that our wants were bad, that we were bad to have certain wants. And we had— when we had certain wants, our— the love was removed. I just want your attention, Mom. You're needy, you know, you're clingy, whatever. Like, we were taught that, like, to own a want is an incredibly vulnerable thing, and we got rejected a lot for our wants, and so we just start shutting them down. But they're our evolutionary pull. It's like the way that a tree bends to the light. Our wants are that same kind of mechanism. They teach us the next step in our learning process, not the ultimate best step, but the next step in our learning process. And if it becomes like a craving, if it becomes what I would say the Buddhists describe as desire, where it's like, you're like a hungry ghost, that's a pretty good indicator that it's no longer a healthy want. It's not a pretty, it's an absolute indicator that we're not in a healthy want there anymore, that you're in an addictive or an obsessive want, and that there's a want, there's a deeper want that will satisfy you.

I guess as my final question for this episode, How can we relate to somebody in our lives who we have been relating to as selfish and relate to them in a different way, recognizing that they are there exploring what they want and then helping facilitate or support them in exploring what they want, even if what they currently want might be a short-sighted, hungry ghost kind of behavior while having our own boundaries?

I would say helping them facilitate only if they want. That, right? But the best thing is to do it in yourself, and if you do it in yourself, it becomes so clear with everybody else. And there's this cool little exercise you can do that'll really, really make this whole thing go away from just like intellectualizing. Like somebody right now is listening to this thing and they're like, well, actually, wants are this, and utilitarian, you know, philosophy says blah blah blah. All great stuff, don't get me wrong, but if you want to just make it real Just write down the want that you have that you don't want to admit to yourself, right? That you're most— you feel most guilty of, right? Some sexual thing or some money thing usually will, you know, be the right thing there, but whatever it is, some fame thing, something you have guilt about. And then just ask yourself, what's the need behind that want? And whatever you come up with, just ask yourself again, what's the need behind that want? And whatever you come up with Then just ask again what the need behind that want is. You just keep on going down and you will find that every single one of your wants is based on something essential that humans need to thrive. The wants are just strategies, right? The wants are just a strategy and we're going and learning our strategies to get to the place where we're— where we can be happy and healthy and thrive. And when you see that inside of yourself, all of a sudden it's really clear with everybody else. And then it's, it's just, you can not judge them for their, their wants, which is the biggest issue. Anybody who's doing those short-term wants that, that don't feel good, that are self-destructive, they, they feel guilty about them on some level. And so you can be with them in that without the judgment. And the judgment keeps that guilt in place, right? So you can be without the right, judgment. And you can say, well, what's actually going on here? And be with them in that. And that's the trick with yourself or with others, is to really— instead of saying this want is bad, it's really saying like, what is this want really want? How do I really satisfy it? What's going to make that 100% for me? And then it's starting to explore and experiment.

That's beautiful. Yeah, thank you, Joe.

Yeah, thanks.

It's been a great talk.

All right, talk to you soon.

All right, and here are some integration questions for this episode. How do you limit yourself by calling yourself selfish? How do you view others as selfish when they're taking care of themselves? What actions do you take when you are scared you won't be able to take care of yourself? All right everyone, thanks for listening.