In this short motivational monologue, the speaker shares an anecdote from a corporate event where a colleague, a psychologist, described his struggle with a purely self‑less mindset that left him feeling guilty whenever he took time for himself. The speaker critiques the binary view of actions as either selfish or self‑less and proposes a third, middle space he calls “self‑charged” – a form of self‑care that replenishes personal energy so one can be more genuinely self‑less later. He illustrates self‑charging activities such as walking, prayer, meditation, and unwinding, and argues that recognizing this middle ground can reduce guilt associated with self‑care. The talk concludes with a call to listeners to identify their own self‑charging actions, especially as the weekend and Mother’s Day approach, wishing everyone a positive, re‑energized experience.
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. Here's your moment of yes for Friday, May 6th. Mako? Yes. Mako in the house. All right, guys, it is May 6th. So, I wanted to share kind of an idea that we sort of fleshed out the other day. I was working with a guy at a corporate event. We actually weren't in session, we were out of session. I was having a conversation. It was me and my colleague who's a psychologist and this guy. And he was basically sharing that he struggles in doing anything for himself. His mode is 100% selfless, to always give of himself to a point where it's a detriment to himself, but he understands that. So, we were talking about the concept of there's selfless and selfish. So, that idea of like, you need to take care of yourself in order to be able to help others. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't help others, but he's still like— Anytime if I have the opportunity to give, you know, instead of taking some time for myself, he goes, I'm going to give to others. And so it was that idea because he was like, anytime I do something for myself, I see it as selfish. And so the idea that came about, and hopefully it's helpful for you guys today, is that if we just look at our actions in terms of something is selfish, selfish, Or selfless, right? There's a lot of room in the middle that we're leaving out, right? So if I do something that's selfish, which is basically only for me without any regard for others, yes, that's selfish. If I do something that's selfless, which is giving myself to help others, yeah, okay. Those are the two extremes, if you will. But what about in the middle, the space of self-care? Or self-charged, right? I like to call it self-charged, right? If I do something that's selfish, it's only about me and not necessarily doing anything for anyone else. But then the next step is I'm going to do something for myself that self-charges me, right? It self-charges me. I know that when I go for a walk, it charges me. When I take time for prayer or meditation, it charges me. When I take time to unwind, it charges me. So that I can be more selfless, so I can be more giving of myself to do the things that I'm passionate about, to help people in a way that makes me feel good about myself, not so that I'm selfish, right? So if we selfish, selfless, in the middle, there's a lot of space to self-charge, to self-care. And so if we can expand our concept of what it means to take care of self, we can avoid a little bit of the guilt that comes with this idea of thinking anytime that we're taking time for ourselves that it's selfish. And so we can denote between the two. Is this selfish or is this self-care so that I can self-charge? What do you need to do today? And are you— do you ever notice for yourself when you're doing something that you feel is self-care, do you feel selfish for doing it? Curious, throwing that out there. And since we're moving into a weekend, hopefully you're finding time to self-charge. And to all you mothers out there, all you mother lovers, have an awesome, awesome Mother's Day. To all you mothers out there and to all of you expressing motherly qualities, have an awesome weekend, everyone. That's your moment of yes.
