The best way to feel blessed yourself is to be a blessing to someone else today!
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| Love your neighbor as yourself! Bless someone else, and you will be blessed yourself! |
In our hyper-individualized American culture, the cultural wisdom tells you that if you want to feel better about yourself, you should engage in "self-care." And "self-care" often means being intentionally self indulgent and self centered.
But once you have a healthy level of self-respect and proper boundaries, focusing excessively on yourself will actually make you less happy and less fulfilled.
Of course, if you don't have a healthy level of self-respect and proper boundaries, so that others push you around and walk all over you without any repercussion, then that is a separate issue that needs to be addressed.
A message if self-care may sometimes be needed to correct for low self-esteem and codependency, where a person feels obligated to put themselves last in any and every situation, no matter what. Some people were raised with an unhealthy belief that enjoying nice things for yourself is somehow sinful. (Usually, this belief is encouraged by selfish and narcissistic religious leaders who don't practice what they preach.) Sometimes, people do need to learn how to say "No!" to the unreasonable and selfish demands of others and to say "Yes!" to their own legitimate needs and desires. After all, you can't obey Jesus's teaching of loving your neighbor as yourself, if you don't love yourself!
Assuming you do have a healthy self-respect and have proper boundaries in your relationships with others, then engaging in "self-care" will only take you so far.
Healthy Self-Respect and Proper Boundaries Help You to Help Others More Effectively
A message if self-care may sometimes be needed to correct for low self-esteem and codependency, where a person feels obligated to put themselves last in any and every situation, no matter what. Some people were raised with an unhealthy belief that enjoying nice things for yourself is somehow sinful. (Usually, this belief is encouraged by selfish and narcissistic religious leaders who don't practice what they preach.) Sometimes, people do need to learn how to say "No!" to the unreasonable and selfish demands of others and to say "Yes!" to their own legitimate needs and desires. After all, you can't obey Jesus's teaching of loving your neighbor as yourself, if you don't love yourself!
If that is the case, find a Christian leader whose life you would want to emulate. Pick someone who is genuinely happy and who has healthy, happy, mutually rewarding relationships. In other words, find someone who both talks the talk and walks the walk. Once you have identified some people like that, ask them to counsel you. As Proverbs 11:14 says, there is wisdom in having multiple good counselors.
Learn to love yourself, but don't stop there. If you love yourself, you're only doing half of what Jesus taught when he said to "love your neighbor as yourself."
Once You Respect Yourself and Have Healthy Boundaries, Look for Ways to Show Your Love for Others!
Assuming you do have a healthy self-respect and have proper boundaries in your relationships with others, then engaging in "self-care" will only take you so far.
If you focus only on yourself and your own needs and wants, you will paradoxically become less happy and less fulfilled in life.
As it turns out, the best way to make yourself feel happier and more fulfilled is to do something nice for someone else! Of course, this is what all the world's major religions have taught for centuries. Now, research in the field of positive psychology is confirming that teaching!
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells the parable of The Good Samaritan in response to a series of questions from a religious leader. When asked about how to gain eternal life, Jesus responds with a question: what does the Law say? "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . . and love thy neighbor as thyself." (Luke 10: 27.) So the religious leader asked a followup question: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus responded with the story of a man in desperate need of help; his own countrymen pass him by without giving aid, ostensibly because of religious considerations (if the man was dead, they would be ritually impure for temple services). But a Samaritan, a member of a lower caste and a natural enemy of the injured man, stopped to help him. Jesus said that this is an example of how we should be towards others: the best way to show our love for God is to perform acts of loving kindness towards others. (See also, the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46!)
In John 12:24-25, Jesus declares something of a paradox: if you try to hang on to something, you will lose it; but if you let go of it in order to serve God by being a blessing to others, you will gain more than whatever you gave up. How does this work? How can you be better off when you sacrifice for the good of others?
In addition to the spiritual blessings promised by Jesus (as well as the leaders of the world's other major religions), we experience verifiable emotional blessings when we act kindly towards others!
As it turns out, the best way to make yourself feel happier and more fulfilled is to do something nice for someone else! Of course, this is what all the world's major religions have taught for centuries. Now, research in the field of positive psychology is confirming that teaching!
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells the parable of The Good Samaritan in response to a series of questions from a religious leader. When asked about how to gain eternal life, Jesus responds with a question: what does the Law say? "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . . and love thy neighbor as thyself." (Luke 10: 27.) So the religious leader asked a followup question: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus responded with the story of a man in desperate need of help; his own countrymen pass him by without giving aid, ostensibly because of religious considerations (if the man was dead, they would be ritually impure for temple services). But a Samaritan, a member of a lower caste and a natural enemy of the injured man, stopped to help him. Jesus said that this is an example of how we should be towards others: the best way to show our love for God is to perform acts of loving kindness towards others. (See also, the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46!)
In John 12:24-25, Jesus declares something of a paradox: if you try to hang on to something, you will lose it; but if you let go of it in order to serve God by being a blessing to others, you will gain more than whatever you gave up. How does this work? How can you be better off when you sacrifice for the good of others?
In addition to the spiritual blessings promised by Jesus (as well as the leaders of the world's other major religions), we experience verifiable emotional blessings when we act kindly towards others!
We are social creatures. There are no indigenous people anywhere who live in isolation: every people group throughout the world originally lived in small tribes. For a person who ventured out on his own, there would have been a lot of hungry predators waiting to eat him! We are physically one of the weakest animals on the planet; in one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat, we would be quickly killed by most of the large predators out there. But what allowed us to survive and thrive as a species was our ability to work together (in addition to our opposable thumbs). Consequently, our instincts and emotions are designed to get us to seek companionship, since relationships with other people are so critical to our survival.
Our brains are "wired" to reward altruism, since acts of kindness towards others strengthens our relationships and social bonds. Because of the type of creatures we are, doing good to others makes us feel subjectively happier and more fulfilled!
Check out this video below (embedded from YouTube) of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar discussing the scientific evidence for the benefits of being kind towards others!
Spirituality and science agree: in order to live a fulfilled and rewarding life, we should perform acts of loving kindness towards. So go and be a blessing to someone today! Not only will you bless the other person, you will also bless yourself!
Check out this video below (embedded from YouTube) of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar discussing the scientific evidence for the benefits of being kind towards others!
Spirituality and science agree: in order to live a fulfilled and rewarding life, we should perform acts of loving kindness towards. So go and be a blessing to someone today! Not only will you bless the other person, you will also bless yourself!
