I suggest focussing more on what you can give in life, not on what you can get.
This focus makes me feel happier and more fulfilled. It’s more tractable for me to intervene on what I give than what I get. It is not so fun to interact with someone who feels “entitled” to you giving them things.
Examples of this:
- At work, my focus is on making my team better, not on the team making me better. I don’t lament the fact that my colleagues aren’t better, I instead search for ways I can help my colleagues become better.
- In social gatherings, I don’t wait for people to talk to me and get upset if they don’t show as much interest in me as I’d like, or don’t ask me about the things that I really want to talk about. I proactively go make people feel included and cared about.
- When I’ve hurt someone, I don’t focus on all the ways I wish they’d apologize or make reparations or what they’ve done wrong. I just straightforwardly own my contribution to the problem and try to make things better from my end.
- A weirder example: What is a nice gift I can give to myself today? Instead of e.g., feeling bummed about my shortcomings.
But Alek, you say, won’t “other-focus” mean that people take advantage of me, or that I’ll end up in unbalanced relationships with people who do not give to me as much as I give to them?
This is a valid critique. I’m not advocating for people to stop thinking about what they hope or expect other people will give to them. That seems quite healthy to do sometimes.
I’m just advocating that directionally for myself, it might be useful to increase my other-focus and tune down my self-focus right now. I’m also claiming that the ideal settings of other vs self focus might skew more towards other-focus than you’d naively guess.
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