Finding The Middle Ground

It is very difficult for me to find the appropriate balance between selfishness and selflessness. I often find myself at one end or the other. Discounting when I'm drunk, and thus have enough problems already to be worried about the self-interest in my behavior (I'm largely a self-interested drunk...thoughts on my drunken behavior will be a recurring theme, but are tertiary to today's discussion). Nevertheless, I have often been told that a big reason for most of my failures in life is a lack of self-confidence and the requisite selfishness that entails. The problem with that is that I can't crank up the selfishness without offending someone I care about, thus leading to them being miserable and thus me being miserable also. So, we have the cycle...in order to be happier, I need to be more selfish...but in being more selfish, I fail to be happy. I attribute this to three things.

1. I obviously haven't found a good balance point yet...my self-interest scale has very few settings between on and off.

2. Because my general setting favors selflessness, I create relationships whereby I create a pattern of putting myself last. Thus, even a minor change in my personal setting can have a major effect on the relationship. There a couple of those that jump to mind.

3. I have created in myself a far too great concern about the well-being of others. Putting my foot down on smaller issues now may help in the future, which is usually the opposite of my usual tack, which is to brush off small things.

A deep and troubling question, and one I don't know the answer to.

Interestingly, when I'm drunk, I am more talkative and generally more pleasant, but I also can be an annoying idiot. Have to work on that balance too.

Oh well...I'm exhausted and that was a lot of self-evaluation for a short post.

Peace