#049: Selfish

The question, “What is your main purpose in life, Adam?” has stuck with me ever since he asked me. That came from a friend years ago. I have thought about that question many times along the way, and have had many different answers for it as well. After we cut past all the other things that matter in life first – God, family, relationships – I was challenged to dive deeper with my life’s work. It took me months to come up with an answer, but that was because I was making it too difficult. I looked over all of the subjects I had talked about and written about over the years, and as I looked at my different thoughts, I was finally able to put the answer to this question into words. So, here it is –

My mission in life is to challenge selfishness.

What I love doing is helping others find areas to show love and help others along the way. There are so many facets to living a great life, and this is the foundation of it all. If there’s one thing I am on this world to fight against, it is selfishness, because I have been there and have learned to hate what it turned my heart into and I see it in the world around me, too. It’s destroying lives, and people don’t even realize it. Listen, if your outlook on life is that it is all about you and it’s you against the world, then I have news for you. To live a healthy life, full of beautiful relationships and impacting lives, this cannot be your approach.

Everything is not about you. It’s about others.

To sum it up in one sentence, this message is my life work. It is the foundation for everything I believe in. People are all about more, more, more, never being satisfied with just giving themselves to loving people. I have spent years destroying selfishness in my own life, because it creeps in, until one day you look up and realize that you have been living the opposite of a better life. I have seen the destructive path that it can cause. I have seen it destroy lives, because the pursuit of those lives were after the wrong things, and it cost them dearly. Of course you can change and bounce back from anything, but it’s always best not to go through heartache and pain if you don’t have to.

So, spread love instead of selfishness, because if there’s one thing this world needs less of, it’s selfishness. Remember that as you search yourself, as you get ready for your day, as you encounter and embrace people, and as you end your day. People need you to show more selflessness than any other thing you could give away with your life.

My challenge to you today is to search yourself of selfishness and rid yourself of what has you focused on the wrong things in life. After you do that, don’t stop at just one area of selfishness, because there are probably be more. That’s how it works for me, anyways. It’s a daily walk my friend. However selfish you have been in the past, it will be a process, but it’s a journey worth embarking on.

Go, and change the world around you with fighting selfishness, today.