How to Stop Being Selfish: 7 Tips

Selfishness means you care and think about yourself and your interests without consideration for the well-being or needs of others. Though human beings naturally exhibit some selfish behavior, especially during hard times, being self-centered or self-absorbed too often or intensely can become a bad habit that negatively affects your relationships with family members and loved ones.

According to mental health experts, selfishness stems from genetic predispositions and behavior learned during childhood development from family members. Mental health issues such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, depression, and anxiety can lead to selfishness. Growing up in a home where caretakers did not model the skills required to develop healthy relationships with others can also lead to selfishness.

“When you enter a relationship—any relationship—you bring with you an entire history about relationships. And that whole history shows up. And it will influence the way we communicate, the way we relate, the way we deal with conflict, the way we develop trust.” — Esther Perel

Recognizing your selfish ways may feel like hard work since it requires self-examination and admission of your behavior without condemnation. Here are some indicators that you might suffer from selfish tendencies:

1. 1. Need for attention: Because of their fragile egos, selfish people need to be the center of attention. They may act loudly, disruptively, or even aggressively in group situations to keep the attention on them.
2. 2. Passive aggression: Passive-aggressive behavior means privately criticizing others or attempting to damage their confidence to build up your ego. Passive aggression often stems from deep insecurities that manifest as a need for control.
3. 3. One-sided relationships: Selfish people will take up a friend’s time when they need to vent emotionally but rarely extend the same courtesy in return. You may have selfish tendencies if you frequently complain about your problems but have trouble listening to others talk about their stressors.
4. 4. Reject advice: If you’re selfish, you believe that you know everything and your opinion is the only one that matters. Because of this quality, you may have trouble taking advice or direction from others, especially when it runs counter to your ideas.
5. 5. Trouble compromising: Self-centered people need to be in control at all times to maintain their sense of self, so compromising with others becomes extremely difficult. An inability to compromise in a relationship contributes to conflict.
6. 6. Inability to admit wrongdoing: Selfish people struggle with acknowledging when they’re wrong. Even if the facts clearly state that you are wrong, you find a way to deny reality and flip it back to the other person.

Selfishness can have destructive and painful effects on your daily life, including the following:

1. 1. Conflict in relationships: Because selfish people must protect their fragile egos at all costs, they lash out at any perceived threat, which, because they believe every event is about them, occurs frequently. If you’re self-centered, your relationships will feel fraught with frequent strife and tension.
2. 2. Inhibits growth: Selfish people have trouble listening or learning from others, making it challenging to grow emotionally or intellectually. When you think you already know everything and are right one hundred percent of the time, you believe you have nothing to learn.
3. 3. Overly sensitive: When you’re selfish, you feel easily insulted, even when the issue at hand has nothing to do with you. Due to low self-worth, selfish people believe most of the events around them are about them or directly affect them. You may take small slights or insensitive slip-ups from a friend as an intentional attack, blowing the incident out of proportion and damaging the relationship.
4. 4. Self-hatred: Self-centered people often suffer from fragile egos and poor relationships with themselves, which manifest as a highly critical voice in their heads, judging them at every turn. To maintain their ego, they act in a superior, self-centered way, which gives them a temporary feeling of value but pushes away the very people with whom they seek to connect.

If you suspect you might be selfish and want to change your ways, try one or all of these helpful tools and see for yourself if your relationships improve:

• Be a better listener. Non-selfish people have well-developed listening skills and engage with others in a compassionate, open way. Active listening means paying attention to the person speaking without interrupting, making eye contact, nodding, and asking follow-up questions to send the message you hear and understand.
• Challenge your biases. If you find yourself frequently offended by what other people say or do, take the time to examine your biases before reacting. You might ask yourself if the person is having a bad day or if your perception of their tone is inaccurate. “Self-awareness involves the idea that you can look at yourself and how you are acting and reacting in relationships,” Esther Perel says. “Watch out not to fall into the trap of constricting narratives about yourselves, about your relationships, about others, that don’t allow you for actual relational self-awareness.”
• Commit yourself to selfless acts. Selfless acts mean you do nice things for someone else without expecting anything in return. Helping others through volunteering, caregiving, or donating money to charity will help build your self-esteem and improve how you view yourself and others.
• Learn to compromise. Learning to incorporate the opinions of others and let go of what you want as an individual for the good of the group will teach you about the value of community. Compromise might include taking advice, seeing things from another perspective, and learning to think critically while setting aside your emotions.
• Let others make decisions. Instead of trying to control every aspect of your relationships, such as what you do for fun or where you’re going for lunch, let others make decisions. Trusting others in decision-making develops trust and better relationships. Learn more about building trust with Esther Perel.
• Practice empathetic visualization. If you don’t understand another person’s behavior, try putting yourself in their shoes by imagining what they might feel in a particular situation before reacting. Problems are rarely black and white, and imagining how others feel will make you more compassionate and empathetic in your relationships. “When we get stuck into too much thinking about ourselves,” Esther says, “it sometimes can stand in the way of our ability to think and understand others.”
• Show interest in and celebrate others. If you’re used to making yourself the center of attention, try shining that light on someone else for a change. Giving compliments, celebrating achievements, or asking friends, family, or coworkers questions about their lives helps develop trust and mutual admiration.

Selfish people can drain your energy and your patience. If you find yourself forced to deal with a self-centered person, try one of these tips:

1. 1. Avoid people-pleasing behavior. People-pleasers are easy targets for attention-seeking behavior. If you are a people-pleaser, selfish people may take advantage of your tendency to put others first. Consider your role in the dynamic if you find yourself constantly attracting self-centered people.
2. 2. Limit interactions. If the selfish person is a coworker or family member who you can’t avoid altogether, limit your interactions and set boundaries. You might restrict telephone conversations and outings to a timed length or create a “time out” agreement to prevent outbursts.
3. 3. Make new friends. Find friends who reflect the values you admire and engage in activities that make you feel safe and nourished. Volunteering, hobbies, sports, and outdoor activities are great ways to recharge and meet like-minded people.
4. 4. When it gets too bad, cut ties. Spending too much time with selfish people can damage your self-esteem and drain your energy. If your relationship with a selfish person severely impacts your quality of life, it may be time to let go of the relationship.

Self-care means recognizing your limitations and caring enough about yourself to meet your needs. While selfishness can cause real damage to you and others, self-care has the opposite effect. The critical differences between self-care and selfishness include the following:

1. 1. Selfishness diminishes energy, while self-care replenishes. Selfish behavior harms the perpetrator and everyone around them, robbing all involved of their self-worth and compassion. Self-care is a healthy behavior that replenishes your energy so that you can be present in your relationships.
2. 2. Selfishness isolates, while self-care connects. Unless they suffer from people-pleasing behaviors, most healthy individuals recognize and naturally try to avoid selfish people. Self-centered people isolate themselves through their behavior and have trouble recognizing why. People who practice self-care understand that everyone has their limits, makes mistakes, and needs a break sometimes and can extend that self-compassion to others.
3. 3. Selfishness saps self-esteem, while self-care builds it. Selfish behavior stems from a poor vision of one’s self which self-perpetuates, meaning the more you practice selfish behavior, the worse your self-esteem becomes. Restoring your physical and mental health helps you build self-esteem and increases the likelihood of expressing compassion for others.

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