The part that stands out to me is .."I occasionally feel some resentment regarding the selfish behavior around me"

I can relate to your post. I am the type of person who pampers my family to the extreme. I actually go out and start my daughter's car in the morning and scrape her windows! I have to laugh at the idea of my Mom doing that for me when I was a senior in high school. Not that I expected her to, and my daughter doesn't expect me to, either.
It's all about me. I am doing it for my own satisfaction, viewing myself as this helpful wonderful Mother when I do it. and that is totally cool.. cause my daughter loves it. BUTTTTT....

It can turn ugly.. when us "selfless" types start feeling sorry for ourselves and enter.. "After All I do for you" syndrome.

Those horrible times when I start feeling sorry for myself and think.. I do all these things for you and look how you treat me" lol

I realize.. Nobody is asking me to do these selfless things.. so it's not fair of me to build up resentment, cause I realize I'm being sort of like an emotional blackmailer.. doing all this nice stuff in order to get what I want... adoration and gratitude. those are the wrong reasons to be doing selfless acts. kwim??

I'm unsure of what you mean by "doing more things for myself". That's the part I can't relate to, because while I pamper my family, I always pamper myself as well.. as in while I have been up and doing great things for my family since 5:00 am.. they are now working hard at work and school. and I am sitting here on the computer, but I hope I helped you with the feeling resentful part!

I dont think you should change who you are. Where i am from everyone was encouraged to live for others, to contribute something to the world instead of focusing on own needs.
I really liked that idea.
Find someone who shares your life's philosophy and you will be happy with that person.

I wanted to elaborate on my post.

I don't stop doing selfless acts. I just remind myself that I am doing them for me. It's not fair to expect a certain action from others because of something we want to do.. that may or may not have been clear from what I wrote before.
If you are feeling overtaxed and resentful.. it's not about making THEM do selfless acts... it's about you decreasing your selflessness a bit and finding other ways to boost your self esteem and peace.

Your post couldn't have came at a better time.. as I could follow a bit of my own advice today!

Aronia... I usually love your advice, but what is up with that?? He is suppose to just ride off into the sunset because he is feeling resentful towards his family today? That is wack. sorry. He will never find a person or people who are going to share his philosophy 24/7... all humans are flawed and his wife and daughter are not 24/7 selfish... they have many good points. I can type this without even knowing them. cause that is the truth about people. Every single one of us is a mixture of bad and good.

Hey, bigguy. Since you're doing these self-less acts for self-ish reasons, you ARE in effect being selfish, aren't you?

I think the real motivation here is being selfless...in an effort to control others, to elicit the desired response, which of course doesn't always happen. I don't see any reason why you should change this "character flaw", just recognize that the outcome, from helping others, may not always be what you want or expect, and that's OK!

I don't know. I was so self-less in my marriage, I have quite enjoyed learning and finding things that make me "tick" since my divorce.

A healthy me makes me a better mom to my son. I make sure to take care of me, have my needs met, because a broken mom doesn't do much for her kid.

Selfishness can be more a point of view based on opinion and assumption than an objective measure based in hard fact.

One thing in your post that stands out to me is your statement 'I do not like selfishness'. If you drill it down, is it really what they are or aren't doing, or your emotional reaction based on what you're telling yourself about what they are doing?

That is, you are measuring what they are or aren't doing against your ideal of what they should or shouldn't be doing. You are holding them up to your expectations based on your opinions and assumptions on how they should act.

I'm not criticizing now, but how you're framing this seems kind of black & white. Either one is selfless or selfish. Doesn't sound like you are allowing for a lot of middle ground. I might be wrong, but that's the feeling I get.

I can relate to what you're saying. I too suffered from this. For me it stemmed from my mother constantly calling me selfish and guilt tripping me into doing things (if you really loved me you would make dinner for me, not be so selfish and self involved). To tell that to a 12 year old in my opinion is a little much...but I digress. The only way I started to finally break free of this was when I too started to be truthful with myself as to what the selflessness was causing in my life... resentment, judgment, bitterness, unappreciated, being taken advantage of, low self esteem, etc. In the end I don't believe God or anyone who loves you wants that for you. You are worthy of having your heart full of happiness and having the intentions behind your selflessness be that of love. To me it was an ego thing, my intentions of being selfless were not always based on unconditional love for the person, it was so I no one would be able to say I've not acted selfless in every opportunity. I also never felt I had excuses for being what I perceived was selfish behavior. Perception on that was very skewed. As I grew in love, I started to pinpoint where that opinion of "selfishness" stemmed from. I started to realize that taking care of yourself is not selfish, making time for yourself is not selfish it's nurturing. Also giving people chances to walk all over you, without you having the right intentions behind your giving actions is not healthy and very "people pleasing". My husband would always help me by saying I want to see you become a strong willed person who doesn't necessarily feel like she's giving up other great qualities such as compassion, loving, empathy, etc. Through his support I realized being selfish is all about bad intentions behind it ... being nurturing to ones self is something totally different and comes from a good place.

I hope my insight has helped. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to add.

God bless.

I think it bugs me you view this as your flaw. Is it a flaw because other people told you it was?

It definitely is an ego thing. Past memories programmed us that if we are 'selfish' we would get punished and/or rejected. The story is constantly replayed to protect us from punishment and rejection by being more and more selfless.

If we dig deep enough, we see a lot of opinion of others and assumptions of ourselves built into these stories. We invest them with power by placing our faith in them, turning them into core beliefs.

By and large they are not true. They are constructs of ego.

Omg the ego! LOL

Kidding JASG hahaha

I can't help it if the little guy is sticking his nose into every aspect of our lives! :-)

@christysays, I feel the resentment because I see how people get hurt by selfish acts and the selfish person has no regard for how the people affected feel. As long as they get what they want out of the situation, then it's all good. I really don't like that and do harbor some resentment when I see people treated poorly like that.

@KOOL, I don't do selfless things for selfish reasons. The only desired response I'd like to see if that people are happier (less stress, etc.). If they are not happier or less stressed then it is their problem. I've done what I could.

@JASG I don't feel that I would be punished if I was selfish .... I just don't like seeing people taking advantage of others in a selfish way (no regard for the feelings of others).

@TTMI, nobody told me that it was a character flaw, I just feel that it is that way for me ... when I have my kids telling me to be more selfish it makes me wonder what that means (a discussion with my daughter is in order to find out how she defines "selfish").

I do take time for myself and do the things that I need to unwind and recharge my batteries, etc. But I don't need a lot of this time and I don't see taking this time as being selfish. What I see as selfish, is doing something that hurts others and not caring.

I had thought as I was typing that I might be missing the point.

I should have asked first off how you define selfish and how you define selfless!

It's a hard thing to define for other people. I assumed you were talking about family members. Are you saying that your wife and daughter are committing selfish acts that are hurting other people?

Maybe some specific examples of scenarios that are upsetting you would help me give more helpful advice

I'm still not sure exactly how you are defining selfish behavior. It can be very flexible. Does 'no regard for the feelings of others' mean they do something directly harmful to another, or just they have their own plan or agenda that doesn't fit in with another's?

For instance, person A wants to go to the beach and wants Person B to go with them, but Person B has other plans and is unwilling to change their plans and Person A is hurt and unhappy.

No regard for the feelings of others seems kind of loaded. Seems like it places the emphasis for feelings on another. An expectation others are responsible for our feelings.

That is so true, simple guy!

for some reason I can't stop thinking about this post! lol

Do you think that when we view our friends and family as being selfish that it's just another way of saying they are not doing what WE want them to do?

I think simple guy made it clear ( the way I'm thinking about it anyway) that we make others responsible for OUR feelings.

I can give a perfect example from my own life. Last night our household was in a tense state with my daughter filling out paperwork for college in the fall.. a stressful time for so many complex reasons, right?? I was running around sorting through tax papers and personal papers etc. later that night I saw I had missed a text from my sister. The phone had been sitting next to where my daughter was working on her college forms. I asked.. "Did you hear my phone earlier" She said "Oh yeah".. I said.. "It would have been nice of you to give me the heads up" "I always give people the heads up in any way I can to help out" I was irked. She said "it's not my problem to listen for your phone" I went on to list all the nice things I do for her that "Aren't my problem"
I then decided to let it go. I thought of this thread. decided my feeling were hurt and that I was feeling unappreciated and mistreated.. I took some deep breaths, said a couple of prayers and focused being grateful.. This morning I pretended it never happened.. & yes I still ran out at 6:30 a.m. to start her car..lol