Excerpt from The Drewsletter

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If you’ve read my books or blog posts for any time, you know that I am a strong advocate of the power of being selfish.

Certainly “selfish” is a label that most of us bristle at, usually because it’s been used as a weapon against us at some point. The potential shame of calling us selfish silently drives a great deal of human behavior.

Instead of taking the reigns of your life by following what feels better and trusting that this is the only path that leads to true happiness (instead of seething martyrdom), there’s a tendency to allow the preferences of others to dictate your choices.

In writing my book Let It Go, I discovered Oscar Wilde’s brilliant definition of selfishness:

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

***

 

My family just returned from a beach vacation in Florida.

As soon as the kids were up and fed, my family walked to the beach. A little boy named Michael Dean walked up to my son, wanting to play. I looked around for his parents and spotted his mom a hundred yards down the beach doing yoga.

Michael Dean was the same age as my son (4), so my first thought was to project my fears onto the situation.

I wouldn’t let Alex that far out of my sight on the beach…

One big wave is all it would take…

As the kids played together, I kept looking over at the mom to see if she noticed where her son was. I never saw her looking at her boy or acknowledge that my wife and I were acting as her de facto babysitters.

Nope. She was too focused on her damn warrior pose form to care about us.

 

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