One more widespread problem that can last a lifetime, literally, is a tendency to put others’ needs ahead of your own. It becomes a habit and can go unnoticed. Usually as a result of childhood experiences, many people spend untold amounts of time and energy trying to ensure others are happy and, especially, that others approve of what they do. It’s exhausting, worrying and holds a lot of decent people back.
Ultimately it is a problem that feeds on itself, because we can never please all the people all the time – but we can certainly keep on trying.
Disapproving parents or even over-encouraging parents who remind children of sky high expectations though a certain type of praise can sow the seeds. It’s then rewarded with thanks and gratitude, further reinforced by demanding or manipulative people and cemented in place by the force of habit.
Happily though, it can be changed:
Firstly, lose the ambivalence: Looking after yourself is not selfish. Call it what you like, there are, of course, ways to balance getting what you want with consideration of others. The philosophers have been there, done that: Adam Smith’s “harmony of self-interests” referred to the economy, but it sums up social existence equally well. Kant makes a similar point in terms of individual authenticity being enabled by shared values.
Secondly, get down to specifics: A calm look at real examples in your own life, no matter how apparently small or insignificant, helps clarify what you need to change and what you do not. Firstly, identify what you are doing to ignore or relegate your own needs, then plan what would work better, then do it. Guilt and raised anxiety will surface, but with practise and with space to focus on whether you are making the right changes, relief and liberation can follow.