The importance of helping yourself before attempting to help others
With so many sick and suffering people in the world and so few willing to reach out and help them, it is a beautiful thing to see people helping others. One thing that we must be mindful of when helping others is not to become so focused on other people’s problems that we neglect to maintain our own well-being. Whatever message of hope or inspiration we may have for others can become diluted and lose its merit if we are not living it ourselves.
Sometimes, we can become so caught up with diagnosing the psychological or spiritual malady of others, that we completely dismiss our own shortcomings. It becomes very easy to concentrate so hard on other people’s downfalls without realizing that we are only pointing out in them, what is still sick inside of ourselves.
Only when we stop trying to “fix” others before we are healed and begin to concentrate on our own healing; do we realize that we were merely magnifying everyone else’s problems to keep from confronting the demons within our own hearts. No matter what we do, it is imperative to remember that we are never done growing. Once we start believing that we are above others in any way, we are surely trapped in a delusional thought pattern.
When we forget that essentially, we are all a part of the same whole and members of a large body; we start believing that others need to catch up or that we are more spiritually advanced than them. Once this thought form is fed it can be very difficult for anyone to convince us of our own wrong-doings, because we cut them off intellectually, believing ourselves to be their superior.
A person caught up in this egoic pattern cannot grasp and accept that we are all exactly where we are supposed to be. They believe that it is their mission and purpose to change others to be like them, instead of allowing others to be where they are. They stop seeing their own faults and believe that the people around them are to blame for any mistakes that they do make.
It is crucial that we who have been charged to help others, first help ourselves. We must never lose sight of the fact that we are all imperfect and we can all use help sometimes. When we put our own well-being first, it puts us in a much better position to be of service to others.
Featured image by Ben Blennerhassett via Unsplash.com