I’ve never thought about it until now, the only times when I ever felt fulfilled is when I’m doing something for others and helping them achieve their goals. I myself have goals and dreams of my own but I’ve never feel motivated to work towards them for myself, it just feels like a boring chore.
And thanks to that, my life is an absolute mess now, I know what I should have done for my own good but I just couldn’t find the will to do it without someone forces me, and sometimes even that doesn’t work.
I’m not saying I’m a good person, I’m anything but a saint, I might enjoy helping others but for some I just don’t give a damn.
Rule #2 from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life:
The basic idea is that if you’re high in agreeableness, ie you strongly exhibit the “mothering” instinct of taking care of others, then one of the most effective ways to take care of yourself is to pretend that you, yourself, are one of those other people.
Also, my own recommendation is to do a lot of therapy and spiritual work. Uncover and resolve any childhood trauma you absorbed around “being selfish”.
Kids are naturally selfish. When parents don’t know how to make good boundaries, they tend to silently stew then explode at the kid, giving the kid a basic equation forged into their subconscious that goes like:
“If I focus on my needs it hurts Mommy and she stops loving me”
There’s a great book on this topic called Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child
Doing the exercises in that book helped me transform — over the course of about 5 minutes of ugly crying — into someone who has a much easier time serving myself in balance with serving others.