Self Help is NOT Selfish

"It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson


This quote is one of the last text messages I received from one of my very best friends before he left on a two year mission for his church. Since the summer before our senior year, he has been telling me to take better care of myself: emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I've never put my needs aside as a way of being self destructive. More than anything, putting others first has just felt like the right thing to do. Helping others has been ingrained in my nature since before I can remember. When I joined leadership in the fourth grade, being selfless became second nature through different service opportunities and staying extra hours at school.

By my senior year of high school, I was elected student body president. Disclaimer: being student body president is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I love the people I worked with, the friends that I made, and the opportunities it gave me. That being said, it also was the most difficult thing I have ever done. Nobody really mentions the extra hours put into the job. Getting to school an hour early to prepare things for class that day, having meetings nearly every day, missing class to meet with the Deans on the next school event, and most importantly, doing my very best to make my council and my school happy. It was a daunting task to please a group of 50 student leaders, let alone 2,000 students in the school. However, I gladly did this. If I needed to pull an all nighter to make agendas or write goal packets, I did it without questioning it. If someone needed me to pick up someone else's slack, I did not hesitate. Why? Because to me, it was just the right thing to do. What I hadn't realized is the toll it would take on me.

My friend (the same one who sent me the quote) used to text me to remind me to get enough sleep. Once when I was relaxing on the weekend, I got an angry call about student council business, and he tried to take the phone away from me and stand up to the other person for me. I'm hardly a pushover, but I certainly have a habit of giving too much of myself. Other than taking a minor hit to my grades senior year, giving so much of myself really didn't negatively impact my life.

This was completely different in college.

Within the first month of my freshman year of college, I became president of my dorm, I joined a sorority, and I landed an internship with ASUN (the student government at my school). Compared to how thin I spread myself in high school, this seemed like nothing. And for a while, it really wasn't a big deal. All of it was very fun, and very manageable. But then life started getting in the way. A person very near to my heart had attempted suicide during the middle of my first semester. This event made me begin to miss my friends back home so dearly. Not having my friends with me started making my anxiety get bad again. These anxiety attacks kept me awake at nights, and my sleep schedule (or lack thereof) was terrible. Home life wasn't exactly picture perfect. The list grew longer, and all of these problems began to have a snowball effect. However, despite all of this, I stuck with my responsibilities for the entire first semester. I told myself it would be selfish to completely quit everything. My desire to be a part of some bigger picture was slowly destroying me.

Then it hit me.

How hypocritical is it of me, to do community service, to go around helping others, when I wasn't even working on helping myself? I realized that self help is NOT selfish. Focusing on myself is not a bad thing.

Which explains my current situation. I am just over a week away from starting my second semester of college, and I have zero responsibilities. I am not president of my dorm anymore. I am not running for a position in ASUN. Most importantly, I am not investing my time and energy into things that I can't fully dedicate myself to. And that's okay.

I'm not saying everything is perfect now. In fact, I feel unbelievably lost. I have more time to myself than I've had in over a decade. I have more time than I even know what to do with, but I can start using that time to find my faith again, to help my anxiety, to improve my grades, and to hang out with my friends more, rather than having to act like everyone's "mom".

So, to all of the people with big hearts, selfless minds, and the crippling fear of disappointing others, never forget that you are so important! So, start treating yourself as well as you treat the people around you that you care for, because who knows, in losing your sense of self, you might find an entirely new version of you. You, 2.0 :)



Special thanks to my friend, Harrison. If you ever read this, know that you've made me a better person. You'll always be the ugliest of trees. 
Check out why he's leaving for two years here!

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