Is focusing on developing our talents selfishness?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
If we focus on our talents, others say that we are selfish. How to respond? Selfishness is when we do our own things at the expense of others. That means, I would say, selfishness, going back to the example of different feasts in different plates, I would be selfish if somebody is eating something, I seize their plate and I start eating that.
But if I am eating my own plate, that’s not selfishness. We all have needs and I am just fulfilling my needs. So, if somebody else is starving and I seize their plate and eat it, that’s selfishness.
So, if I am concentrating on developing my talents, that’s not selfishness. That’s intelligence. But it may come off as selfishness because we may not socialize the way we were socializing earlier.
We may not spend time with others the way we might have been doing earlier. But then you look in any field, look in any field, people who have achieved anything substantial, they have been focused. They’ve been focused.
Without focus, you can’t achieve anything in life. And focus, focus means when we do one thing, that means it implies that we don’t do other things. Because we are finite beings.
So, if people start thinking of focus as selfishness, that is their mistake in understanding. For any field, for us to be successful, we need to focus. If somebody becomes a champion cricketer, they have to practice for hours and hours, for months and years to become a champion cricketer.
And then they may have so many social occasions. Friends go for parties and this and that. They can’t do that.
Those who are fit cricketers, they have to do their workout, they have to do their fitness routines. They can’t just hang around with people all the time. So, success in any field requires focus.
So, when we are using our talents and focusing on developing those talents, that’s not selfishness. That’s basically intelligence. That’s what commitment is all about.
Commitment requires saying no to certain things so that we can say yes to certain things. And if we properly explain to people that this is my time for doing these things, and at other times I’ll be available, but this time I’m going to do these things. So, we can’t reject people entirely from our life, but we do have to focus.
So, without focus we’re not going to achieve anything. And that’s not selfishness. That’s actually intelligence.
Yes. As you told about,