Episode 234 Transcript: The Sacred Art of Being Selfish
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Nancy Levin
Welcome back to the Nancy Levin Show. I wanna begin by asking you something. When was the last time you did something purely for yourself? Without justifying it, without earning it, without making sure everyone else was taken care of first? When was the last time you chose yourself without apology?
For most of us, that’s an uncomfortable question because we’re taught that choosing ourselves is selfish and that selfish is bad, selfish is wrong, selfish is something we should never be. But what if we’ve had it all backwards? What if the very thing we’ve been taught to reject our selfishness is actually the key to our wholeness?
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What if being selfish isn’t a character flaw, but a form of self respect? Today, we are going to reclaim a word that has been weaponized against us for far too long.
We’re going to break the spell, and I promise by the end of our conversation, you’re going to feel lighter, clearer, and much more rooted in your power. So stay with me.
So I get that today’s topic is one that might make you flinch a little bit at first. I get it. The word we’re diving into today carries a lot of weight, a lot of conditioning, a lot of shame because today we’re talking about the sacred art of being selfish.
Especially during the holidays. Yes, you heard me right. Selfish. A word we’ve been trained to reject.
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A treat we’ve been told is wrong or shameful or indulgent or cold. A quality that if we possess it must mean there’s something fundamentally flawed about us. But here’s what I wanna explore with you today. What if selfishness isn’t the enemy we’ve been told it is? What if it’s actually one of the most honest, grounded, necessary parts of being human? What if the real problem isn’t that we’re selfish, but that we’ve been taught to deny our needs so thoroughly that we’ve lost touch with ourselves entirely?
Let’s begin breaking the spell. Let’s start here by naming what we’ve been conditioned to believe. From a very young age, most of us learned that being selfish is bad. It makes us cold, uncaring, narcissistic, unworthy of love.
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We learned that good people put others first, always without question. We learned that our needs should come last if they’re even considered at all in this conditioning.
It ramps up during the holidays. We’re told to give, to sacrifice, to show up no matter how depleted we feel. We’re praised for putting everyone else first and silently judged for doing the opposite. The holiday season becomes this proving ground of our goodness, measured by how much we give and how little we ask for in return.
But here’s what I want you to hear, and I mean, really hear. Selfish and selfless are not opposites. They’re two sides of the same coin. I’m gonna say this again. Selfish and selfless are not opposites.
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To be truly selfless. To genuinely give from the heart, you must be deeply rooted in yourself first, your needs, your truth, your limits, your longings, your humanity. Otherwise, your giving becomes performative. It becomes hollow. It becomes transactional. It becomes resentful. Think about it. Have you ever given something, your time, your energy, your presence when you really didn’t want to? When every fiber of your being was saying no, but you said yes anyway because you thought you should?
How did that feel? Because that’s not generosity, that’s self abandonment. And self abandonment dressed up as selflessness is one of the most damaging patterns we perpetuate. True generosity requires a full tank.
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You cannot give from a place of fullness if you never allow yourself to receive. If you never allow yourself to rest, if you never allow yourself to have needs.
So this season, this holiday season, this season of your life, I invite you to stop disowning your selfishness and start exploring what it might look like to honor it. I wanna support you in reframing this entirely because being selfish doesn’t mean you don’t care about others. It means you care enough about yourself to show up in your wholeness.
It means you stop outsourcing your worth to how much you give, or how little you need. It means you stop performing martyrdom. Start practicing alignment. It means you take responsibility for your own wellbeing instead of waiting for someone else to notice you’re running on empty. Because here’s the truth that nobody talks about.
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When you deny your needs, you don’t just harm yourself, you harm your relationships. When you consistently abandon yourself, here’s what happens. You say yes when you mean no. Then you resent the person you said yes to. You show up to gatherings, half present, going through the motions, wishing you were anywhere else.
You overextend yourself and under recover, running yourself into the ground. You keep score, you build resentments. You wait for people to notice your sacrifice and feel hurt when they don’t. And eventually all of that self abandonment leaks out. As irritation, as passive aggression, as guilt, as resentment, as withdrawal. And the people around you, they can feel it, even if they don’t name it.
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But when you honor your selfishness, when you take responsibility for your needs, everything shifts. You give because you genuinely want to, not because you have to. You show up fully present, or you don’t show up at all. You communicate clearly instead of expecting people to read your mind. And your yes means yes, your no means no, and there’s no resentment attached to either. So being selfish is actually the most responsible thing you can do, because it ensures that when you do choose to give, it’s real, it’s clean, it’s from the heart. And that kind of giving, that’s the only kind worth doing. I’m going to bring in a metaphor that I often use in my work: the moon.
So we see the moon in the sky, and it might be a crescent, a sliver, a half moon, a full moon, but the moon itself is always whole.
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No matter how much of it we see or don’t see, the moon is waxing or waning. It’s revealing and concealing. And here’s the thing, the moon doesn’t apologize for a shadow. It doesn’t try to be perpetually visible. It cycles through the phases, and no matter how much of it we see or don’t see, it’s always whole.
And we are just like the moon. We are always whole, even when parts of us are hidden and there are aspects of ourselves we reveal proudly: our kindness, our compassion, our generosity, our warmth, and these are the traits that get praised.
These are the parts of us that we feel safe to show, but there are other parts. The selfish ones, the tired ones.
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The ones that want to say no, the ones that need space, the ones that don’t want to perform, that we keep tucked away in our shadow. We exile these parts thinking they make us unlovable or wrong or too much or not enough, or hide them away hoping no one will see.
But the truth is wholeness includes all of it, the light and the shadow, the giving and the receiving. The showing up and the stepping back. The selfish and the selfless. And just like the moon, we are not here to be visible all the time. We are not here to be endlessly available, endlessly generous, endlessly on.
We’re here to honor what needs light and what needs rest. We’re here to move through our cycles, our seasons, our phases. We’re not meant to be everything to everyone all at once.
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You are meant to be you fully, unapologetically, and cyclically. Sometimes radiant and visible, sometimes quiet and withdrawn, sometimes giving, sometimes receiving… all of it is valid. All of it is necessary. All of it leads to wholeness.
So when you feel that pull to retreat to rest, to choose yourself, that’s not selfishness gone wrong. That’s wholeness showing up. That’s your inner moon, honoring its natural rhythm. Now here’s the paradox that I see play out over and over again. When we try to deny our selfish parts, we don’t actually become more generous.
We become more manipulative, more depleted, more resentful. Disowned selfishness doesn’t disappear, it just gets distorted.
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When you reject your own needs, they don’t go away. They go underground and they start running the show from the shadows. You might find yourself giving in hopes of being loved back. You say yes when you mean no. Secretly hoping they’ll finally see your worth. You over-function, then feel invisible and underappreciated when no one notices. You keep track of everything you’ve done for others. You’re building a mental ledger of who owes you what. You give, but with strings attached, even if you don’t consciously realize it.
This is what happens when we reject a part of ourselves. It doesn’t disappear, it doesn’t die. It just gets twisted as we overcompensate for its existence. And then we wonder why our relationships feel transactional. Why our generosity feels heavy. Why we’re constantly exhausted but never fulfilled.
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But when we reclaim selfishness as sacred, when we own it, honor it, integrate it, we step out of performance and into truth.
And we give because we want to, not because we have to. We rest without guilt. We say no without shame. We stop earning our place at the table through exhaustion. We stop proving our worth through self-sacrifice, and here is what is beautiful. When you own your selfishness, you actually become more trustworthy because people know that when you say yes, you mean it.
When you show up, you’re really there. When you give, it’s genuine. There’s no hidden agenda, no silent scorekeeping, no resentment waiting to erupt and come out sideways. Owned selfishness is integrity, disowned selfish is manipulation.
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Choose integration.
So you might be wondering what this looks like in practice.
What does sacred selfishness look like, especially during the holiday season? So I’m gonna give you some examples and I want you to notice what comes up in your body as you hear these. Here are some perfectly selfish things you are fully allowed to do: Declining an invitation to preserve your peace. Leaving a gathering early because your body says it’s time. Not participating in a gift exchange to avoid financial stress or overwhelm. Taking a solo walk when family tension rises. Ordering takeout instead of cooking an elaborate meal. Saying I need help instead of doing it all yourself. Choosing not to host this year.
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Spending the holiday alone if that’s what you need. Setting a firm boundary around political or religious discussions. Turning off your phone for a day.
Notice how it felt to hear those. Maybe some of them had you feel uncomfortable or maybe your mind immediately jumped to, “I can’t do that. People would be so upset.” That discomfort, that’s the conditioning, that’s the part of you that was taught to be small, accommodating, and endlessly available. But I want you to hear this clearly. Those are not acts of disconnection. They’re acts of reconnection with yourself. Every time you choose yourself, not against someone else but for you, you teach others that it’s safe to do the same. You model what self-respect looks like.
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You give permission for others to honor their needs too. Because here’s the thing, when you consistently abandon yourself to please others, you’re not just hurting you, you’re also teaching the people around you that self abandonment is what love looks like. That sacrifice is the currency of relationship. That the needs of others should always come before their own. But when you honor your boundaries, when you choose yourself, when you practice sacred selfishness, you show them a different way. You show them what’s possible when you care for others and care for yourself.
It’s not an either or. It’s a both. And it’s possible to be generous and have boundaries. It’s possible to love deeply without losing yourself, and that is the greatest gift you can give.
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So here’s where nuance becomes everything, because the truth is not black and white. It’s not either or, it’s both.
And you can be selfish and generous, self-honoring and available, firm and compassionate, boundaried and loving. You don’t have to choose between being a good person and a whole person. In fact, the more you own your needs, the more capacity you have to show up in authentic love because your giving isn’t coming from fear or guilt or obligation. It’s coming from truth.
So this holiday season, I invite you to release the binary thinking. Release the idea that you have to be either selfless or selfish, either giving or receiving, either present or private. Embrace the both, and you can love your family deeply and still need space from them.
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You can be grateful for invitations and still decline them. You can cherish traditions and still change them. You can honor your commitments and still renegotiate them. You can be generous with your time and still protect your energy. This isn’t contradiction, this is complexity. It isn’t failure, it’s maturity. It isn’t selfishness, run amuck, this is integration.
You are like the moon. Remember, not just the glow, but the shadow too. Not just the revealing, also the concealing. Not just the expansion, but also the contraction. All of it together at once. That is wholeness. So I invite you to take a moment here to check in with yourself.
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I’m gonna offer you a few questions and if you can grab a journal, otherwise, simply listen and notice what arises.
So the first question is. Where am I abandoning myself to meet expectations? What am I doing right now or planning to do that doesn’t actually align with my truth? The next question is: What am I doing because I think I should, not because I want to? Where is obligation driving my choices instead of genuine desire?
Question three: Where might a selfish choice actually bring more integrity to my holiday season? What would shift if I gave myself permission to choose me? And then finally: What would it feel like to stop performing and start honoring myself?
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What becomes possible when I let myself be whole shadow and light, selfish and generous, human and holy?
Let your answers guide your boundaries, your schedule, your presence. Let them inform how you move through the rest of the season because the answers are already inside of you. You already know what you need. You simply need permission to honor it.
So let’s make this tangible. Let’s bring this into your daily life.
Here are some practical ways to practice sacred selfishness. Not just during the holidays, but all the time. First start each day by asking yourself, what is the most self-honoring choice I can make today? What is the most self-loving action I can take today? We’re not talking about your to-do list, we’re not talking about what other people need from you.
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We’re talking about you. What is the most self-loving action and most self-honoring choice? The next is to pause before saying yes. When someone asks something of you, an invitation or requests a favor, don’t answer immediately. Take a breath, check in with your body. Does this feel like a true yes, or does it feel like a should?
And if it’s a should, it’s a no.
The third is to block out white space in your calendar, non-negotiable time that belongs to you and only you. Time that isn’t for productivity or accomplishment or taking care of others. Time for just being, for resting for whatever you need. Protect that space like it is sacred because it is.
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Fourth,practice saying no with warmth. You can be kind and firm at the same time. You can say, I wish I could, but I can’t this time. That doesn’t work for me, but I appreciate you thinking of me. I’m keeping my schedule simple right now. Notice, no apologies, no over explanations, just clarity.
Fifth, let yourself enjoy something quietly. Just for you, without sharing it on social media, without telling anyone about it, without justifying it. Read a book, take a bath, watch something you love, sit in silence, let it be yours alone. These aren’t indulgences. They’re rituals of self-respect and they teach your nervous system that you are safe in your own care.
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What’s happened? For those of us who are so mapped to external validation, we only do things that will give us the gold star, the approval, the applause. We don’t do the things that no one can see because we don’t give ourselves enough value. So I invite you to do things just for you. And guess what? You can give yourself your own stamp of approval.
So let’s come back to the moon one more time here. There’s no shame in the shadow. There’s no apology in the quiet. There’s no guilt in being whole. This season, this holiday season, this season of your life, let’s stop striving to be endlessly available, and instead, let’s be real.
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Let’s root in our wholeness instead. Let’s be selfish because wholeness includes the part of you that wants to rest, to receive, to retreat, to say no, to choose you. You are not too much. You are not not enough. You are just right exactly as you are. Light and shadow, giving and receiving, present and private, all of it together whole. So as you move through this season, remember you don’t owe anyone your depletion.
You don’t owe anyone your exhaustion. You don’t owe anyone proof of your goodness through self-sacrifice. What you owe yourself is care. What you owe yourself is honoring. What you owe yourself is wholeness. Everything else is a choice.
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If you know someone who’s struggling with sacred selfishness, someone who’s been taught to apologize for their needs, someone who’s running themselves into the ground trying to be good enough, please share this episode with them.
Sometimes all we need is one voice telling us we’re allowed to be selfish. You could be that voice for someone today.
I’m so glad you decided to join me, and I hope this episode offered you a new lens, a way to reclaim the parts of yourself that have been wanting to come home. And as you move through this season, may you give yourself permission to be whole, to reveal and conceal, to glow and rest, to be selfish when you need to be.
Not because you’re flawed, but because you’re human. Because, just like the moon, you are always whole. Until next time, take good care of you. Stay curious, stay clear, and above all, stay true to you, and I will see you here next time.