No matter how much we want to believe that this world is beautiful and full of kind people, the reality is selfish and mean people do exist in this world.

And we often struggle to figure out a way to live among such people.

So we either reply to them with selfishness or we respond to them with kindness. Earlier, I have talked about how replying to such mean people with kindness is actually the best way to deal with them.

Today, I want to show you the bright side of having selfish and mean people in your life. While I know you may find it hard to see this bright side, especially during the time when such people are mean to you, but if you detach yourself from the event and look at the bigger picture you will see this bright side, too.

Once you see how these selfish people can actually help you improve your own life, you may not be as hard on them as you usually are.

So, here’s how you can expect to benefit from the selfish and mean people in your life :

They Help You Understand the Nature of Selfishness

When you see someone acting selfishly, often you can see the greed in them – in their eyes, in their face, in their body language. You can see for yourself how selfish thoughts change the appearance of the person whom it controls and how acting selfishly makes a person look evil to others.

And if you meditate upon the reason why selfish people act with selfishness, it helps you understand the nature of selfishness itself and then you can uproot it fully from your own life. If you live with mindfulness then you recognize such selfish thoughts instantly as and when they arise in you, and you can choose to discard them if you want to.

They Help You Grow and Make You Tough

Dealing with mean people is a part of life. You had to deal with them when you were a kid in school. You have to deal with them even now at work, and you may find them even within your own family. By living your life among such people, with time, you learn to find ways to handle them and yet not lose your peace of mind.

They also make you tough and prepare you to deal with other selfish people in future. So, you learn to keep yourself cool and detached even when you see others acting selfishly, and you learn to stay in the state of kindness even when others around you are full of selfishness.

Remember, each time someone acts to you with selfishness, they actually help you grow and improve your practice of mindfulness.

They Help You Reflect and Meditate Upon the Truth About Life

If you look deeper, you can see that every living being is at least a little selfish by nature. Selfishness is essential to survive in this planet. Whether humans or animals we all need some selfishness within us to live and thrive here.

Sometimes, those acts of selfishness of others around you forces you to look deep within yourself, so that you can find the root cause of selfishness and eradicate it from your own life. And this may even push you towards the practice of meditation, which can help you to overcome not just selfishness but every other kind of negativity, too.

They Help You Realize What Not to Do to Others

When you realize how bad you feel when others act selfishly towards you, you also realize that others feel the same way when you act selfishly towards them. This understanding can help you give up your own selfishness so that you don’t hurt others the way others have hurt you.

When you stop doing the wrong thing to others, you automatically start to act the right way with them, and when this happens, you can be sure that you are moving in the right direction in life, too.

They Help You Identify Your Ego

When you see others acting selfishly you start to feel anger and restraint inside you. At that moment, you want to resist the other person from doing what he or she wants.

But when you are angry, who is it that’s really angry? And when you want to resist, who is it that really wants to resist? Is it your whole body, or is it your mind, or is it just your heart? The moment you start to identify who is it that really gets angry, you see that it’s nothing but the ego inside you which is angry. It’s your thinking in terms of ‘I’ that really makes you angry.

If you learn to be mindful of such moments which make you angry, you can identify your ego for what it is – just a creation of your mind, and then you can practice more mindfulness and meditation to remove this ego, this feeling of I’ness, completely from yourself.

Be Thankful to them…

Be thankful to the selfish people in your life. Without them you may grow, but your rate of growth will be slow. Your true strength of mindfulness is tested under situations which make you angry, jealous, and hate and resist others.

If you can stay calm and steady when everyone else around you hurts you with their selfish acts and mean behavior, you can see the true face of selfishness itself and then avoid it from forming in you.

If you can see the selfishness in others, and yet remain kind yourself, what harm can their selfishness do to you? Nothing at all.

Only you can decide how you want to deal with selfish people in your life. You can reply them by acting selfishly yourself or you can try to understand selfishness for what it is and let it go from your mind forever.

By being thankful for everything you have in life, even those moments and events when others were selfish to you, you learn to see life for what it is, and this makes your own path clear to you.

Thank you for reading this article. I hope after reading this you not only overcome selfishness in your own life, but also learn to forgive others for their acts of selfishness.

And if you find this post useful, then please share it with others and help me spread the message of peace and kindness.

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