The Selfishness Paradox

The Selfishness Paradox explores how true power and personal growth come not from focusing on yourself, but from helping others. By giving, you gain more than you could by taking.

Most people think of selfishness as something straightforward: you act in your own best interest, you take what you need, and that improves your life. It seems obvious. But there’s a paradox embedded within selfishness—something almost hidden. The paradox is this: the most effective way to improve your own life is to stop focusing on it. The more you help others, the more your own life tends to improve. This isn’t some altruistic platitude. It’s the mechanics of how the world actually works.

In my experience, the most effective way to grow—both personally and professionally—comes when we temporarily suppress our desires and insecurities and focus on doing things that make other people's lives better. It’s not the route most people expect, but it’s the route that works. The irony is, if you’re driven purely by selfish desires, you’ll often undermine your own goals. The truly selfish approach is almost counterintuitive: it's about being less selfish.

Power Through Service

Let’s start with something concrete. When I was younger, I volunteered to teach grammar school students. At first, it seemed like I was doing them a favor, but as I got into it, I realized that helping these students gave me something too: confidence. By helping others, I unknowingly developed my own skills, and that gave me power—real power, not the kind that comes from titles or hierarchy, but the kind that comes from competence and the ability to serve. Over time, this experience led me to become a professional lecturer, a career I never imagined when I first stepped into that classroom.

Here’s what I realized: power isn’t about being in charge. It’s about being able to make a difference. When you improve the lives of others, you start to gain influence. Your value increases, but not in the way most people expect. It's not just about being "useful"; it's about developing the skills, insights, and competence that allow you to solve real problems.

The selfish person, in the traditional sense, waits for the right opportunity or the perfect moment to rise to power. They believe power is something bestowed upon them—something that comes with position or recognition. But power isn’t a gift. It’s something you grow into by making yourself indispensable. And the only way to become indispensable is by helping other people.

Action Precedes Power

A mistake people make is waiting for permission to be useful. They think they need a job title, a promotion, or someone else to give them the green light before they act. But opportunities to help are all around us. The truth is, you don’t need a position of authority to start making a difference. You don’t even need to be asked. The key to unlocking the paradox of selfishness is to realize that you have to offer help before anyone asks for it.

Look at entrepreneurs. The most successful entrepreneurs didn’t wait for customers to tell them what they needed. They saw the need before anyone else and created solutions that no one had asked for yet. They were proactive. They acted, and through that action, they built influence and eventually power. Consider Steve Jobs: no one was clamoring for the iPhone before it was invented. Jobs and his team didn’t wait for a request—they anticipated the need, created a solution, and the world came knocking.

The same applies on a personal level. You don’t wait for someone to ask for your help. If you see an opportunity to do something useful, you step in. And that’s where the selfishness paradox comes in: by focusing on others—by solving their problems—you build the power and influence to improve your own life. It’s a cycle that feeds on itself.

Fear and Insecurity Block Progress

But if it’s so simple, why don’t more people do it? The answer is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, and fear of overstepping. Most people are afraid to offer help unless they’re asked because they’re worried it will be taken the wrong way, or worse, that they’ll fail and look incompetent. In fact, fear of failure is one of the most powerful forces that prevents people from stepping up.

This fear manifests everywhere. You see it in workplaces where people keep quiet about an idea that could improve a project because they’re afraid of how it will be received. Or in personal relationships, where someone sees a loved one struggling but hesitates to offer help, fearing they’ll be rejected or perceived as overbearing.

But those who overcome this fear find that they become stronger. The act of helping itself makes you better. The more you offer solutions, the better you become at solving problems. Confidence builds through action. I’ve seen it over and over in my own life: every time I’ve overcome the hesitation to offer help, even when it wasn’t asked for, the result has been growth—not just for the person I helped, but for me.

Ironically, the fear that keeps people from offering help is exactly what keeps them from gaining the power they want. You can’t grow by standing still, and you can’t gain influence by waiting for someone to give you permission.

The Trap of Misused Power

There’s a dark side to power that’s acquired without competence. We’ve all seen examples of people who’ve reached positions of influence but lack the ability to use that power effectively. When people chase power for its own sake, without first learning how to serve, they often fail. They might rise to the top, but without the competence built from helping others, they crumble under the weight of their responsibilities.

Think of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos. Holmes was granted enormous power—money, influence, and the backing of major investors. But she hadn’t built the competence needed to justify that power. She was driven by ambition, but without the skills to deliver on her promises, the company collapsed. She didn’t fail because she lacked vision or drive. She failed because she didn’t have the competence that comes from truly understanding how to solve problems for others. She sought power directly, but in doing so, missed the real path to success.

True power comes from competence, and competence comes from service. It’s a cycle that can’t be short-circuited. When people try to skip this step—when they grasp at power without first becoming competent—they fail. And they fail not because they’re not ambitious, but because they haven’t mastered the paradox of selfishness. They haven't realized that to gain power, you first have to give it away.

Helping Others is the Smartest Strategy

If you think about it, helping others is just smart strategy. People talk about thinking long-term, but the best long-term strategy is to make yourself useful to other people. This is where intelligence comes into play—not just raw IQ, but the kind of strategic thinking that sees opportunities where others see obstacles.

Take, for example, open-source software developers. Many of them contribute code without any expectation of immediate financial reward. On the surface, it seems like a selfless act, but in reality, it’s a brilliant strategy. By helping others, these developers showcase their skills, build a reputation, and form connections that can lead to paid work later on. They don’t think of themselves as sacrificing for others. They see it as an investment in their own future.

This is why selfishness, in its traditional sense, is a trap. The more you hoard your time and resources, the less you have. It’s only by giving freely that you start to receive more. The more problems you solve for others, the more you learn, the more you grow, and the more value you create for yourself.

It’s the same in relationships. People often approach relationships thinking about what they can get—love, support, validation. But the strongest relationships are those where each person focuses on what they can give. By putting the other person’s needs first, you create a dynamic where both people feel valued and supported. And in doing so, you get what you wanted all along, but indirectly.

Conclusion: The Selfishness Paradox in Action

The paradox of selfishness is that you gain the most by focusing the least on your own immediate desires. Power, influence, and personal growth come not from taking, but from giving. This isn’t about self-sacrifice; it’s about smart strategy. By helping others, you create a cycle of growth that benefits everyone involved, including yourself.

People think they need to wait for power to make a difference. But the reality is, by making a difference, you create power. The world doesn’t reward those who wait—it rewards those who act, who help, and who create value for others. The truly selfish thing to do is to help as many people as you can. Because in the end, the person who benefits the most from that help will be you.