In my experience this is something that we generally find very hard to do. We invariably find it easier to be concerned about others than ourselves even if in doing so resentment arises.

Why indeed should this be so?

‘Love thee one another as thee love thyself’, is a quote from the Bible. But often guilt arises within us when we find ourselves weighing a situation up from our standpoint and putting ourselves first and thereby loving our ‘self’.

Christmas time, of course, is the time of year when we are specifically encouraged to think of others. Sometimes, however, it is our HEADS and NOT OUR HEARTS, which embrace the idea of thinking of others.

The meaning of Christmas is fundamentally LOVE. But there are different shades of ‘LOVE’ as it were — kindness, caring, giving our time to helping others…etc. A smile often goes a long way to making someone else feel good about themselves and costs us nothing.

A smile, however, comes naturally and without effort when we feel good within and when, indeed, we have been looking after ourselves and giving to our ‘selves’ in way which makes us feel happy.

This, of course, is NOT a question of comparing our needs to another’s, merely of loving ourselves so that we feel good within and taking the time to smile comes naturally and spontaneously.

It is perhaps, only when we are listening to our concerns about our SELF that we can indeed, be SELFLESS rather than SELFISH because when we are looking after our ‘selves’, having given ourselves permission so to do we feel no guilt or anger at others.

PONDER POINTS: The way I feel on reading these words is …… I feel I do look after myself when …. I feel that by looking after my ‘self’ I am a nicer, kinder person because ….