Are You Serving Yourself First, Serving Others, or Being Self-Serving?

Are you serving yourself first or last? Or do you dismiss the importance of serving yourself first as being selfish? On the other hand, do you ever focus on putting other people’s needs ahead of your own?

Take a breath, step back, and ask yourself the three questions encompassed in the title of today’s blog post. Instead of being pulled in all sorts of directions, create the balance you seek.

In my recent post-pandemic consulting conversations, I listen and guide clients like you. These clients feel professionally exhausted and compromised but do not know why. Sound familiar? As we drill down on root causes we simultaneously expand upward. Our goal is a more innovative and realistic professional framework for the future. These three questions are continuously part of the process.

Many of us are exquisitely customer-focused on serving others. That is the only mantra imprinted onto our professional DNA.

• However, what happens when that focus is no longer viable for you? However, you are in denial. You are not alone.
• Yet, your professional ethic is built upon the belief that serving yourself first, before you serve others, is straight-up selfish.
• Consequently, you dismiss the importance of serving yourself first. Over time, you lose enthusiasm, energy and the professional purpose you built your career and businesses on.
• When you dismiss the importance of serving yourself first as a mission-critical element for better serving others, you confuse serving yourself first with being self-serving (which is selfish).

If you do not pause each day to understand how you can help yourself serve yourself first, then you do not show up as your best self when serving others. Read that sentence again. Then incorporate that statement as your daily mantra.

Serving other people takes energy and purpose. Honor how well you are able to serve yourself first before you start serving others. Otherwise, you do yourself (and them) a disservice. As a result of honestly and truthfully serving yourself first, you are better able to realistically calibrate how well you will serve others throughout the day.

You bring a version of your best self into each day you serve others when you start that day by serving  yourself first. Evaluate the impact of honoring and managing your own self-expectations first, so you feel less compromised and exhausted by the end of each day. Accomplish each daily goal, one millimeter at a time. To work with me on accomplishing what is new, next, and changing, moving forward, contact me here. 

I catalyze cross-functional, collaborative, profitable, and sustainable solutions across value silos. | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Complex Problem Solving | Speaker, Consultant, Coach |

• Need to stop spinning your wheels professionally? Searching for a speaker focused on doing the smallest things with the biggest impact to get you towards what is new and next? Then engage me to present a One Millimeter Mindset ™ program! Delivered virtually or in-person.
• Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset™ programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more successfully. Become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable as you create and implement innovative and robust business outcomes together. She is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). Babette is a member of the SHRM, PMI, the National Speakers Association (NSA). Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in soft cover and digital formats on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.