(Note: This is written through self-reflection, I didn’t do any study about this)

Loyalty has always seen as a positive aspect of me. However, as all things in life, if you take it to the extreme, it might end up hurting you.

It’s hard to say no.

As someone who is known to say yes to many things and offers, even though it makes other people happy, sometimes it becomes a bit difficult to turn them down.

Being loyal means that other people trust you with their given task. It’s great to have someone’s trust in the task that you need to do. Whether it’s doing something like a chore, or being a friend and be for them when things are getting rough.

Therefore, when you have someone’s back, it’s natural for the other to have yours, right? Right?

Selflessness

When you help out people just out of generosity and don’t ask for anything in return, then it becomes so much more difficult to ask someone for something. If being that loyal is a habit of yours, then you probably wouldn’t ask for much in return. Is that a good thing? I wonder.

The good side of this is of course that you can save lives. Now if you don’t ask for anything in return, then it would be so much more difficult to navigate through life right? People might misuse your efforts if you always ask for nothing in return.

Especially nowadays where selflessness is seen as a super positive aspect, you end up being afraid to ask for something in return if you go too far with it. The opposite of selflessness is selfishness. Which is seen quite often as a bad thing which I disagree on.

You unlearn the skill of asking for help, or asking for a reward. Then it might become more and more scary to actually ask for it because you might feel guilty. And then you might become independent (which is not okay in this case because it’s done for the wrong reason). (This is self-speculated)

Fear of losing people around you

Doing everyone a favor with nothing in return is done for two reasons.

1. You do it out of generosity
2. You are afraid

If someone important to you in the past has left you behind, then it’s just so logical that you’re so afraid of seeing that happen again later on in your future life.

Being afraid to lose someone makes you feel stuck. You feel stuck because you want to explore your own interests and life but you can’t let go of this pain of being left behind. Thus, you’d rather throw away your own role in your movie to put give your friends the spotlight.

So, how do we solve this?

You are the star of your show

Being on stage a couple of times where I show the audiece what I can play on the piano is still one of my favorite moments. Since I’m in that spotlight, there’s no one who is more in the center of the show than I am.

And then you perform.

Start activities that is only for you, because you enjoy doing that specific activity. If you don’t know what to do, then I suggest you to look up on Google or something and see if you can find some inspiration over there.

And when you do, there’s a big chance where you meet people that have common interests. Where it doesn’t matter if you need to help them or not. It just becomes more fun to hang out with them and you don’t need to give yourself away.

Be more selfish, and learn how to turn people down if you don’t want to do the activity. People seem to be less disappointed and more acceptable about it than you might think.

When you do help out other people, see if you can negotiate in some way. This is a really interesting skill to learn since we live in a society.

You don’t have to feel guilty for asking someone to scratch your back.