Accepting Selfishness

By Leo Gura - March 18, 2026

Please don’t misunderstand me. I speak a lot about the virtues of selflessness. After a while of listening to that, it will start to seem like selfishness is evil and wrong. This leads to a devious trap, where you enter into a negative relationship with your own selfishness. A crucial aspect of truthfulness is accepting yourself exactly as you are. If you are selfish, that’s how you are, that’s the truth. In the future you can change but right now you are however selfish you are. That can be ugly to look at and accept. Because it is ugly. However, it is better to accept it than to repress it.

Give yourself permission to be selfish. Don’t guilt-trip yourself about it too much. “I am selfish, this is just my situation. Okay.” Just sit with that.

I place many high ideals upon you in this work, like not chasing money, not chasing sex, not chasing luxury, being truthful, being loving, being selfless, being healthy, etc. You are probably very far away from those ideals. Be careful trying to fake being those things. If you’re a selfish asshole, just be selfish asshole. Be it, but also watch yourself being it. Watch without judgment. If you continue watching, as time passes you will start to naturally improve.

Remember, the journey to selflessness is very long. It will take 50+ years, so keep that in mind, pace yourself. If you need to be selfish to survive, so be it. That’s reality, that’s life. Mostly what I speak against is excessive and needless selfishness. For example, I understand if you’re selfish because you’re an Incel and never slept with a girl before. Then selfishness makes sense. But what I strongly criticize is people who are selfish way past their basic needs. For example, I will be highly critical of a pickup artist who has slept with 100+ girls and still continues to be a selfish exploiter of women for even more sex. This is beyond the pail. Or, for example, a multi-millionaire who keeps hoarding more money, cars, and houses. Like Andrew Tate. He has no need to be as selfish as he is. It’s just pure ego at this point. Once you have your basic needs handled, you effort should go towards developing selflessness. But if you can barely have sex, barely earn money, barely take care of yourself, then you have no other option but to be selfish.

Being selfless is a kind of luxury that assumes your basic survival needs are handled. It is okay to bend a few rules to bootstrap yourself, to get yourself rolling. However, if you are already relatively successful, you have a much higher responsibility for integrity and truthfulness.

Look at yourself completely truthfully and honestly. How selfish are you? And then just accept that as your situation. Don’t try to cover it up or rationalize it. You will improve just by doing this.

What you will notice if you observe yourself truthfully is that you are selfish in ways that you simply cannot stop. You could develop out of it, but right now you cannot stop. That’s the truth and it’s okay. We are all in this situation to various degrees. You have to be patient with yourself in this process because development cannot happen in a few weeks. It takes years.

The technique here is: spend a lot of time observing and contemplating your own selfishness, but do it without judgment or emotional drama.

Selfishness is such a monstrously powerful and intelligent force that you cannot tackle it head on. Wrangling selfishness is like surfing a tsunami. It requires tact.

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