Prepare to rethink everything you’ve been taught about selfishness. It’s time to embrace your selfish side, and in doing so, unleash your leadership potential. This episode of the How’d It Happen podcast is a deep-dive into the misunderstood concept of selfishness and its surprising benefits for leaders. Drawing from Mike’s book, “Owner Shift”, Mike debunks common misconceptions about selfishness and lays out five reasons why it’s not just okay but crucial to be selfish as a leader.
In this honest, thought-provoking episode, Mike explores how a healthy dose of selfishness can better your time management, enhance your decision-making skills, bolster your balance in life, optimize your resource allocation, and even facilitate emotional detachment. Yes, you heard it right—emotional detachment, an often-overlooked key to long-term success and impact. So buckle up and tune in to this unconventional journey through the realm of selfishness. Whether it resonates or ruffles your feathers, this episode will spark some serious self-reflection. As always, your opinions and feedback are welcome. So let’s get started, and together, let’s maximize the greatness inside you today.
Check out the video version of this episode below:
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Episode transcript below:
0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta
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Hey everybody, welcome back to this Friday episode, this free thinking Friday episode of the how’d it Happen podcast. So glad that you are here today. And today I’m going to be talking about why it’s okay to be selfish and I know that’s like a weird thing because people are told from a very early age that it’s bad to be selfish, but I wrote my book Owner Shift with the subtitle how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck, and I think it’s one of the most important and underrated and underappreciated things that a leader can be, and that is to be selfish, but not in the way that we’ve traditionally been taught what selfishness is, and I’m going to explain that in these five tips about selfishness that I’m going to give afterwards. But keep an open mind. Try to put away the sort of idea that you have about what being selfish in the traditional sense means, which is basically always putting yourself before anybody else. That is not what I’m talking about here and I’ll explain it in these five tips. So these are five reasons or tips why I think it’s okay to be selfish, and the fifth one is going to surprise you a little bit. So let’s run through these. The first thing is time management. So being selfish with your time can lead to more focused efforts on high impact tasks, the things that you do that really move the needle and benefit the business, or your life, for that matter. So that’s number one time management.
Number two is quality decision making. This is one of the things I see most get away from entrepreneurs or high impact people leaders is that their decision making quality is, let’s just say, suspect, and for me, you have to know what you want before you have any chance of getting it. Prioritizing your own judgment and intuition often leads to better decisions, rather than getting swayed by every piece of external advice or by the other thing that I think gets in the way of so many people, and that’s speed. Like I have to have an answer, I have to make a decision very, very quickly. Being selfish with your decision making, I think, gives you an edge. I got a real, significant edge, particularly when you’ve been selfish with your thinking enough to know what you are actually looking to accomplish.
Number three is balance. For me, balance means that I’m adjusting my time, my energy and my thinking to what’s most important and necessary right now. Sometimes that’s family, sometimes that’s work, sometimes that’s friends and sometimes it’s me. Knowing where I need to be and what I need to focus on leads to better long-term business and personal health. Number four is resource allocation. So being selfish with company resources and me as being a part of the company, is a company resource, just like you are Capital, human resources, etc. Increases focus, sharpens alignment and collaboration and increases return on investment almost every time.
And here’s the fifth one, the surprise detachment. Most people think that emotional investment is essential for success, like consistent, constant emotional investment. But being selfish enough to emotionally detach from work can actually help in making objective evaluations about long-term success planning. See, I think what being selfish does is it gives you a long-term perspective, and when you have a long-term perspective, you are going to be much better prepared to be impactful, because you know exactly where you want to end up and you know that it’s not crucial, it’s not even necessary, it’s not even optimal to try to get there tomorrow or the next day. What’s important is that you can remain detached from every single second of the day, but you are completely committed to the long-term success. So those are five things why I think it’s okay to be selfish.
I hope you agree with some of them. Here they are again, just to summarize One is time management, two is quality decision making, three is balance, four is resource allocation and the fifth one the surprise is detachment. So let me know what you think. I hope that this time has been valuable for you and I think hopefully you got something out of this free thinking, thought about selfishness today and why it’s okay to be selfish. I love having this dialogue between us and you know it seems like I’m doing all the talking. I’m actually doing some of the listening too, because I listened to what I think you’re saying back to me. I know that sounds kind of weird, but it’s true.
If you like the podcast or you like what I’m doing here, please follow, share it with your friends, talk about it, mention it to me also, reach out if you’ve got something you wanna share with me, some ideas you have about selfishness or any other thing that I’ve talked about, or any guests that I’ve had on the show. Let me know what you’re thinking and I’d be happy to hear from you and correspond with you and learn from you. So I’ll leave you with this Please maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today and make your future your property, something that you are very, very proud to own. Until next time. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer, if you’re really into it. Leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate.
Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere. If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential, order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy and, if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name, mikemalatesta.com. You do that right now. Put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.
