I welcome you to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learners' featured post. Over the years one thing I have come to realize is that there are certain goals you cannot achieve until you decide to be selfish or you make some selfish moves; if you keep being selfless and extending a helping hand, then you will be left with just dreams, and making your dreams a reality becomes very difficult. I don't think doing this once in a while, especially when you have a particular goal you want to achieve, makes you selfish, but doing it all the time and without considering how others will feel or how heartbroken they will feel is what I consider selfish.

I am not a selfish person; I have had people, friends, and family reaching out to me for help, and I find myself feeling restless even if I was able to help, and maybe I could not meet up with their expectations, and I find myself worrying about how they will come out of the tight spot they are in that made them reach out in the first place. The other day my sister needed 10 thousand naira, and all I could spare at that moment was 8. Despite offering the help I could offer at that time, I kept calling her to know if she was able to get the remainder of the money she was in need of.
Being selfless is good, but sometimes if you yourself don't earn enough, it has a way of affecting you. Sometimes last year I needed to save up for my final-year project, but then at the same time when I was able to raise some money for that, I would have family or friends calling to ask for help, and since I am not the type to have and then deny people help, I found myself going back to the little I had been able to save up so I could help them with the hope that before the deadline for the project I would be able to cover it back, but then I realized I was running out of time.
Realizing that I was running out of time, I had to embark on a little selfish journey. Though it was hard when they called for help, I told them I didn't have any spare at the moment and they should bear with me since I had to save up for my final year project; if I did not do that and I kept extending a helping hand, maybe I would not have been able to carry out my final year project when my mates were carrying out theirs. Maybe I would have been stranded and forced to not carry out my final year project at the right time due to the lack of funds or the money to finance it.

It was at that point that I realized that sometimes to achieve a dream or a goal, you have to put yourself first because if you don't, those dreams stay dreams and are never actualized. Putting yourself first once in a while is not so bad, but making it habitual is when it becomes bad.