This is the biggest delusion of them all and is where all others come from.

Society tells us to ‘look after number one’, but in reality this just causes problems. Think about giving and receiving gifts. How do you feel when you’ve received another Christmas jumper, or a present that quite clearly didn’t take your needs into account or demonstrates a lack of understanding about what you like? Now imagine that you’ve put thought into buying the perfect present for someone and you see their face light up with joy when receiving it, especially if they didn’t expect it.

Which situation makes you feel happiest? The Christmas jumper or the joy of giving? In the first situation, you’re thinking about yourself and what you’re getting out of it – unhappiness. In the second, you get enormous pleasure from doing something for someone else.

Self-focus is the former and leads only to unhappiness. As you read through the other articles you’ll see lots of examples of how self-focus leads to unhappiness.

In modern society we have a name for excessive self-focus – narcissism. But it’s nothing new, it’s been around for millenia. You can also see the effects of self-focus all around you. Crime, abuse, lying, stealing, cheating and generally not caring about others all stem from self-focus. And we all have it.

We’ve all encountered the person who thinks only of themselves and not others, who thinks everything is about them. They assume their view of the world is right and that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either out to get them or needs ‘sorting out’. It’s very hard to discuss things with someone like that because they get angry, frustrated and upset when you don’t conform to their way of thinking – the way you ‘should’ think.

A mind full of delusions is not a happy place to live. Self-focus is the ultimate delusion from which all others flow and we all have it to a greater or lesser degree. The fewer delusions we have and the weaker they are, the more likely we are to live a happier, more peaceful life.