Being moderately selfish is not only normal, but even very useful. People who cannot stand up for themselves and always do everything just for the sake of others, as a result, can become very unhappy, because they often use kindness and excessive gentleness.
The Most Important Differences Between Healthy and Unhealthy Selfishness
Healthy egoism is primarily characterized by a person’s ability to act in his own interests and achieve the results that he needs, without violating other people's rights and without causing others to suffer. Unhealthy egoism, which can also be called egocentrism, is much more unpleasant: it forces a person to act at his own discretion, "go over his head", not caring at all about the life and well-being of even the closest people.
Self-centeredness prevents people from putting themselves in a strange place. It is incompatible with empathy, empathy, diplomacy. A person is simply not able to imagine what others can feel.
With healthy egoism, a person loves himself to the best of his ability, has a good, not overrated, and not underestimated self-esteem, knows about his strengths and weaknesses. He does not need someone else's praise, he does not try to achieve the earliest recognition of his merits. Unhealthy egoism, on the contrary, pushes a person to do bad things. It forces to constantly demand worship, can cause humiliation of others, the desire to "sit" at work, slander people to seem better against their background. To seem perfect in his own eyes, an egocentric will do anything.