Selfishness is universally accepted to be a pretty bad thing, right? It’s certainly a quality that seems to have developed negative connotations: consider the idea of selfishness and words like ‘greedy’, ‘self-centred’ and ‘egotistical’ will probably spring into your head unprompted.

“There’s loads of research out there that as human beings, we’re all inherently selfish,” says psychologist Wendy Dignan. “That’s an evolutionary need to be safe and secure and protect ourselves. However, social norms dictate that we behave in the opposite way, in a very selfless way – that we should behave in a way where we’re giving and caring, and often in a way that compromises ourselves as individuals. So we get stuck between the human mode of self-protection, which is our evolutionary drive, and the societal requirement to be selfless.”

When we look at selfishness from another angle, though, a different picture emerges: what if not all forms of this behaviour are bad, and what if developing a ‘healthy’ form of selfishness could transform our lives for the better? The psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman has defined healthy selfishness as “having a healthy respect for your own health, growth, happiness, joy and freedom”. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

According to Kaufman, this form of selfishness is all about putting boundaries in place so that you can focus on your own needs, but in a way that will help other people too. By saying no to some social events that might leave you feeling drained and grumpy, for example, you are reserving your social battery for those closest to you, meaning that the time you’ll spend with them will be more valuable.

What is healthy selfishness – and how can it help you set boundaries?