“It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so。”

　　“事情本无好坏之分，关键在于你怎么想”——莎士比亚

　　William Shakespeare

　　Some things are often deemed to be bad. Some things are often deemed to be good。

　　Here are three things that may sound bad but can actually be good for you. Three things that I have learned to make better use of or strengthen a bit since that would help me out. Think about them. Then add and subtract as you see useful for your life and situation right now while using your own common sense。

　　有些事总是被认为是好的，而有些事总是被认为是坏的。有三件事听起来很坏，却能真正帮助你。好好地利用这三件事给我带来了很多帮助。仔细想想，看看它们对你现在的处境是否有帮助。

　　1. Selfishness。

　　1.自私

　　Selfishness is rarely seen as something positive. The word may fill your head with images of greedy and soulless Montgomery Burns-like people。

　　自私很少被认为是好的品质。一提到这个词，你脑海中可能就浮现出类似于Montgomery Burns那样贪婪、无情的人。

　　However, personal development is in a way pretty selfish. You are trying to make yourself and your life better. But the thing is that by focusing on helping yourself first you can become stronger and help others in a better way too。

　　然而，个人提升在某种程度确实是一件很自私的事。你总是试图让你和你的生活更好些。事实上，通过优先关注自己的事不仅会让你变得更强大，而且还可以更好的帮助别人。

　　If you just focus on other people and not on yourself then you risk burning out. Or people may take advantage of you as you set no limits or boundaries. You become the “nice guy/girl” who is always out there to help people but think little about yourself which in the long run can become pretty unhealthy。

　　如果你只关注别人的事，那你就有被“耗尽”的可能。因为你对事情没有约束和限制，被人很可能会利用你。你成了“好好人”，因为你总是在帮人忙这忙那，却很少考虑你自己。长期来说，这样是很不好的。

　　And selfishness and helping others often go hand in hand anyway. I did for example improve my health and increased my energy levels last year. This also gave me the extra energy to work on an free ebook – that will, if everything goes as planned, be up on the blog very soon – besides writing the usual articles. So that is a win-win。

　　话又说回来，自私和帮助别人也并不矛盾。举例来说，去年一年，我努力使自己更健康也更有精力了。这使我在除却写平常的一些文章外还有多余的精力去完成一本免费的电子书(若不错意外，明年就可与大家见面了)。所以这是双赢。