The Tenth Principle of Self-love is that when doing kind deeds you will be happier if you forget what is in it for you and this act of forgetting is itself an act of self-love. When you have problems no matter how small it always helps to get your mind off yourself by keeping busy. This is a selfish act for you seek the pleasure of forgetting about what bothers you.
How does this square with saying that we must not do good works to earn praise and self-esteem but do them to remind us how good we are for that is trying to get something out of it for ourselves? But you only do things because you desire to and want gratification. You always want to feel good about yourself and this is the only exception. That is why you can help an ingrate and still be an egoist. It is easier to do good to be able to perceive yourself as good than it is to do good to get other people’s thanks or their money or favours. It’s more satisfying and therefore more selfish in the good way.
It is when you forget about what good doing good to others will do for you that you reap quality happiness and become happy with yourself. The reason is that desire is pain because it means wanting what you do not have yet and when you put it out of your mind you get the happiness you crave. Also, the best happiness is got by being happy in the present moment for to focus too much on the future is scary for you don’t even know if you will get it and you are more sure of the present moment. Yes you are doing good to make yourself happy and you are loving only yourself by doing this good but you are forgetting about the results IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THAT HAPPINESS. You are still doing good just to make yourself happy. Self-esteem is not feeling brilliant about yourself all the time. Self-esteem is forgetting thrills in order to develop personal peace of mind. If you are unhappy take your mind off yourself by going out and doing something for others and in time your mind will be purified of the dross that afflicts it.
We Humanists are hedonists, that is, we believe right and wrong are about having fun and avoiding suffering. We practice a form of hedonism that is designed to maximise the happiness we can have in this world for ourselves and everybody else too. We practice individualism the only way it can be properly practised. We are materialists because we value our lives in this world and our feelings. Our lives and our feelings are material things. We are even more materialists than those who love money for unlike them we know how to get the best out of being materialistic.
