How Strong is Your Sense of Entitlement?
Glen / 
17 Comments / 
October 22nd, 2008 / 
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What do you deserve? Why are some people able to live in mansions while others live in poverty and die of starvation? What is it that you are entitled to? On a surface level you could say we all deserve the same thing, plants and animals alike because nobody is better than the other. This may be true, but..
…do we all feel we are entitled to the same things. If there is a 36 year old, unhealthy computer geek who lives with his parents, does he deserve to date a supermodel? If you answered no, why not? Or more importantly, does HE FEEL that he is entitled to date a super model? Probably not.
What We Deserve
The discussion of entitlement is a difficult one, and one that I’ve actually been hesitant to bring up. There are so many arguments about whether people deserve their current life situation such as poor vs rich and orphan vs happy family. Some people are born into their current situation and can’t do anything about it, did they deserve it? Do they deserve better? Before I delve into that, let’s look at some basic human rights:
- The right to life
- The right to freedom & expression
- The right to work
- The right to education
- The right to food, etc.
These are all things that have been set aside as a basic requirement for every human on the planet to have. What I want to cover in this post is more along the lines of what we believe we deserve, rather than looking at the life situations of others and seeing whether it is fair. I have some simple thoughts on that topic though:
I don’t believe that people have an unfortunate life situation because of something they did in a past life or anything like that. I think people are just born into the situations they are in and must make the best of them.
Is it really as bad as we think for a child in Africa who has food and shelter but of basic means. Do they think there lives are terrible because they have to work 14 hour days? If you don’t know any different, how bad are things? Someone could think the same about us in the western world who struggle through with our 9-5’s.
I’m not saying I’m not fortunate and nor do children in Africa suffer. I’m just saying you don’t miss what you don’t have and maybe things aren’t as polarised in terms of life situation on earth as we think. If you are no longer confined to the ego, do you even need any of the luxuries we view as our luxuries besides what we need to survive? Think about that.
It’s clear that as humans we have laid out rights as to how we want others to live and what is acceptable for all humans to have. As we are clear on what we believe others deserve, I want to take a look at what we believe we deserve.
Your Sense of Entitlement
I believe that a persons sense of entitlement (what they deserve / think they should have) is often closely linked to their self esteem. If you value yourself then you are more likely to believe that you deserve more, where-as if you don’t think much of yourself then you aren’t going to see how others can either.
When I talk about the things we feel we are / aren’t entitled too I mean things such as:
- A high paying job
- A happy family
- A good relationship with an attractive partner
Want to know what I think you deserve? The same as everyone else. I fully think everyone deserves the right to an education, food, freedom of speech and more, but I also think that nobody should be excluded from having the same opportunities or ‘chances’ that other people have. In reality, if you are reading this I will assume that you’ve been given a very good opportunity in life, a lot more than others.
The issue is, most of us don’t believe it. I’m young, find concentration difficult and don’t have enough A-Levels to get into university, does that mean I should forever think I don’t have a chance at a high paying job? Does the college nerd who plays video games all day have to think the best he can get is the first lonely girl who will take him? Definitely not.
You are enough.
- You are enough for the attractive partner
- You are enough to live a happy life
- You are enough to be a part of a happy family
- You are enough for the high paying job
Don’t base your sense of entitlement around your self-esteem. Why? Because your self-esteem has probably been highly affected by society. If you fit into the norms of what society thinks is good looking then you are much more likely to believe you can have an attractive girlfriend. If you fit into the norms and have the certificates for what society deems an intelligent individual then you believe you can have a high paying job. Your beliefs often come into effect, thoughts become reality.
“Some people are just lucky”
“Good things don’t happen to people like me”
“Families like ours don’t get the opportunities that others have”
Are you going to let beliefs like these stop you from living your life and creating your own reality. Or are you going to realise that we are all cut from the same cloth and you deserve no more or less than anybody or thing on this planet. On the other side of the scale, if you think you deserve more than others then you definitely aren’t plugged in. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t work for things or try to achieve anything, just don’t believe that achieving the results is meant for somebody else.
Having a poor sense of entitlement is going to lead you down the path to unhappiness, reacting and even make relationships difficult. It means you constantly view people through the eyes of society and give them a level of value, even a level of value in what you think they deserve out of life. In actual fact I think the best mindset is not to judge anyone but certainly don’t think you are better or worse than others. As soon as you realise you are enough (on the same level) and you go for the things you want (legally) then you’ll start to see doors open and opportunities arise. Trust me when I say it isn’t coincidental.
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Not a word there to disagree with. We make our own world, even if obstacles are placed in our path. With the wrong mindset, our footsteps are heavier.
Nice to have you back.
Thanks Sean, it’s good to be back
Good post. But I just want to make a comment about your link color. The orange color is really hard to read on a white background. You might want to consider picking a darker shade of orange for your link color. I am using firefox ver 3.03 if this is any help.
Thanks for this asithi, I’ll look into making it a bit darker, although it is actually quite clear to me.
Welcome back Glen! I feel our sense of entitlement ties in closely with our core values. We just need to be aware of where we got our core values from – are they conditioned by society, or did they originate from within? I had to smile at the last sentence … oh yeah, I’d trust you on THAT one.
So that is all you would trust me on Irene?
– Great comment, thanks!
A very decent discussion on the topic of entitlement.
Stumbled.
Awesome marc, thank you!
I’m always aiming for the best cos’ I believe in having an entitlement to the best things in life.
Glen, a great article here today. It makes me think – do I sometimes think I’m entitled to things? Much to think about…
Okay, yes. Points well taken. But what about the OPPOSITE problem of people feeling OVERLY entitled? Look at the educational system right now. More parents than ever are being their children’s FRIENDS, which allows these kids to grow up thinking that they DESERVE everything.
Get my drift? I’d like to see something written about that and what everyone can do to feel entitled enough to basic rights but not overly entitled, wanting too much.
@Teality, excellent point about people feeling overly entitled – especially when it comes to parents and what they think their children deserve. Just a few years back, there was a big flap in a town not far from where I live when a teacher – who had given her students *and* their parents a “contract” to sign acknowledging that any student who cheated or plagiarized in their work would get a grade of “0″ for that project. Several students ended up lifting passages straight from reference books, and were given “0″s for the project – one worth half their grade in that class.
The parents decided that this wasn’t fair and complained to the school board. They argued that they though the “no cheating or plagiarism” clause referred to copying from papers done by previous students, not material in a reference book (huh?) and that their children didn’t deserve to be flunked for what they did. (At least one kid tried to justify it by saying that plagiarism is copying word-for-word, but the sentence in the original book was one sentence and he divided it into two.)
The school board AGREED and the principal – who had originally backed the teacher’s decision – ordered her to deduct just over 1/3 of the overall points available for the infraction and also cut how much it would weigh in as a part of their overall grade. That kind of stuff just makes me angry. (Thanks to the New York Times and CBS for helping refresh my memory on the details of this story *g*)
You can also see a lot of the over-entitlement mentality in the outrageous lawsuits that get filed. And I don’t just mean the guy with the $57 million pants. There are all sorts of suits filed every day because someone thinks they’re entitled to have a perfect life and if anything causes even a little ripple in their path, they want to be compensated for it.
Overall, though, I do like Glen’s take on it. Even though I’m both geeky and fat – and didn’t think any guy would want to marry a woman like me – I also felt that if I did get married (and I really wanted to) that I deserved a man who would genuinely love me, treat me with respect and consider me to be his equal – and who I felt that same way about. It took a while to find him, but next week we celebrate our 14th anniversary.
Your comments about maybe someone living in the poor parts of Africa might not know how miserable he’s supposed to be reminded me of my experience of living in Nome, AK for a summer. When I first got there, it was a bit weird because it is truly an outpost up there. When I was there, they had only 2 miles of paved roads, no fast-food places or national franchises of any kind – except the Sears “store” that consisted of a guy behind a window with a Sears catalog on the counter and you told him what you wanted to order and he’d get it set up to be shipped to Nome the next time Sears had enough orders to actually make a trip up there.
By the time I left, though, about 3 months later, getting back to the busy city nearly made me lose my mind. I couldn’t handle the noise or the lights or the crowds of people everywhere! If I’d lived in Nome all my life, and suddenly got moved to the US – even if I had more money and a plusher home, a wider variety of food, drink, entertainment, etc, I’d probably wonder what horrible thing I’d done to deserve being sent there! So, yeah, I think perspective makes a big difference in determining whether something is “good” or not.
Excellent comment thorswitch and thanks for sharing that story, I found it very interesting.
I think you are right about your city / Nome example, ‘perspective’ is the word I was looking for when I wrote that. i could have said it a lot better
Thanks again!
This is a very inspiring post. There are some universal truths in here. Kudos for reminding us of the importance of right thought.
You are welcome Allan, thanks for the comment
“You sir have an unhealthy sense of entitlement…” haha quoting the Blueprint Decoded. Awesome post Glen. You said it better than I’ve ever seen before.