Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
December 17, 2021 · 7 min read
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. ~ Albert Einstein
Have you ever wondered how do people sell their soul?
No, we’re not talking about actual Satan or devil.
This article is focusing on earthy problems where people detach themselves what really matters in life and start doing terrible things.
Regardless, even if you’re an atheist and don’t believe in God or Devil, what if there’s a chance they exist? Even if the odds them existing are 1 in a trillion, you shouldn’t take this bet blindly for an eternity of pain.
Nonetheless, it shouldn’t be your first motive to be a good person. You should be a good person because you prefer over anything not to hurt other people and to spread the joy around.
Hopefully, by the end of this article you will completely comprehend signs you’ve sold your soul and how to avoid these situations.
What does selling your soul mean?
If a person will do absolutely anything for money, fame, pride, and abundance of possessions, it means you’ve sold your soul. Detaching yourself from down to Earth values, such as kindness, willingness to help others, being compassionate, is a sure way to sell your soul.
If you don’t want to sell your soul, it doesn’t mean to detach yourself from modern world. All you have to do is to live a modest, sincere life and not to hurt anyone in the process.
In either way, soul is not a commodity. Selling your soul refers to a metaphorical phrase.
You can’t simply take it from yourself and give to someone else. All it means is that you are leading your life into despair and abyss.
How to tell if someone has sold their soul?
People who are always full of themselves, try to take advantage of you, boast about their materialistic possessions, have sold their soul. You can tell from miles away if that person has lost his integrity and lives by human created values.
The stronger your moral principles are, the less likely you will become an evil person who sees everyone nothing else than a possibility to gain advantage of.
Why do people sell their soul?
People who are desperate for success and are willing to do anything for it sell their souls. They’re utilizing shady tactics to achieve whatever they want.
The main reason for people selling their souls is money and power. A lot of people want to have an influence on others and control them.
If you stay true to your principles, you have confidence, conviction, purpose, values - in other words, you have a future. ~ Mike Klepper
That’s because such people want to boost their ego, self-esteem, and acquire every materialistic possession they want. They’re seeking for temporary things.
Greediness is one of the most common traits people possess [1]. It leads them to self-destruction eventually.
12 Signs you’ve sold your soul
1. Ignoring moral principles
Moral principles refer to what you believe is right and good thing to do. Ignoring them is one of the signs you’ve sold your soul.
Whenever you get loose from what is right, you lose the guidance of life. You become a loner wolf which is fighting against the whole world.
The only difference between a loner wolf and you is that you’re not thriving to survive. You are seeking to fulfill your individual, egoistic needs in exchange of worthy principles.
Such approach in life not only hurts your self-development, but might also harm other people depending on how badly you’ve drifted away from moral principles.
2. Losing self-respect
Whenever you act unkind from the point of view of other person, you lose your self-respect.
For example, you’re criticizing the other person without any valid reasons. That could come from jealousy or resentment towards the other person.
While constructive criticism is acceptable, but any other form of hatred criticism is not. The only thing you do is make yourself look like you’ve sold your soul to boost your ego.
Remember…Whoever is trying to bring you down is already below you. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour
Such behavior is born from poor self-image and low self-esteem. Having a high self-esteem doesn’t mean you will look to others from above.
It means you will be in harmony with yourself and you won’t be damaging yourself and other people.
3. You always think negatively
We all have negative thoughts, which is completely fine. We all have our ups and downs.
Nonetheless, if this behavior transforms to a continuous pattern, you will soon realize that it’s one of the signs you’ve sold your soul.
Having a negative mindset hurts your whole outlook of the world. It will look either black or white and there will be no in between.
If you’re interested how to break negative thinking pattern, top tier psychologist and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins explains that:
Not only you will gradually destroy your potential what you can achieve, but you might also start harming others.
Negative mindset can transform to violence, such as bullying and hurting other people. When you start behaving like that, that’s how you know if you sold your soul.
4. Taking advantage of other people
One of the harshest examples is slavery of any form. There are lots of places in the world where people are paid (or not paid at all) very little just to keep them survived.
Did you know that Dubai was built on slavery? Construction workers were paid $175 per month for working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their passports were taken away and they lived in very, very small rooms. Majority of these workers came from South Asia [2].
When selling your soul it’s important to remember that there is no buy-back clause in the contract. ~ Dean Cavanagh
It’s an inhumane thing to do. This is definitely one of the signs you’ve sold your soul if you violate other humans’ rights.
It just proves how some people treat unfairly others to gain their own benefit.
You always have to work on your highest self if you want to become a better person.
5. You prefer over anything the trinity of satisfaction
By saying trinity of satisfaction, I mean money, power, sex. Since the early ages people were driven by greed.
Ultimately, everything leads to power. If you have power, you can have everything you want. People desire power even if they don’t get anything from it, a research from the UBC Sauder School of Business has found [3].
What is very interesting is that the most powerful people tend to have a common thing – they were neglected in their past. To make sure that this won’t happen again, they work hard to be where they are at now.
As a result, they sell their soul to do everything they can to gain absolute power. While not everyone does that, but there’s a good number of people that abuse their power.
You don’t even have to look even very far – take managers for example. I’ve had a fair share of my experience where I and others were treated poorly by upper management.
Again, while not everyone, but some of them have “God complex” and they want to be treated extremely well, while they let themselves to treat others however they want.
6. You killed someone
Killing someone is one of absolute signs you’ve sold your soul. No one in the world should kill other people purely for their ego, needs, and other reasons.
However, history has proved that there’s a never-ending tendency of leaders, dictators, that look for their own interests. They do everything, including killing people, to achieve their personal goals.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Though, if we would return to the present, there are plenty of people who murder each other for influence and money. There’s abundance of these events and they happen everyday all around the world. If you would search it up, you would find plenty of headlines regarding this topic.
That’s how people sell their souls – by taking lives of other people. They have no understanding how valuable life is and what it actually means.
7. Being extremely selfish and not helping others
It doesn’t mean you should live completely for others. Living absolutely for others and neglecting your needs will lead you to a miserable and unhappy life. You have to find a good balance.
Yet, there are people who are selfish for all of their lives and keep everything to themselves. They pass through a homeless, helpless animal like it was a piece of nothing. They don’t contribute to others that are helpless by themselves.
There’s a difference in helping those who really need and those who are just plainly lazy and look for the easiest way to get the day by. Yes, those people are drug addicts that spend every dime they get purely to escape the reality.
However, not taking care of others who absolutely need your help is plainly selfish and is one of the signs you’ve sold your soul.
You don’t have to look that far away, though. Your family always needs your support and it’s always a good gesture to lend them your hand and help with whatever they need. That’s one of the moral principles you should lead your life by if you don’t want to sell your soul.
8. Disrespecting someone else’s opinions
Without a doubt respect has to be earned. If the other person doesn’t respect you, you shouldn’t respect him. It will only backfire by raising his self-esteem and ego.
It’s important to note that being an elder person doesn’t make him eligible to be respected more than any other person. If he treats you bad, you don’t have to respect such opinion and move on.
Never stop being a good person because of bad people. ~ Unknown Author
Generally, you should respect others’ opinions. You have to listen what other people say and how they back them up.
However, if someone disrespects, interrupts, and curses at other person, it can be one of the signs you’ve sold your soul.
9. Purposefully trying to hurt others
Sometimes people hurt others without realizing it, but often people do it without a blink of an eye and hurt others in many ways.
They feel pleasure from humiliating others, which is one of the major signs you’ve sold your soul.
You can find these people starting from a school bully, internet troll, to being humiliated in front of an audience or co-workers by your managers or even on a national TV.
The more they taste what it’s like to hurt people, the more they want of it. It becomes their fuel and energy to sustain their “happy” mood.
So it’s not a surprise that people sell their souls by trying to make others’ life more miserable. In an essence, these people are insecure and seek to gain power.
10. Your only escape from reality is drugs
When you fear the reality, you constantly (not occasionally!) escape from life by being high. Some people often see the negatives in life and it makes them to continue this pattern.
The reality for them is nothing more than pain. Drugs are the most effective way to escape their suffering. It’s short-term, but for that moment that’s enough.
Insecure people put others down to raise themselves up. ~ Habeeb Akande
Not enjoying what life can truly offer is another sign you’ve sold your soul.
Well, if you really think about it, we all try to escape from reality – reading fictional books, going to movies, entertaining yourself in one or another way.
People don’t like how society works – working from early adulthood to the day when you can barely walk. That’s understandable, but you can always change it if you really want it.
You don’t have to sell your soul to drugs to experience the “happy” side of life. There are plenty of other ways.
11. Trusting everything you hear
Trusting everyone blindly is one of the signs you’ve sold your soul for free. You don’t have your own opinion or self-identity at that point.
If you are trusting everyone too quickly, it can result in you being taken advantage of.
The best way to avoid becoming a victim of such scenario is to check the facts yourself, preferably that are based on science, statistics, big surveys, done by independent companies, etc.
Having a good heart and having faith in people is applaudable, but that’s how you can sell your soul without even realizing it. You can fall into a trap and suffer greatly.
12. Not keeping your word
People like to sugarcoat the situation. People love to promise beautiful things. It makes them and others feel good about that.
However, when the deadline comes, nothing is done. The pain kicks in and everything starts to crumble.
Those who are really good do not give up their goodness because of bad people. ~ Nitin Namdeo
People start losing trust in you, they instantly think of you of a liar and that you don’t care about them. Excuses, however, don’t really help in such situation.
As there’s a saying “actions speak louder than words”. Inability to prove your words with actions means nothing. Not keeping your promises is one of the signs you’ve sold your soul and it shows your real attitude.
While sometimes not keeping a promise can impact other person insignificantly, in other cases it can cost people lives. That’s definitely not something you can joke with.
Final Words From Delightful Mindset
Selling your soul doesn’t mean you’re selling it to a devil or something. It means you’re losing integrity, moral principles in exchange for power.
While you can have power without harming anyone and actually helping others, but often people fall into greediness and trying to hurt others, which are the most obvious signs someone sold their soul.
As long as you keep yourself living by moral principles, you will be happy about yourself and people will also gladly be a part of your life.
- Zhu Y, Sun X, Liu S and Xue G (2019) Is Greed a Double-Edged Sword? The Roles of the Need for Social Status and Perceived Distributive Justice in the Relationship Between Greed and Job Performance. Psychol.10:2021. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02021
- Travelling Jezebel. Construction Workers in Dubai – Modern Slavery in the UAE. 2020 [viewed Dec 17, 2021]. Available from: https://travellingjezebel.com/construction-workers-dubai-modern-slavery/
- UBC SAUDER School of Business. The Power Game: People Want Power Over Others, Even If There’s Nothing to Gain. 2020 [viewed Dec 17, 2021]. Available from: https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/news/insights/power-game-people-want-power-over-others-even-if-theres-nothing-gain