![Unchecking Upvote Post + Ending Self Upvoting.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmc1yY5feWfswb7v3XScGr7cPYcrkVPGNxP1WszEF7nctk/Unchecking%20Upvote%20Post%20%2B%20Ending%20Self%20Upvoting.png)

Why use all our voting power on others instead of upvoting our own posts?  I am unchecking the upvote post box starting today on my new posts and also am ending my practice of sometimes or often voting up my own comments because it feels like the right thing to do for my own happiness.

When I starting using Steemit in May, I was so excited about voting that naturally I voted up hundreds of my own comments just to try it out!  Burning my voting power all on myself left me feeling the same way I used to feel when having sex without a partner.  There is a line from a Kesha song that sums it up!

"Look who's all alone now."

With trying to make more posts everyday, I have not been feeling very good about burning up 6% of my daily voting power or about $45 a day voting my own posts up when we are kind enough here to already be voting the posts I makes up $200 to $1,000 a day.  Do I really need that additional $45 from my own votes or would I feel better about being able to give that out?

While it might look like I am trying to impress us with how generous and kind I am, the truth is just like the rest of us I want to feel good all day all the time except for occasionally when I honestly want to feel miserable and roll around in it for a while.  What I am learning is that every little action I take contributes to how I feel.  Almost all the feelings I do not like are traceable to small actions of selfishness.  To identify them I just need to notice when my feelings of joy slip into fear or anger or jealousy or doubt.  Whatever I did right before that is usually the source.

Last night when I read a comment about "Why does Jerry's post have $15 upvoted right when it is posted" I identified the feeling and made it worse by writing a defensive answer along the lines of "Well because Jerry is a big shot that invested 15 BTC into Steem and when you invest that much you can vote yourself up all day too."

After that answer I felt even worse because that is exactly the kind of jerk I hated most of my life and thankfully today I realize this is motivation to do something about it.  Ending self-upvoting forces even more faith because starting each post from $0.00 is a bit scary.  What if it stays there and earns as much as a post on Facebook?  At least with voting myself up, I know short of a total spam post that gets flagged I will earn $15+.

Finally, what if the founders of Steemit @ned and @dan took the same attitude I had up until last night about their posts?  With each of them having about 100 times as much Steem Power as I do, that means each of them could upvote every one of their posts $1,500 to $2,000 although technically that much of a vote might drop the value of the votes significantly.  Wouldn't they perfectly be within their rights to make several posts every day and rake in $5,000 to $10,000 a day off of their own upvotes?  I noticed that on @dan's recent post about EOS he declined payout and on the one before that he did not upvote it.  @ned also declines payouts on this posts.

If the founders of Steemit choose with their example to not upvote their own posts and trust the community either to create the payout or decline payout, is not this probably the right answer for me too?  The first argument here likely is "well they have lots of money while you, we, me, and I do not.  We need every dollar we can get."  Ironically I have learned the more generous I am, the more I will tend to be given by the world.  The attitude of "I do not have enough money and therefore need to hustle for every dollar I can get" is the same attitude that left me without the ability to ever feel financially secure and to then waste any good fortune that came my way.  Maybe I will upgrade to declining a payout all together one day ...

Until then, I am going to give out all of my voting power to someone besides me in the same imperfect and awkward way I have been doing it so far.  Thank you for reading this and I hope it was helpful for you!

Would you upvote this post if you support giving up our rights to upvote ourselves because the more readers see this, the more we can collaborate with our voting power?

Love,
Jerry Banfield