Love Yourself As You Love Your Baby

Hi! How are you doing? Hope you are having a great day!!

The day before yesterday, I got my hair cut and having a short hair all after 6 years or so and I feel GREAT!

I always liked my hair short. Wonder why I’ve had my hair long for 5-6 years. So strange.

Anyways as I was working on my computer yesterday, I thought I wanted get my hair washed. So I did.

And I felt SO GOOD the way I am treating myself and this phrase came up to my mind.

Love yourself as you love your baby.

Fulfilling your needs and wants

Right now, I am trying to learn how to enjoy myself everyday. Be happy as much as possible with what I have. So I am trying little that and this.

Washing my hair right at that point I thought about it was one of those things.

I felt so good as if I was taken care of well as I am a little baby. Just like as I claimed “Mama—-! I want my hair washed~!!” then here she comes and fulfill my needs. The only difference was that person who gave that to me was myself =D.

Although I don’t have my own child, I have many lovely experiences with babies as below.

1. My host family had their 4th baby when I was there (I studied in the US when I was 16 and the host mother had the baby when I was there. I was in that very room in the hospital when she came out to this world and it was wonderful). I took part of the daily routines such as changing diaper, feeding, burping and it was fun.
2. My brother had his lovely daughter when I was 26! She is 20 now already but I am still SO GRATEFUL that I have her in my life.
3. Seeing my friend’s baby weekly when he was around 0-1 (I was about 28 or so).

When we are with babies, we don’t really expect much from them because they really cannot do anything except sleeping, eating and crying. But we still enjoy being them by looking at them sleeping, crying or just steering the air with wonder and their simple smile bring us joy and happiness.

We take care of babies as they would be all OK and comfortable. If they cry, we guess, and feed them if we think they are crying because they are hungry. We change diapers if we think it is because the diaper is wet. We do things spontaneously to make them comfortable and happy.

When they stand up, we cheer them with joy, be happy with them with their accomplishment.

The way we treat ourselves

However, do we take care of ourselves as we do to our babies?

Are we happy the way we are as we are happy with babies? Are we happy just the way we are?

Are we happy, even if we don’t do something important that day??

Are we happy, even the job we have now doesn’t seem so great?

For me, the answer was no. Especially on those bad days of my life.

I am middle of the changing process to be happy with just the way I am. With so many things I can do. Even with so many things that I can’t do. Whatsoever. Just accept the fact that I am wonderful as I want all of the people on the earth want to feel.

When I am on my depression, the things I can do look SO SMALL and WORTHLESS. I bully myself so I would feel so miserable. I bully myself far way more than I’d ever do to anyone else. No mercy.

But not anymore. I won’t do it to myself. Isn’t it strange that we do so bad to ourselves that we wouldn’t do to other people? Or is it just me??

Keep your geniusty alive

There are people known as genius, sometimes also known that they were kicked out from school because of their attitude.

I am starting to think that we all are born genius, but while we grew up, our geniusness was bended and discurraged its way by receiving and believing some messages from outside.

In modern world or probably even in the ancient world, there are rules that are believed to be good to follow.

And there are some people who fit with those rules well. Those who are comfortable with those rules.

On the other hand, there are people who don’t fit with those rules, and sometimes, people mistakenly deliver the message that they are not good enough because they cannot follow the rules or they are not comfortable with those rules.

I think those genius are someone who had someone who believed in them constantly even someone else out there said that they were not good enough because of something.

The more important fact I assume is that those genius chose to believe (most probably without intention) that the opinion that they were special was true and not the one that they were not good enough.

We are all different

I had an incident recently that accelerate of the thought that we are all different.

I met up with two friends from university earlier this month. One girl was one of my besties back in the year and the other girl who was close but not that much. Anyways, we united all after 15 years.

When we were talking, a topic of Singapore came up and the friend said “I love rules and I am comfortable following them.” She said she believes Singapore is the most advanced country in the current world.

As you may know, in Singapore everything is set as rules such as “throwing garbage in public, you are fined $$$$”, “eating in train, you are fined $$$$”.

When I heard about it from one of my friends from Singapore, I thought “No way—-! I would never be able to live in Singapore.” “Fined by throwing garbage in public is OK but not eating and drinking in train?!?!”

Nope, I can’t stand starvation.

So when I heard my friend saying “I love rules and love keeping them.” I thought is it even possible, but she seemed being natural, not that she was trying to be unique or anything.

As I had the opportunity to watch two kids in very close age in common period (my niece and my friend’s son who I was seeing every week in the past are a year and half different in age), I know we are ALL DIFFERENT. We are all different from the beginning.

My friend’s son was such a happy child. My friend had hard time back them with her married family, so she was not very happy. She even cried in front of the baby sometimes, but the baby didn’t get unhappy. He wiped his Mom’s tears and tap her head and made her smile. I had some kind of belief that those things are contagious so I was surprised to see him happy despite the fact his Mom was not always happy.

My niece on the other hand was quite tense baby. She got really tense and screamed sometimes. I did not know it back at the time though, my sister-in-law wasn’t happily married. She was not open about it so it might had something to do with my niece mood (cannot know that though).

Since I did not know my sis in law wasn’t happily married at the time, I felt quite odd seeing my friend’s son as a happy baby and my niece as a nervous baby.

Anyways seeing the two different babies in very different personality back then, I used to think how I would be like if I wasn’t taught what I was taught such as going to a prestigious school is important in life etc..

Be happy with ourselves

OK. Let’s get back to the way we are with babies.

When we are with babies, we really don’t judge what they are doing is good or bad. We just enjoy what they are discovering. We enjoy watching what they are doing. Maybe do a little help sometimes to keep them safe like keeping them from swallowing what they are not supposed to.

I think this attitude of our own toward babies is something we can learn and apply to ourselves.

Be happy with what we are doing without judging what we are doing worth or not.

Just observe ourselves and be happy with ourselves.

That is something I am going to do to myself.

Let myself grow in the way I want. Enjoy being myself. Let myself do what please me, give myself what I want and so on. I feel that it will do a lot good to my life. I am kind of excited to see the change from now!!