TREAT YOURSELF AS A PRINCESS AND YOU WILL ATTRACT A PRINCE.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a princess just for a day or even for a lifetime? A princess has just about all the privileges of the queen, except the headache of having to answer to the “subjects.” The headache of supervising the house workers and answering to the king’s demands, even on the nights you have a headache, dear. Have you ever wondered how the princess takes care of herself even in the face of adversity? To the point of being labeled a narcissist. How does she have servants catering to her every whim and beck and call? Many times, she is self-indulgent in her mannerisms and in her relationship with others. She commands her right as a princess and does whatever she can to live a privileged life. The main attraction and focus are just her and her only. Her degree of self-love, and at times selfish, narcissistic behavior, can leave one wondering who raised this human child like this.
Well, first it could be that she was born into royalty and grew up knowing that the world was made to serve her, or she grew up demanding that because she loves herself so much that everything must fall in line to her reality by everyone catering to her needs. If people do not cater to her needs, then she will create ways and means and the environment to make this happen.
Most girls grew up being pampered by their fathers. In fact, most little girls grew up thinking their name was “princess,” because that was what their fathers called them. They grew up knowing that they were to be catered to, and anything they wanted they would get it, just as daddy promised them.
Then they grew up and learned that the rosy picture daddy painted was not the real world. They now had to cater to themselves and provide the ways and means to pamper themselves if the prince was not there to do it, or the prince had bailed out of the relationship.
Janice, a friend from high school, came from a wealthy family in New York. Her family owned a car dealership. The dealership was a major success back in the 1980s. Janice was my neighbor. I went to public school, and she went to private school. Janice and her brother were driven to school by a private car while my sister and I caught the school bus. Janice played the princess with a silver spoon in her mouth to the hilt. She reluctantly played with us only when her parents were not home. She never came into our home to share food with us. My family knew she looked down on us because we did not have as much means as her parents.
Janice dressed up to play. In her knee-length pink pleated form-fitting sleeveless dress and black patent leather shoes, you would think she was on her way to a club or Sunday brunch. She dressed up to go grocery shopping with her mother. Janice had the best designer shoes, clothes, and jewelry. Her three carat diamond stud earrings never left her ears. Naturally, money attracted money. Janice went to the prom with a boy also from a wealthy family, even though Janice really liked another boy from across the railroad tracks, a struggling middle-class family. Janice grew up listening to her father call her princess, who bought her anything her little heart desired. Janice walked around the neighborhood with an air of arrogance and pretentious attitude.
However, the one thing she wanted was Kevin from across the railroad tracks, who could not provide her the luxuries she was accustomed to. Her father warned her to stay far away from Kevin. Janice’s heart won out in the end, and she went ahead and married Kevin as soon as she was eighteen. Her father quickly cut her off from the family inheritance. One can only imagine that the marriage did not last more than two years. Poor Kevin could not keep up with Janice’s appetite for the finest things in life. She was spending money faster than Kevin could make it as a grocery store manager. Janice never went to college after high school and never looked for a job during the marriage. Being a “princess,” Janice never thought of anyone but herself and never considered having children, even though Kevin came from a large family and wanted children.
In the end, the marriage dissolved amicably. Full of shame but not looking back and having learned a thing or two from Kevin about hard work, and helping others in need, Janice returned to school for fashion design, with some help from her father, who still loved his princess. Janice never knew the creative genes she had hidden in her until she began to create beautiful dresses catering to middle class women after college. Janice became an overnight sensation in the fashion industry in Paris, where she relocated after her divorce. Still a princess in her father’s eyes, Janice was given a huge allowance to go to fashion school by her father.
Now, with money beyond even what her father was making, Janice never forgot where she came from. Janice never forgot that she was still a princess, just like her father called her, and she continued to treat herself as a princess. However, this time, a princess with a mission to help other women who were struggling. Janice knew how to care for and love herself. Janice surrounded herself with chefs, housekeepers, gardeners, and drivers. Baths were drawn for her every evening with beautiful essential oils, chocolates, scented candles, wine and champagne. Once a princess, always a princess.
However, Janice became a princess with heart. Those three years with Kevin taught Janice. Janice never remarried and never had children, but she left a legacy of financial assistance to women from the third world countries and helped many to establish their own business to love others as you love yourself. Janice now began to show other women how to care for themselves. She began with the women who worked for her, and then provided gifts to women from the rural area of third world countries, especially where her fabrics were made.
CREATING THE PAMPERED PRINCESS LIFESTYLE.
1. Compassionate self-love.
What is love to you? How do you define love? Do you define love as the ability to love others completely without regard to your emotional involvement? Do you define love as you were taught in Sunday school, to give and give till it hurts, or give your last shirt off your back, or fall to the ground and let people step all over you, or be humble, timid, and never fight back? Love people even when they don’t love you back.
While these are admirable traits, they are not the hallmark or definition of love. These traits can bring on compassionate fatigue and can cause you to lose love and respect from others, as well as feel bitterness toward fellow human beings. Love is not a tool that can be turned on and off like a water faucet. Love is carefully given. It is given to the deserving person after you have come to understand the deep love that you have for yourself first, before caring for or giving the same love to others.
Society has summed up love as the ability to love others. However, the ability to love yourself first seems to be what most people consider an oxymoron because it is expected that people should automatically love themselves first. This is not always the case. Self-love is taught in early childhood. If you grew up being told by your parents that you are beautiful, you are smart, you’re the best person in the world, then you would most likely grow up confident, with high self-esteem, and unselfish in freely giving love to others. If you grew up in a home being called stupid, dumb, fat, ugly and “just like the mother, or father,” you will grow up with shame, guilt, low self-esteem, angry with yourself, others, and society in general, and will shy away from any situation requiring focus or attention on you.
This is basically how you develop self-love or self-hatred, which, once developed at an earlier stage in life, can stay with you for life. Only a therapist can attempt to undo the damage that was done years ago.
2. Laugh out loud!
Serotonin is a chemical hormone in the brain that when stimulated will cause a manifestation of a happy, joyful, and even ecstatic elevated mood. You ask: How do I get this? Simple. By having happy thoughts and doing things that make you happy, being positive, and doing happy things for yourself and others. It is known that exercising and laughter will release serotonin faster than watching a comedy show. The good book does say that laughter makes good like medicine. Wouldn’t you prefer to have a supernatural medicine that keeps you in a state of joy than a mind-altering medication that causes side effects and keeps you in a state of daze? Other avenues to release this wonderful chemical include dancing, smelling your favorite flowers, eating your favorite food, cuddling with your pet dog, or smiling along with a newborn baby. So many things to do can bring on happy thoughts that release serotonin and keep you in a state of joy, positive thoughts, and positive energy.
3. Your holistic health: body, mind, and spirit
To be holistic means that you exude and project the epitome of excellent and optimum health mentally, physically, and spiritually. This means that your cholesterol, blood pressure, heart, hormones, digestion, and stress levels are under control. Nothing makes you lose your cool easily. Your mind is alert and active, and your emotional level can deal with all types of stress without a breakdown. Spiritually, your faith is unshakable. You have positive energy and a positive mindset about everything. You have more optimism about life than negativism. You tend to bounce back quickly when your plans fail. You don’t give up and go into depression, whether mild or serious. This is what is called holistic health. Everything about you is running like a well-oiled machine. Your yearly physical exams are always within normal. If you were your doctor’s only patient, the office would be shut down. This is good news for you. You are in the category of holistic health and should be proud of this important life force. This is what the Chinese call the good Qi, when health is good and in balance and no disease is manifesting.
Excellent health is evidenced by the way one takes care of him or herself. What type of food do you eat? How many hours of sleep do you get at night? How much exercise do you get in a week? What do you do to release stress and bring joy to your inner person? These are the attributes of health when it is done in balance with the other meridians of the spirit, soul, and body. Engage a conventional practitioner for acute health needs, but also engage an alternative doctor to provide alternative therapies such as herbal teas, Mediterranean diets, acupuncture, meditation, and other natural practices.
EXCERPT FROM BRIDGET JACOBS E BOOK THE DIVORCED WOMAN’S GUIDE TO WELLNESS
