Why You Need to Live for Yourself too and Not Just for Your Kids

As parents, we often feel obligated to do everything for our kids and give them the best of everything. While this is great and I definitely relate to this feeling as my world does revolve around my son, I have now realized the importance of living for yourself as well and taking it easy on yourself when it comes to parenting.

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Yes, we need to look after our babies and work hard to cover their basic needs and to provide them with a good lifestyle, but that should not be our only goal. We need to live for ourselves too and when I say that, I really mean it. What I have seen in most parents here is that they word arduously, day in and day out for their kids and family and think about only themselves.

Not only do they do that, they also say it out aloud and make their kids feel that too. Honestly speaking, I did that previously as well. I was working late at night and when my son asked me why I wasn’t sleeping, I told him I had to work hard to make sure I give him a good life and to fulfill all his wishes. There is nothing wrong in saying that really, but that’s when you don’t look at the long-term effects of this behavior.

When we keep thinking that we are working hard and living a tough life to give our family a better lifestyle and to make sure we give our kids a bright future, we rewire our brain to think that way. Day in and day out, we feed this exact suggestion into our brain and when something is repeated, it turns into a strong belief. So by constantly saying that we live for our kids, we nurture this belief too. As we age, this belief grows stronger and our never ending struggle to live for our kids and keep them happy keeps growing as well.

You may think that it is alright to nurture this belief. I felt the same too. However, there have been some experiences in my life currently that have now forced me to think otherwise.

When we grow older, we are mostly not left with a lot of energy to do things that we used to and live life the way we used to. We then want time from our loved ones and since we feel the closest to our kids, they are on top of the list. (I am referring to most of the people; this may not be true for some people.) At that time, we start associating a lot of our expectations with our kids and not just when we grow old, even when we are young parents, we do happen to expect a lot from our kids.

While we want our kids to do and behave the way we want to, they may not agree with us. They are likely to think differently, feel differently, nurture different beliefs and make different decisions in life because they have had exposure to situations and experiences different than you. So your child is a different person than you are and that is perfectly alright. However, when he/ she does not do as we want and chooses to hold a different belief, that may hurt us. Not only do we feel hurt, we may feel betrayed as well. We feel pained because we see them going against us. We do not realize that they are different individuals and can think differently. However, we feel that because we have done a lot for them and have killed ourselves for their well-being, they owe it to us to think, feel and behave like we wanted them too. This is rooted in the belief I talked about earlier.

Because we have taught ourselves to think that whatever we do is for our kids and then act accordingly, we feel this gives us the right to own them and because we have that right, we can force them to do anything we want. This I feel is completely wrong and needs to be stopped. We do not own our kids and can never own anybody really and we need to stop feeling that. We need to live for ourselves too and stop feeding the wrong suggestions that whatever we do is for our kids to our mind. Because if we don’t work on this now, we will forever become victimized by this belief and keep nurturing the need to own our kids.

I have seen many people suffer from this desire and live miserably. When they don’t see their kids behaving like they want or spending as much time as they want with them, they feel hurt, betrayed and lost and then they start nurturing bitter feelings for their kids. If you are a parent, I ask you to please live for yourself also. Use your earnings to pursue things you want and focus on your happiness as well and not just that of your kids. Yes, when your kids are happy, you feel happy too but that’s just one way of being happy. Focus on things that bring you happiness only as well and engage in them every once in a while. I am doing that now and honestly, I feel a lot more positive than before. Not only that, but living for yourself and changing your belief that whatever hard work you do is because of your kids, you free your mind of undue stress and let go of the huge pressure you unconsciously place on your kids to conform to your values. This feeling is great for sure.

What are your thoughts on the topic? Looking forward to having some interesting conversation on this one.

Love and light,

Sharoon.

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