You can’t help others without helping yourself! Most of us have the experience on a flight, if you did notice what the safety announcements told you, to put the oxygen masks on yourself first before you reach out to help your children and others. Think about it, what good can you do for your children and others when you yourself have passed out from lack of oxygen while hanging in the air?

This same principle applied to many situations in life - be it in relationship, career, money making etc. We must be able to first taking care of ourself, to love and respect ourself before receiving the love and respect from others; we need to be in a stable state and take responsibility for whatever we desire in our life, but not waiting for someone to come to rescue, or fulfill our dreams for us.

My daughter was telling her brother a fairytale that she learned from school: A beautiful princess was being captive in a tower by her bad-hearted step-mom, day after day, all she can do was wait, wait until her step-mom changes her mind and let her go; or someone will comes and rescue her …. then here he comes, a brave, handsome young prince who just passing by on time, and saw the beautiful princess, alone on the tower, and he decided to rescue her from her step-mom …. then they’re living together happily ever after ….

But life just doesn’t works that way, waiting is a waste of time, or worse, a waste of life. Why wait when we could have saved ourselve if some proper actions was taken? I realized the message across the fairytale of waiting for someone to rescue us from where we are to where we want, or to put others need before us has a bad impact on my children’s life, and us who were fed by the fairy tales.

I used to be a princess myself, in life, I was always the one waiting at home. Wait for him to comes home; wait until he has more time so we can do things together; wait until he has earned enough so that we can go for our belated honey moon; wait for one day if we can get a baby sitter to helps us at night so that we can spend an evening together; wait until one day when my children are grown up so that …

Ended, all these did not happen but what I received from my waiting is a divorce paper! I could have saved myself if I were to take some actions (maybe not my marriage but at least walk out with dignity and less miserable) instead of waiting.

We need fairy tales some time, to feel the sweetness, and maybe hope, but we need to understand and live a real life too. We can always choose to either stay waiting, or do something in return. I am now taking every opportunity to educate my children how they can make a difference in their life, with or without the help from others.