Within

Yesterday, reading Gwyneth Paltrow's goop newsletter about winter detox, I came upon her recommendation for a book by Dr. Habib Sadeghi, Within.  I stopped reading Gwyneth, bought Dr. Sadeghi's book on Kindle and started reading Within.

Within talks about the power of thoughts and emotions on our lives and how what we feel shapes our experiences and produces results.  Although the title of the book suggests that it is focused on weight loss, the author points out that it can work equally well for any perceived issue in your life.   Dr. Sadeghi talks about self-love and how it is more a state of being (feeling that you are enough), rather than state of doing (buying yourself flowers and taking a bubble bath and then wondering why nothing changes).

Feelings of not being enough or of not being worthy, says Dr. Sadeghi, come from childhood.  When the adults in the child's life do not provide for the child's need to be loved and to feel safe, the children grow up not knowing how to love themselves and how to feel they are enough.   Looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, good parenting would include more than providing for the child's "physiological needs" (shelter, food, water) and "safety," but necessarily will include the higher needs for "love and belonging."   Without this third, higher, level of needs, the fourth level, "esteem," which includes all the traits we want for our children, such as self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, and respect by others, cannot be achieved.

Dr. Sadeghi writes:  "By providing our children with just their material needs, we're doing the absolute minimum at the most important job we'll ever have in our lives.  We're also teaching them that the minimum is all they deserve."  This goes equally well for the children who are raised in one-bedroom apartments and children who live in material wealth.

Dr. Sadeghi writes about a patient who said that he knows his mother loved him "because she would make my favorite pancakes for breakfast."  He intellectualized this idea as an adult, but that's not what his subconscious belief was about his mother.  "Children think literally, and a pancake is just a pancake.  That's all.  To experience love, a child needs to feel it.   Feeling is the door to the subconscious and where most of our beliefs are stored.  When a child is held, touched, hugged, played with, tickled, or rocked to sleep, words are unnecessary.   The message is clear.  They are safe, secure, and most of all, loved."

I will go tickle my kids now.