We are at a wedding and my son is licking the side of my arm during dinner. I turn to my brother in law, who’s sitting across from me, and make a disgusted face referring to the licking going on at the moment. My brother in law casually states that that’s just how he shows his affection.
Really? I think. Is that why he’s licking me???
I did not see that at all! Seems so obvious now.
How is that even possible, I wonder now, but that is besides the point.
The point is – a change of perspective is a miracle. (A quote I recently heard)
My sons licking before my ‘aha moment’ was so annoying and disgusting!
All I tried to do is to get him to stop licking my arm and he wouldn’t stop.
The reason I call my change of view a miracle is because of how dramatic the shift was in me when it happened.
I went from seeing my son as this little person who is trying to make my life more difficult.
TO feeling loved.
My son who’s licking me – actually loves me so much that the only way he knows to express this one and only love for his mom is through licking. He has no intentions of annoying.
I went from feeling annoyed to feeling grateful and loving.
All within seconds.
Nothing else has changed.
He was still licking me.
I was still me and he was still him.
That sure felt like a miracle to me!
A lot of my self coaching revolves a lot around my perspective and changing it in case I’m not happy with the results. So you can imagine how happy I was to get such an amazing result of appreciating my son without much effort. Don’t you wish everything that easy?
So, licking isn’t always gross is what I’ve learned. Now I kind of like the licking.
P.S.
This morning when I gave my husband a quick summary of my post his reaction was this: “you sound like a crazy person”. (He thought I am crazy for not realizing the reason for the licking) Which of course made me laugh. But it also proved my point even more: sometimes we live so deeply inside our own world and how we see it – we don’t see what’s obvious to others.