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So in life it happens that the kindest and brightest intentions sometimes lead to a bad outcome. Here, too, the kindest and brightest fairy tale leads to the fact that some girls have a distorted perception of one of the most important schemes of life — finding happiness.
Probably, there is not a single girl in the world who has not heard this beautiful, kind story. Every girl in the world tries on the role of Cinderella. Few people want to be Ariel the Little Mermaid or Sleeping Beauty, everyone wants to be Cinderella.
Why do so many girls get stuck as Cinderella?
The fate of Cinderella is very much in common with another very famous story in the world, the so-called «American dream». The American Dream promotes the reality of a life story in which a poor man becomes a millionaire in a second. Cinderella, also, instantly receives her super prize, in an instant, she turns from a mess into a beautiful princess. Such vivid images of quickly gaining happiness and simple schemes for achieving an ideal future settle deep in the subconscious of an unformed and incapable of analysis personality. Therefore, for a long time they become the only guidelines in the construction of life. And, even unknowingly, in adulthood, the girl continues to go the wrong way, being at the mercy of subconscious attitudes. Our subconscious mind believes in a fairy tale and follows the ideal scheme for finding happiness, learned in childhood.
What is wrong with this good fairy tale?
Let’s try to build a logical chain of Cinderella’s actions to achieve happiness. Steps to go through to reach the Happy End. What you need to do to become happy like Cinderella. I got something like this:
- Cinderella works hard and is bullied.
- The good fairy gives her a beautiful dress and perfect shoes for her patience and work.
- Cinderella becomes a beauty and goes to the ball.
- The prince falls in love with the beautiful Cinderella.
- The prince marries Cinderella. Happy forever.
In fact, this is an insidious trap. A simple scheme to achieve happiness leads to dire consequences. Our emotional brain (the right hemisphere, which is more developed in girls) draws its own picture not logical, but bright, spectacular, so that the heart flies out, and tears from the eyes. Cinderella now believes in such logic, and is guided by the distorted rules of life that our children’s brains have read.
False guidelines of the girlish subconscious:
- a kind girl must endure bullying and cry quietly into her pillow when she is offended (non-resistance to evil);
- in order to find happiness, a girl must patiently work hard and work hard (even if you don’t like this work, you need to do your duty);
- a good fairy will come and save, thank you for your patience and hard work (someone will notice the efforts and generously reward you);
- a beautiful dress and shoes can make a girl beautiful (beauty is achieved with the help of external tools, clothes, cosmetics, etc.);
- in a beautiful dress, the prince will fall in love, (an ideal man can fall in love only with the most beautiful);
- the prince will save and give happiness (to find happiness you need to marry a prince).
Belief in these schemes grows if the parents and inner circle devalue the young princess in every possible way, trying to make her a comfortable and obedient child. Reality is not so sweet and smooth, but in dreams it is cozy and good.
Poor Cinderella
Dresses
Among girls, the desire to get a beautiful dress, shoes, all the external attributes of beauty is most often spread. And this desire increases enormously if there is no confirmation of one’s own beauty, parents are stingy with the praise of appearance, and those around them say all sorts of unpleasant things. When the princess grows up and stops waiting for the fairy with gifts, she herself begins to buy beautiful dresses for herself in order to become more beautiful, so that the prince falls in love. Over time, there are more and more dresses, less and less princes. Some, in order to become more beautiful, nevertheless, come to plastic fairies, change their ugliness for more beautiful details, and wait for princes. It seems that the wardrobe is full of beautiful dresses, it seems that the fairies have corrected all the ugliness, but something happiness is not felt. So the pursuit of ghosts continues, the girls continue to go to plastic fairies, continue to look for a perfectly beautiful dress, and think about the fact that the princes are now fake. After all, to become happy, you just need to marry a real prince. The scheme is false, so happiness is not achieved.
Kind fairy
Another common Cinderella scheme is when girls start working very hard and often do not care about their appearance at all, not because they are confident in their own beauty, by no means, they are simply sure that a fairy will fly in and fix everything, reward for patience, work and kindness, make beautiful, give happiness. Or thinks that a real prince is already able to see her inner beauty even under a layer of ash. Such a Cinderella, even in the family, takes on all household duties, is trouble-free at work, pulls everything on herself. Cinderellas are humiliated, offended, treated unfairly, but they endure and accumulate in their souls anger, resentment, disappointment and anger for the whole world. Cinderella sincerely does not understand why the fairy does not arrive, which should thank and reward for overwork. Why are others not in a hurry to praise and thank for the efforts.
Prince
How many girls in the world are sure that only a real prince can give happiness? Probably a lot, a lot. Cinderellas around the world are waiting for their prince rich, handsome and strong. Some entrepreneurs even make money from it by offering Cinderellas help in finding their destiny. Even the expression, which is bright and eloquent, has taken root in the Russian language: meet your fate. That is, to become happy, you just need to marry the right prince. Sometimes Cinderellas get tired of waiting for the perfect and take the one that more or less fits and start remodeling it to look like the real thing. Others begin to look for suitable candidates themselves, turning into treasure hunters. Still others fall in love and think, well, here he is my beloved, but when the fog of love passes and the prince no longer gives happiness, Cinderella wonders if the real prince is.
Of course, all these distorted landmarks or false paths to achieving happiness in each of us, Cinderellas, are intertwined, and to one degree or another manifest themselves as false actions that do not lead to happiness.
Let’s get the story right
When I thought about my idea of happiness, I re-read the fairy tale already in adulthood and made many discoveries for myself.
First, let’s figure out what kind of person was that lucky woman who became a worldwide example, the ideal of a happy woman.
In fact, our girl is not a poor woman, but from a noble family, that is, a family that, in terms of social status, matches the royal one. The Prince and Cinderella were from the same social circle.
Cinderella, educated girl, who perfectly owns the craft of a stylist-designer of clothes. She has a subtle sense of beauty, which she uses to create beautiful things. And everyone in the district knows about Cinderella’s professional skills, so, for sure, she even has her own client base. The girl had a professionwhich helped her discover her strengths as a person and gave her the opportunity to realize herself in her environment.
Cinderella works hard not because she so wants to sacrifice herself, she is forced to do work for which she does not have a heart. The girl calmly accepts the circumstances of life, realizing that now this is the only option. But at the same time, he does not fall into the role of a victim and does not engage in self-pity.
Soberly assessing the situation, Cinderella even understands that her own father will not help her, as he is completely at the mercy of his new wife. Any complaints to the father will not bring results, but will only aggravate the situation. External difficult circumstances do not change her mental balance. She doesn’t get mean.
Our heroine showed her self-sufficiency and maturity, she does not care about the opinions of others, At the same time, Cinderella knows his own worth and is confident in his own beauty. Neither the dirty outfit, nor the condemnation and ridicule of others embarrass her, she is self-confident. Cinderella does not close in on herself and does not behave like a victim, on the contrary, she is open and friendly to others. Someone else’s opinion does not hurt her at all.
Also, Cinderella has amazing spiritual qualities of true love for people. She knew how not to harbor resentment, anger at her tyrants. The real guru of forgiveness. With her torturer relatives, of her own free will, the girl spends time at the ball, ignoring the magnificent prince. The heroine does not try to take revenge on her offenders, even when there was an opportunity to make the sisters «epic fail», Cinderella did their job honestly and sincerely.
Cinderella is already happy under any circumstances, she is the mistress of her emotional life. The girl does not expect gifts of fate, does not dream of gratitude or praise. She has no illusions that someone will save her from her current situation. Our heroine does what she can and carefully preserves her spiritual harmony.
Such a portrait of the heroine reveals to us the essence of what is happening and gives us a new vision of achieving happiness by a woman.
And perhaps most importantly
One of the most common and exploited images of this tale is that Cinderella and all the ladies at the ball are eager to meet the magnificent prince. Between the sisters there are whole battles for the right to be with the incomparable. All the girls want to get at least a dance with the beautiful heir to the throne, and our beauty is one of them. But!
In fact, the tale does not mention that there was an interest in the young prince. And the real discovery for me was that on the first day of the ball (and it turns out there were two of them), our heroine was not at all interested in this very prince, she even ignored him, although he showed active signs of attention to the young beauty. Cinderella preferred the company of her offenders — sisters, even gave the prince’s gifts to them. And only on the second day, our handsome prince managed to win Cinderella’s heart with sweet speeches. It turns out that Cinderella’s goal was just to hang out at the ball, and not at all a meeting with the prince! Seeing the attention of the prince to herself, the heroine does not fall into a love fog, does not rush into the pool with her head. Moreover, after learning that the prince is looking for her throughout the kingdom, she is in no hurry to reveal her identity. The plot of the tale took on a completely different meaning.
Cinderella’s happiness is not at all in a successful marriage
No one can make a person happy. Happiness is a feeling, even a worldview, that a person gives himself. And the more self-sufficient and harmonious a person is, the more and more often he is able to create this category of human sensations, to be happy more often. And even then, on the way, another equally lucky person appears, with whom love comes into life. That is, in other words, you must first find yourself, find your way, and love itself will find you. Cinderella is not about meeting a prince, it’s about finding yourself.