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point is not to inconvenience him or “let him have it” because he gets to go out and you don’t. At the same time, don’t assume that the kids are your sole responsibility when you have a perfectly capable man who is willing to share that responsibility with you.
    When Donna started practicing good self-care by doing at least three things from her lists each day, she was amazed that no one in her family objected. “I thought I was being selfish at first,” she admitted. In time she grew accustomed to having fun and feelinggood every day, and even noticed a positive change at home. When she was happy and balanced, she was more available to support her family the way she always wanted to. What she considered “selfish” at first was actually a wonderful gift for the people she loved most.

5
EXPRESS YOUR DESIRES
    â€œThe indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.”
    â€”BEN STEIN
    Don’t hesitate to tell your husband what you want, whether it’s a vacation, new furniture, piano lessons for the kids, time to yourself, or even a baby. But make sure you are describing an end-result, not telling him how to do it.
    When you tell your husband what you want without telling him when, why, and how you want him to get it—without controlling him—you are giving him a new opportunity to feel accomplished and proud about how happy he makes you. Letting him please you will make you feel adored and intimate.

    When you treat yourself well by doing plenty of self-care, you also encourage everyone around you to treat you well, including your husband. Taking that one step further, the more you know what you want and say it out loud, the better your chances of getting it.
    When you express a desire purely and simply, you’re acknowledging and honoring your self and providing your husband with an opportunity—nothing more. By contrast, complaining that you don’t have something is not only overbearing, it’s downright unattractive.
    Prior to surrendering, I used complaining and demanding to try to get my husband to do the dishes, which never worked. About a year ago I said, “I’d like to make us a nice dinner tonight, but it’s going to make a mess and I don’t want to do the dishes.” He promptly offered to do them that night. In fact, he did them several times over the next week. Now he does them all the time and I never wash dishes. I started to wash them once many months ago and he said, “Thanks for doing the dishes for me.”
    Some of us have had the “I want” trained out of us. Maybe we were once told not to be so self-centered, or to think of others who have less, or to be more practical. For instance, when a woman at the park told her preschool aged daughter that it was time to leave, the little girl said simply, “I don’t want to go with you.” The mother then responded by saying, “That’s not very nice. Don’t you like to be with your mother?” The mother twisted the daughter’s statement of desire into a personal attack. She was unfortunately well on her way to training the “I want” out of her daughter.
    Like the girl at the park, some of us were told it’s not polite or considerate to express what we want, but that just isn’t true.Knowing what you want and being willing to express it are the purest ways to be true to yourself, which
is
a very attractive quality. The alternative to being direct about what we want is to be manipulative, which is totally unappealing. A third choice is to ignore our own desires, which means that we live without the things that would make us happiest, and suffer a corresponding drop in energy, vitality, and satisfaction with our lives. We also become resentful, and that’s ugly.
    Saying what you want means that you’re aware of your feelings and desires and that you’re willing