With the New Year, your thoughts may turn to making resolutions, those things we
commit to do to improve ourselves and make the upcoming year better than the
last. Have you noticed that most
resolutions involve giving up or quitting something, such as stopping smoking,
losing weight, or cutting out sweets? Our
brains don’t like to “give up” things. Have
you also noticed the pressure around resolutions, particularly the pressure
around failing to maintain your resolve? The word itself – resolve – connotes feelings
of force and suffering. The perceived
loss in giving up something, the pressure around failure and the implied force
of a resolution all sabotage your success. For greater success, think of the
changes you desire as refreshing your life.
Here are a few ideas for refreshing your family life. Out with the old and in with the new can be
refreshing without the pressure.
Consider these four ideas an invitation.
Have monthly family meetings. Family meetings are a great time
to connect, tune in to what other family members are doing, synchronize
schedules, resolve challenges and support one another. The key to making family meetings work is to
choose a regular meeting day and time with your family and then hold it
sacred. Do not continuously change the
day because “something comes up”.
Schedule other activities around your family meeting time. Turn off the phone and television, and do not schedule
your family meeting during mealtime.
There are other ingredients for successful
family meetings, such as keeping an agenda, having a secretary and leader
(children have an opportunity to lead), beginning each meeting with an activity
that creates unity, and keeping your meeting minutes in a journal. For details on making your family meetings
fun and successful, check out the Whole Hearted Parenting website under “Resources”
and “Articles”.
Create a family handshake or greeting. Having your own handshake is a
creative and unique way to make saying hello and goodbye fun. It can also be comforting for young children
saying goodbye at pre-school and for kids going away for sleep-away camp for
the first time. Every family member contributes one movement to the handshake
or one word or sound to the greeting. Combine
everyone’s contributions, and you have a unique family ritual that you can
refresh every year.
Each month, find something that you are doing for your
child that he can do for himself and let him. When we do things for our children
that they can do for themselves, they miss the opportunity of knowing how
capable they are. Feeling capable is one
of the components of self-esteem. If you
wake your child up every morning and she is capable of getting up on her own,
make an adventure out of shopping for her new alarm clock. Let her pick it out and teach her how to
operate it. If your child is capable of
making his own lunch for school, have him write weekly menus so that he knows in
advance what he will be making each day and so the ingredients are on hand. Not only does your child feel capable, but
you also have more time for you!
Keep track of your emotional bank accounts with your
family members. Stephen Covey spoke of these “trust accounts”
in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You have an emotional bank account with
everyone in your life. Starting with a
neutral balance, you add deposits and make debits with your interactions. Yelling is a debit. Hugging is a deposit. Begin to regularly notice your balance with
the people you love. Teach your children
this concept as well. If your account
takes a hit because an argument, add a few deposits to be back “in the black.”
Instead of the
heaviness of a resolution, I invite you to refresh your family relationships
with these four ideas. Happy 2013!
