For those who follow solstice calendar, June is a month of new beginnings!
We started already with health and financial wellness sequence of Micro-Habits, how to implement these micro-habits and incremental change in to our life today!
Incremental Change? Small shifts over a long period of time.
Today our focus is Family Life and relationships within our families.
We could all agree that we missing enough time with our families. Given how important our families are in our lives, it’s good to know that tiny habits can strengthen these relationships and help instigate positive change where it’s needed the most.
Teach gratitude – grateful heart tends to be a heart that’s at peace with the world around them. By teaching your kids about gratitude early will infuse values in them that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.
What can you do?
Teach your kids from early on to start their day by saying something that they’re thankful for before they even get out of bed. This is such a small thing but starts the day in such a positive way.
Build family habits – Some habits just need to be built right into your family. Things like saying “please” and “thank you” are really so important!
What can you do?
Start with your manners! Build the micro-habit of saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when you have that one down. It sound so straight forward however, you would be surprised how many people are not having these manners implemented!
Create time together – As the saying goes, ‘the family that plays together, stays together.’ How true that is might be up for debate, but there have been plenty of studies that show the benefit of kids sitting down at the dinner table with their parents.
What can you do?
Since we’re only looking at micro-habits, we’re not looking for big sweeping changes designed to shift the entire family dynamic. Make a point to have at least one meal with everyone together at the table once a week. Every family is different, find the small things that will make the biggest differences.
Communicate more – how can you possibly expect to get along with someone that you never even talk to? Or to be understood by someone who would rather argue than listen to what you have to say? Communication is so important to the family dynamic that it gets its own discussion here.
What can you do?
Micro-Habits here might involve checking in with the other family on a regular basis. Maybe that means calling your mom once a week. Try a 5-minute rule where each spouse gets five minutes to talk about their day every night while the other listens.
With your kids, building a micro-habit of asking your child what they liked best about the day as part of the bedtime routine and then really listen when they answer. Put notes in their lunches. Arrange a date with your teen once a month where you combine shopping with a long heart-to-heart over lunch.
