This picture is one of my absolute favorites. It really shows both Beezus and Ramona very happy with their aunt. It is perfectly in theme with this weeks post.
2010 was a hard year. We found out that Beezus had Celiac Disease. Beezus was hospitalized briefly for HSP. Finances were tight. Jobs were scarce. My man found a new job. Our entire family moved to a new state with extremely cold weather. I moved from my family and the neighborhoods that was my home for 30 years! We struggled to get our fixer home on the market in a short time frame. Our home still has not sold and offers have been a bit demoralizing. I learned a couple hard life lessons about friendships and relationships in general. It is not too surprising that happiness was not a focus in 2010. For my family survival became our main focus. I know of many friends who have had rough times in the last year or even this year. I worry about us all.
Life moves on though. It does not slow down due to change, crisis or stress. And I am grateful that life keeps moving, so no one gets stuck living solely in the lows! As my children love to sing occasionally, “the sun will come out tomorrow, so you better hang on till tomorrow!”
In 2011 my family and I are ready to move into a new phase. Survival with high levels of stress hormones circulating through our veins is not good enough nor is it healthy. We are ready to pursue happiness and South Dakota seems like the best place to pursue it.
I will now start my mind and body happy posts. Once a month I will dedicate a post to ways in which my family is achieving happiness as a goal, as well as, ways I am maintaining a happier and healthier life style. I hope to have great ideas that the important people in my life can use to achieve a little bit of happiness.
For the month of April:
I started reading “raising happiness 10 simple steps for more joyful kids and happier parents” by Christine Carter, PH.D. I can not say enough good things about this book. I will recommend this book to all the parents I know. I will also recommend this book to my mother, my sisters, my friends or anyone who wants to achieve a greater sense of fulfillment and happiness.
This book is chalk full of strategies to create and maintain healthier and happier people. This book bases all tips/strategies on empirical and valid research by leading social psychologists (including my old professor from UC Berkeley – go bears! - and he is an amazing individual – also very happy guy). I do not believe you need children to utilize the strategies or to read this book!
I can not get through everything this book has to offer in a singular post. So, I will simply state one strategy my family has already utilized in the last couple weeks.
In chapter 4, “Step 4: Choose Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Optimism” Carter cites research in which people who exhibit gratitude are more likely to be happy. She suggests implementing a plan in which the entire family lists things they are grateful for on a regular basis and writing it down.
When I read this I doubted the effectiveness, but not because I didn’t believe in the results of the studies. I instead doubted that applying this mind frame to my own family would change our lives for the better. I doubted our abilities to be happier: a rather large fundamental flaw in my own schema. It is sad how after a hard year, or a hard couple years, it is so easy to express learned helplessness. This is a psychological condition in which there is a false perception of having a lack of control over a situation – as wiki would put it, “a condition of a human person or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected”. Even having been educated in my social psychology course about learned helplessness I am guilty of falling right smack into it.
However, I decided to try this activity out - as I am changing my old habits - and I am grateful that I did. :-)
At dinner time two Fridays ago I asked my family to list off five things we are grateful for.
I can tell you that I have NEVER seen happiness occur as abruptly, purely and just plain enthusiastically as I did when I requested their gratitude proclamations. Dinner was not unhappy before this suggestion, it was not melancholy: we were simply having a typical dinner. We were all connecting and talking about our days, the good, the bad and the ugly. We smiled a bit and maybe we laughed. But nothing compares to the unbridled joy when I asked my kids to come up with things they were grateful for. My children were literally yelling over each other with gigantic smiles, giggles and laughs. They did not stop at five things. My man more reserved, less trusting, skeptical –similar to how I had been initially at this concept – did come up with a list. When it was my turn I was surprised how hard it was at first, even knowing what we were about to do. Once I started my list out loud it got easier and I felt satisfied and content. It was one of the most amazing family moments we have had yet.
As the book will state gratitude is a mind set that will aid in happiness through out life. It is an important trait to practice with ourselves and our children. Teaching kids to grow up grateful with these activities will lead to long term happiness and not simply dinner time giggles.
I am sure I will continue to post activities and insights from this book that we have used. I encourage others to try the gratitude exercise. It was an amazing and healthy moment in our lives. It is time to have a few more of those.
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