Your guide to a healthier perspective of life
Prioritize relationships.
Don’t let your pride or ego get in the way. What’s more important? Always being right? Or maintaining a healthy relationship?
When you are on your deathbed, what is your more likely regret? Tarnishing your relationship with others over something so small that you may or may not even remember? Make sure that you are focusing on what is really important in life.
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain
Joy, happiness, and laughter are contagious! Even if you are not happy, trying to make others happy can help improve your mood as well.
If you’re moping around, you may get attention in the short-term. Nice people or people who care about you will ask how you’re doing and try to offer encouragement or advice. But if you’re constantly down in the dumps, eventually people will not want to hang around you as much because you’ll drag their mood down too.
Be happy. Try to make others feel good. The more you can genuinely make others laugh or be happy, the more they’ll want to do the same for you. And you get the positive benefit of doing something nice for others, which will increase your happiness.
Every parent wants what is best for their kids. These “rules” are something quick I thought about for my 3-year old and 1-year old. The rules will grow and modify as they get older (such as teaching them to be respectful, responsible, and have good work ethic, talking about philosophy, etc). But for now, with my limited experience as a parent, I feel these are a good start for any new parent. Read below and let me know your thoughts in the comments section!
Rules of being a good parent:
1. Be interested in them and give them your attention…When you’re with them, be PRESENT. Don’t be on your phone or watching tv. Don’t think about work. Ask them questions and actively listen to them.
2. Don’t be afraid to say no…kids shouldn’t feel entitled to anything. When you said no, stick to your word. Don’t give in because they’re throwing a tantrum. It’s always going to be easier to give them what they want, but is that helping them in the long run?
3. Teach them that actions have consequences – whether those are good or bad consequences depends on the action.
4. Support their interests. You may not like whatever they happen to be into at the moment, but if it’s not hurting them, support them. Be interested in what they’re interested in, even if you have to fake it. Let them be themselves and explore things on their own without you influencing them to like/dislike something. They should figure that out on their own.
5. Tell them you love them. They should know how much they mean to you and they should feel loved and supported. Tell them you love them and that you’re proud of them everyday.
A lot of people love holidays and birthdays. They enjoy gift giving, gift receiving, recognizing others on their special day, or being recognized on their own special day.
As I was thinking about it yesterday (Father’s Day), I realized that I really enjoy the holidays and birthdays too. But I honestly don’t care about receiving gifts or recognition. That’s not my love language. Holidays and birthdays are just another day to me. What I love about the holidays though is having a set day, a reminder, to take some time off from work. It’s almost like a forced break. It’s a scheduled day in our calendar where it’s not only socially acceptable to not work that day, it’s actually encouraged and it’s a little strange to be working.
It’s important for the hard-drivers (the people who are always focused on work, achievement, and improvement) to take some time off. Because too often, we are thinking about what we need to do next, when really we need to just enjoy time with our loved ones – the ones who make our lives worth living.
So, yes…I enjoy holidays too. But it’s not for the reason many think about.
Telling the truth can be really, really hard sometimes. It can be uncomfortable because you want to make other people feel good (or, you at least don’t want to make them feel bad).
But if you withhold the truth, you are actually hurting them. How can they improve what they’re doing or how they’re acting if nobody confronts them about it? What if they don’t have the awareness to realize that anything is wrong in the first place? Make the difficult decision to tell them what they need to hear, even when it’s easier to tell them what they want to hear.