Busy schedules and hectic lifestyles often get the better of us in our day-to-day life. But this feeling can change as you head home to the comfort of your loved ones. There is, however, just one catch – are you and your family living a happy family life?
A happy family is extremely essential for your relationships both within and outside of your family. Also, the way you function in your family strongly defines your behaviour outdoors. Your mood, and your growth and development as an individual are strongly influenced by your family.
If you’re not sure of how to achieve a happy and healthy family life, follow our little pointers to help guide you in achieving more smiles, and bursts of laughter each evening while you spend time with your family.
Communication is Key
The thumb rule of any relationship is communication. If you are unable to communicate with each other, your family life will remain stagnated. It is important to talk to each other, about each other, and about yourself. Help each other by putting feelings into words. But always remember, communication is a two-way street; you must listen more than you talk. Most importantly, listen to understand. Communication is about understanding, acceptance, comfort, and encouragement. Make sure when you communicate, you do not lose its purpose.
Quality Time
We’ve established the importance of communication, but that’s not possible if you don’t have a certain level of comfort with your loved ones; comfort that only comes from spending quality time. Quality time can be spent at the dinner table, doing chores, running a shopping errand, or doing more fun things such as watching a movie, dinner outside, game nights, and much more. Quality time ensures everyone within the family feel included in each other’s lives rather than feeling like outsiders.
Celebrate Little Victories
Baby steps and little victories make up a family’s growth and development, but these little victories also make up an individual’s self-confidence and will to strive for success and achieve much more in life. When you celebrate little victories, you contribute to your family member’s self-esteem. No matter what, big or small, they always know that their family is going to be their biggest cheerleader. It also teaches you to appreciate the little things in life and look at the world from a positive perspective; this comes in extremely handy considering the challenges and obstacles that come our way every step of life.
Encourage through Failure
Failure is inevitable, moreover, failure is common. But what’s not common is the knowledge and support required to cope with failure and move on to do greater things. When Edison said, “failure is the stepping stone to success,” he was right. Once you know where you went wrong you know how to correct it. But sometimes through all the pain felt by failure, one may not be able to see failure as a learning opportunity, here’s where family steps in. Encouraging your loved ones through failures and challenging times only proves to them that it isn’t the end of the world. It proves that failure does not make you love each other less. Join forces with each other and help navigate through failure, encourage each other to try again, and ensure your loved ones that you will be there in case another learning opportunity decides to surface as they try again!
Self-Love and Care
Every family is made up of individuals. Unless you are happy as an individual, your contribution to family life will be dull or will exhaust you till you reach breaking point. Self-love and care are highly essential for a healthy lifestyle. Figure out what makes you happy and what exhausts you. Talk to someone within the family you can trust and always let them know how you feel. It is a great practice to have a confidante within your family to help you navigate through your own emotions. It is also important to do things that help and boost your self-worth. Always put in the effort to love yourself. No matter how much you do for a happier family, you will never truly be happy until you take the time to look after yourself.