Learn to Stop Sucking The Joy out of Life

"Do you want instant peace and joy in your life today? Here is what you do: Watch a child play…"

I love quotes, I love inspirational quotes and I stole this inspirational quote from a self help website.

Although the advice is inspirational and thought provoking - it's often harder to do something that sounds so simple. Life and day to day stresses tangle us up and we forget the basic premise of stopping to smell the roses. Even as I sit here, dilegently 'working' to provide information and content for my website, The Girl is playing quietly beside me. I know that I could stop and smell the roses now but my mind is telling me "right after I'm done this" but why not this after I'm done smelling the roses? How did my priorities become skewed?

Don't get me wrong, it's not all like that all the time - last night for instance I was thorougly enjoying watching the Dervish and The Girl play tag on the deck - there was a little shrieking and gentle screaming but for the most part they were having a wonderful time and it made me smile.

Partially it was just because it's such a rare opportunity to see these two intense children play together and have fun and not fight for such a good chunk of time but a lot of it was just the sheer pleasure of watching 2 little kids laughing and running and feeling joy. (I even forgot about their intensity for a while) It rubs off on you if you let it!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, one of our goals for 'now' is to spend more time in "family time". This is all part of the smelling of the roses but isn't it a shame that we get to the point of having to plan it?

"Do you want instant
peace and joy in your life today?
Here is what you do:
Watch a child play…"

I'm going to print this out about 20 times and put it on every wall!

One of the other goals we set was to re-establish a routine in an attempt to gain some control in our lives - less chaos = happier family. I found another tidbit of good information on the same self help site - it was an item about teaching your children to set goals.

Admittedly, I could stand to teach myself how to set goals and it looks like I'll be printing that one out too... we can all learn together - FAMILY TIME!

Article Source: http://www.parentingarticlelibrary.com

RollerCoasterKidMom is the parent of 2 emotionally intense children and writes about their life and parenting difficult, challenging, spirited intense children at www.myrollercoasterkid.com/serendipity Dervish is the 7 year old boy whirlwind that inspired www.myrollercoasterkid.com The Girl is his 3 year old sister who mirrors his intensity Pie is the 11 year old oldest brother of normal temperament Self help site referenced: self-help.vocaboly.com/

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