Happy New Year!

I love the New Year because it’s a time of hope and renewal. It’s also a perfect time to take stock of how we’re showing up in our families and make adjustments where necessary.

We only get one chance to build a functional family. We want to do the best job we can do, so our hard work and efforts bring us joy and satisfaction rather than hardship and disappointment.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here are four aspects of building a functional family that are helpful to reflect on and see where we might need to improve a little.

Domestic Duties

Is your home chaotic? Do you waste time trying to find things that never seem to be where they belong? Are your kids waking up at odd hours and sleeping at odd hours? Do mealtimes consist of scrambling to find something to cook at the last minute?

Are your kids struggling to get your attention because you’re glued to your phone more times than not?

Parenting Duties

Do days go by when you realize you haven’t had time to stop and read to your children? Are your children demanding and bossy? Are they indoors complaining of boredom too often? Are they glued to the tube? Are you struggling to find time to take them out into nature or even to the park?

Marriage Duties

Do you sometimes feel like life revolves around your children, and there’s no time for anything else? Are you and your spouse growing more distant from one another because everything else screams so much louder for your time and attention?

Self-Care

Do you feel overwhelmed, overworked, and under-appreciated?

Does your life feel like you’re on a treadmill, and you find yourself daydreaming of escaping to some faraway place? No matter how hard you try, does it seem like you never manage to find a moment to take a quiet break?

Whether you said yes or no to any of the above, we all have plenty of room for improvement. This is a good time of the year to take stock of the past year, refocus, and put a plan in place to create more harmony in your family life for 2020.

Raising children shouldn’t exhaust you and leave you with little time for anything else. If you have children under three, maybe, but as the children get older, your workload should lighten.

You aren’t trying to have a perfect family, but you do want to have some balance in your life when you’re raising children. There is work involved, and sometimes there are struggles too, but the rewards should outweigh the difficulties.

An old friend of mine once said to me, “Life is difficult, but it should be enjoyed.”

Amidst all of the difficulties in life, all the things that don’t work out the way we thought they would, all the disappointments that come with being human; there is something sublime, something majestic, something divine about being alive that we want to help our children embrace.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

— Confucius

Each day brings new wonder and joy, whether we have the presence of mind to notice or not.

Today is a great day for us to make some New Year’s resolutions that will help us experience more of the beauty in life and less of the overwhelm. Rumi understood this when he said:

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”

— Rumi

It’s a fact that putting New Year’s resolutions down on paper is a useful exercise to help us live lives that are in harmony with the kind of person we want to be and better reflect the kind of life we want to live.

Some people think it’s silly, but just writing your intention down makes you more likely to reach your goals and aspirations. If you have an accountability friend, that spikes your chances even higher.

The New Year’s resolution tradition now has some research to back it up and silence the naysayers amongst us, which means that, if you haven’t already, you should grab some paper and start writing.

Happy New Year!