10 Ideas for an Effective Morning Ritual
The most successful people on this planet advocate having a morning ritual and waking up as early as 5am.
Morning ‘rituals’ turn us off because it has a joyless, going-through-the-motions connotation to it. And waking up early is painful enough.
Morning routines and rituals are usually for adults, but they can be tweaked for your children as well.
Morning rituals are great because..
They give us the much-needed alone time before distractions start entering our day.
Rituals make us look forward to getting out of bed in the morning.
We have the luxury of having more time to accomplish our tasks for the day.
It instills discipline in children and teens
I had the experience of waking up at 530am one morning and wasn’t able to go back to sleep. Boy, I’ve never felt so accomplished in my life.
I made a smoothie, savoured it in the quiet of the morning, did light exercises, enjoyed the sunrise, took a hot shower, managed to meditate for 10 minutes and by 730am, I was fresh and in front of my laptop – ready to start cracking on work.
Needless to say, I completed so many things that day before lunch came around.
Everyone’s family situation is unique,thus, my morning ritual might not work for you.
Below is a list to help you and your family get started.
10 Ideas for an Effective Morning Ritual
(This is helpful for adults, but rituals can be created for your children as well!)
- Don’t be afraid to tweak your ritual as time passes to suit your needs.
- Incorporate the activities you love in your morning ritual. As time goes, different things will make you happy in the morning and thus, tweaking is essential.
- Don’t plan on having the ‘perfect’ ritual. Everybody’s morning ritual is unique to his or her own liking. Your ritual should make you feel happy and enthused instead of filling you with dread.
- Include light exercises to get your endorphins and blood pumping to give you a better mood.
- Be patient. It takes 44 days to form a habit, thus, don’t be tempted to give up on a morning ritual too soon.
- Go for a walk or jog in nature in the morning to give you perspective.
- Begin your day with a beloved beverage of choice to enthuse you into getting out of bed – be it a self-concocted hazelnut latte, a banana smoothie, a cappuccino, fragrant tea..you get the idea.
- Some people journal or write in their gratitude journals in the mornings. It’s not my favourite morning activity personally, but it might work for you.
- Some meditate to clear their minds in the morning.
- Enjoy the sunrise
All the best!
How to Handle Difficult Relationships in 2 Steps
Our teens are not spared from relationship challenges in school.
They communicate with friends, teachers, school staff and classmates on a daily basis.
They are unlikely to get along with everyone everyday – there will be people whom our teens don’t have a smooth relationship with.
This is normal – even us adults face challenges when interacting with people whose personalities are not compatible with ours.
However, having a conflict-free environment in school is very beneficial to our teens, as we know. They may not get along with their classmate John, for example, but that doesn’t mean our child has to pick a fight with John every time they meet or skip school in order to avoid seeing him. There are better ways to handle such situations.
With proper guidance, our teens can interact with people they personally dislike with grace and manners.
So how can our teens take control of negative relationships (in 2 steps)?
Reframe the situation
Reframing is incredibly powerful. Instead of labeling a classmate as ‘irritating and selfish,’ for example, they can reframe some negative words as stated below:
- ‘Irritating’ – persistent
- ‘Selfish’ – focused, goal-oriented
- ‘Loud’ – vocal, extraverted
- ‘Strict’ – caring
and so on. They might require a thesaurus for this exercise. (just kidding!)
Highlight the positive
We can encourage our teen to highlight the positive aspects of facing challenging relationships.
For example:
- ‘Our teacher may be strict and fierce, but it has pushed me to be more careful and double-check my work in class.’
- ‘Kayla likes to make fun of my curly hair, but it has taught me to be a more patient person over time.’ (admittedly, this particular example is challenging for most of us. Many of us will be tearing our hair out to remain patient with such a character!)
- ‘I have a lot of homework today. However, this will ensure that I get ample practice before the exams next month.’
It takes time for our teens to grasp and practise concepts #1 and #2 above.
However, do not give up and praise him or her whenever a small positive change is noticed.
All the best
A Little-Known-Way to Boost Your Child’s Confidence
Today, we are going to learn how to boost your child’s confidence, spur him or her to achieve more successes and give him courage to take on new challenges.
As humans, we are preprogramed towards negative bias – we easily take stock of where we fell short, where we made (even the smallest) mistakes and so on.
It’s not easy for us – and our children – to recall and appreciate our (big and small) achievements.
This is the secret of many successful people. Successful people are often aware of their strengths and talents and are secure enough to acknowledge their past wins.
Research has shown that the more we celebrate our own successes, the more confident we are when facing new challenges.
This applies to our children and teens. In this exercise, we will be celebrating your child’s successes – no matter how small they may seem.
Step 1: Download the Success Log here.
Step 2: Complete the Success Log with your child.
Examples of successes: ‘I am good at drawing and my art teacher praised my work in front of the class before.’ ‘I scored a B – my ideal grade – for my Maths test last year.’ ‘I like helping my teachers and they appreciate it.’
Basically, include any achievement which your child or teen is proud of. It doesn’t matter if we *think* the achievement is small!
Further actions for you and your child:
Coax your child to re-read this Success Log when your child or teen feels doubtful or insecure about his abilities
Coax your child to re-read this Success Log when your child is fearful of taking a new challenge
When your child scores a new achievement, add it to this log!
I will guarantee that your child will feel good about himself and boost his or her self-confidence with this powerful exercise alone.
All the best.
5 Ways to Know if Your Child is Destined for Success
We know that IQ is needed for our kids to get into good schools, get good jobs, earn good money and lead good lives in future.
Do you know that there is one other factor which is as important – if not, MORE important – than IQ in determining your child’s success?
This factor is EQ – or emotional intelligence.
I don’t wish to bore you with details of how a high EQ equates to success (that will be for another blog post at another time).
Suffice to say that a healthy EQ will lead to
- better relationships
- better decision-making
- better conflict-handling
which brings
- better opportunities
- the best of careers
- the best of friends
and much, much more.
We’ll start with the basics.
Having the 5 EQ traits in the infographic below can predict your child’s success – even more than a high IQ (according to renowned researcher Daniel Goleman).
Unlike IQ, we can up our EQ levels through learning and experience.
And that’s good news for us!
The 5-Item Checklist for a Stronger, More Resilient Child
We’ve heard of this phrase many times : “Change is the only constant.”
Our children – especially teens – experience changes every day.
Life will throw curve balls at them, plans may not go as planned and unpredictable things happen. At the same time, wonderful things happen every day as well!
It’s not enough that they face changes in school and even at home, they are also evolving mentally, emotionally and physically on a rapid level.
They may not be able to handle an avalanche of changes and challenges. But, they can be better prepared with the 2-Step Strategy and The 5-item Checklist for a Stronger, More Resilient Child.
The 2-Step Strategy
1.Be less rigid and more fluid
Tell your child that change is normal. As time passes, things, events and people will change. Expect and accept change as part of life. Nothing in life will remain the same.
Instead of wanting people and things to remain the same, they have to be open-minded and flexible. This means they will be quick-thinking and quick-acting when something happens. Lower their expectations and be open that sometimes things don’t go as planned – and that’s normal.
Just roll with it and go with the flow.
2. Change Means New Adventures
If your child or teen has a ‘catastrophic’ mindset and thinks that every change is a disaster, encourage him to re-frame his mindset.
This means to view the change from a different angle. Get him/her to write down the lessons he or she has learnt from this change.
Your child can go one step further and complete The 5-item Checklist for a Stronger, More Resilient Child below.
The 5-item Checklist for a Stronger, More Resilient Child
a. Is the change a wake-up call for me to do something differently?
b. Will the change open up more opportunities for me to grow and learn?
c. How will this change make me a stronger, confident person?
d. How can the change benefit me?
e. What have I learnt from this change?
You can also download The 5-item Checklist for a Stronger, More Resilient Child for your child here.
All the best!