Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.” — Martha Beck
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Author: Christine Carter
Live Group Coaching — October Registration Open!
raise happy kids + love your life
Registration is now open for October’s Live Group Coaching: Social & Emotional Intelligence!
- Does your child have issues with a bully, or friendships gone awry?
- What do you do when your kid has an emotional outburst?
- Think you may be over-thinking problems?
- Want to learn more about parenting mindfully (and practicing loving-kindness with kids)?
This is the why — and how — to raise caring and forgiving kids! Learn how to teach your kids to choose compassion over anger.
Participation is extremely limited. Sign-ups will likely fill up this week.
CLICK HERE to learn more about or register for the NEW live small-group coaching.
“Christine Carter coaches families on how to create systems that promote family happiness. And you know what? She changed my life. Because she took questions that are difficult and complicated for me and she was able to find good answers quickly.”
– Penelope Trunk, blogger, bestselling author & mother of two, Madison, Wisconsin.
October Theme: Social & Emotional Intelligence
Learn to teach children skills for happiness, emotional intelligence, and resilience.
4 weeks of coaching (Oct. 1st to Oct. 26th)
Live video coaching calls on October 9th, 16th, & 23rd
Tuesdays 5:30pm PT/7:30pm CT/8:30pm ET.
Ready for Group Coaching Sessions with Dr. Christine Carter?
CLICK HERE to learn more about or register for the NEW live small-group coaching.
Happiness Tip: Be Unproductive for a Whole Work Day
If you are like me (a recovering perfectionist and over-achiever) consider taking a break from your high-productivity this week. Loads of research make it clear that unrelenting work doesn’t lead to success and it certainly doesn’t contribute to happiness. (Or health, for that matter.)
We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that highly successful people manage their energy by working hard and then resting. They take time off and get enough sleep.
Sometimes, we need to let ourselves tinker and day dream and chat rather than produce, produce, produce.
Go ahead: Procrastinate. Linger at the water cooler. Don’t do the dishes. Take a long lunch. Answer your emails in any order you fancy. Don’t cross anything off your task list. If this isn’t your normal way of being, this might be quite uncomfortable for you. Try to breathe through the discomfort while resisting the urge to criticize your sloth-like pace. You can always put the pedal to the metal tomorrow.
Join the discussion: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate? Inspire others by commenting below.
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Friday Inspiration: Som Sabadell Flashmob
One of my favorite flashmobs: Ode to Joy!
Thursday Thought
Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.” — David McCullough Jr.
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Turning the Morning Blitz into School-Day Bliss
Moment of truth: My kids and I spent the first part of the last school year without any sort of predictable morning routine, or at least one that worked. If my kids seemed tired, I’d let them sleep in — and feed them breakfast in the car. If I was tired, I’d sleep in — and then find my cranky self snapping at the kids to hurry up.
In my household, there is a vast difference between school mornings that go smoothly and those that involve nagging, missed buses, and tears. It’s the difference between heaven and hell.
Mornings are important. Will kids arrive at school flustered and distressed from their panicked run to the bus, having barely choked down breakfast? Or will they arrive well-rested and well-fed, bright-eyed and ready to learn? Plenty of research suggests that this difference can influence their school success in a big way.
The good news is that our mornings aren’t simply catastrophes that happen to us; instead, our morning happiness is actually within our power to control, and finding that morning bliss is all about HABIT. Once a routine is established in our brains, it takes very little effort for us, or our kids, to enact that routine.
The bad news is that if we aren’t deliberate in establishing our routines, our families can get into bad habits that become difficult to break. A few examples of the bad habits we got into last year: One of my daughters would always wait to come down for breakfast until I nagged her repeatedly — sometimes to the point of yelling — to do so; the other would routinely change clothes 1,000 times; both never put their PE shoes in the same (findable) place.
I did finally get it together and choreograph a morning routine that worked. It was HARD for the first several weeks: my friends and family thought I was being particularly neurotic and controlling with my detailed checklists and minute-to-minute schedules. The kids started off strong, and then, about 3 weeks in, got bored and annoyed and wanted to have nothing to do with my routines. But I was so glad that I persisted! Turning that crazy morning blitz into morning bliss is SO WORTH IT.
Want my best advice for establishing a blissful morning routine? See this post on my Raising Happiness blog at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.
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Live Group Coaching Starts Tonight!
raise happy kids + love your life
Our first live call in September’s group coaching is tonight!
If weren’t able to join us this time, next month we’ll be focusing on Social & Emotional Intelligence. Sign-ups for October’s group open September 17th.
What’s Live Group Coaching? CLICK HERE to learn more.
“Christine Carter coaches families on how to create systems that promote family happiness. And you know what? She changed my life. Because she took questions that are difficult and complicated for me and she was able to find good answers quickly.”
– Penelope Trunk, blogger, bestselling author & mother of two, Madison, Wisconsin.
September Theme: Fostering Academic Success
How to raise engaged learners — but not perfectionists — who thrive at school
4 weeks of coaching (Sept. 1st to Sept. 30th)
Live video coaching calls on September 11th, 18th, & 25th
Tuesdays 5:30pm PT/7:30pm CT/8:30pm ET.
October Theme: Social & Emotional Intelligence
Learn to teach children skills for happiness, emotional intelligence, and resilience.
4 weeks of coaching (Oct. 1st to Oct. 26th)
Live video coaching calls on October 9th, 16th, & 23rd
Tuesdays 5:30pm PT/7:30pm CT/8:30pm ET.
Ready to Join the Coaching Group with Dr. Christine Carter?
CLICK HERE to learn more about the NEW live small-group coaching.
Happiness Tip: Memorize Two Lines from a Poem
We often forget that inspiration — along with its cousins, elevation and awe, — are positive emotions that make us feel more content, joyful and satisfied with our lives. One way to bring more of these positive emotions into our lives is to memorize a part of a poem that inspires us.
This is one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The lines I say to myself for inspiration are, “the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
Take Action: Use the Internet to find a poem you remember loving. Print it out, highlight your favorite lines, and commit them to memory.
Join the discussion: What is your favorite line from a poem? Inspire others by commenting below.
Friday Inspiration: Nick Vujicic
Here’s a video for all the times our kids are feeling sorry for themselves. (Or we are feeling victimized, for that matter.) No arms, no legs, no worries!
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Thursday Thought
Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.” — Bliss Carman
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