PERSPECTIVES: ‘Make people feel loved everyday’

When I decided to start blogging about health and well-being, it began with an effort to take my own family’s goals towards a healthy lifestyle more seriously. It meant indefinite attempts to find a balance between understanding the voids we needed to fill with more awareness, knowledge, learning and practicing new skills and assimilating all this into our lifestyle while also trying to decide how to share our learning with others. While the COVID-19 pandemic ‘added fuel to fire’ and compounded existing struggles for many of us, it also served to emphasise newer opportunities to reimagine our lives. A rare opportunity shared by us all, world over, and all at once, at that! A new lease on life much like that experienced by the environment and wild-life as a result of the pandemic-related lockdowns (as reported by various documentaries). Perhaps the biggest difference between the environment / wild-life and us in this context, is that the former were quick to adapt to this rare opportunity and make the most of it in order to thrive! Not just survive, but thrive! Have we taken this opportunity to make changes to our lives, to our perspectives, choices and actions; that would enable us to not just survive, but thrive?

Personally, the past couple of years have meant examining our health amidst generic health issues that have been taking on a chronic nature and pushed us to seriously reflect deeper, on the different but interrelated dimensions of our health. We took this further to think of ways in which we could possibly address / resolve these issues individually and as a family.

Here is what we have learnt so far…

We started off with repeated discussions about our goals (individual and family) – the result, A Goals List
Insert GOALS into daily routine in order to practice habits towards achieving GOALS – Daily Routine
Put it in usable, practical, easily accessible and appealing format – Daily Routine Hardcopy Print / on Digital device
Motivation to follow through with Daily Routine (Still a struggle with us tripping over every task and each other) – the result; Burn Out, Frustration, Exhaustion and Demotivation.

After all our collective efforts to get to point no. 4 over the past couple of years, we find ourselves struggling to follow through; each day of failure leaves us highly demotivated and devoid of energy to begin anew towards our goals. We have still been circling around the periphery of our goals that have seemed still far out of reach. Until recently, when I realised how enthusiastic my little kids would become after me exercising elements of our routine even in small increments (due to our struggle to manage time at home) with them. Undoubtedly, it was the ‘quality’ of that little increment of time spent with them that energised them to be more willing and cooperative when it came to their chores and being receptive to the guidance I would give them. They would surprise me with their own ideas and creativity, coming up with ways to help me with my own tasks as well. The same was with the hubby; the smallest efforts to connect (say even through a momentary but warm hug) through the day somehow energised us to invest more thought and impulse into each other through the day. We soon started to be able to spontaneously make an effort to take that ‘ideal daily routine’ to implementation, even though in small increments, and we continue to see progress.

What we realised was, just how caught up we get with the stress of carrying out our responsibilities day-in and day-out that we gradually stop connecting with each other. Something that is essential for us. Humans are social by nature, and failure to forge connections with each other can disrupt our thought processes, the choices we make and the happiness we could otherwise all afford despite our wider circumstances. Additionally, like many aspects of our lives, there is a feedback loop where achieving our goals through the support from our social relationships, can also in turn improve our social interactions.

This brings me back to a previous post of mine, ‘Some goodies to stock up on before tackling family resolutions’; where an inspirational thought I came upon over the Internet struck me and resonates strongly with today’s post. ‘Make people feel loved everyday’ and the rest will start to take shape. Human connections are magical and have the power to communicate unspoken thoughts that can be an effective and essential source of daily motivation, character building and strengthening resilience. So connect with yourself and with those around you, everyday. When love thrives, life thrives.

Join me in my follow-up post for a few ideas on making people feel loved everyday. The learning continues…

References:

Jakubiak, B.K. and Feeney, B. C. (2016). Daily goal progress is facilitated by spousal support and promotes psychological, physical, and relational well-being throughout adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(3): 317–340. doi:10.1037/pspi0000062
Canadian Mental Health Association. (2019, October 17). The importance of human connection [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://cmha.ca/blogs/the-importance-of-human-connection