Are the stresses of life negatively impacting your family? Work toward becoming a happy mom in 5 easy steps!
I hadn’t realized the stresses of life were having such a negative effect on the family as a whole. As hard as that was to see, I realized that I needed to be a happy mom not only for my kids, but for myself.
Goal Setting
After hearing various requests for different Christmas gifts, we decided to sit our kids down and have them tell us what they wanted so we could make a list. The list included things such as dates to the movies, toys, etc. My 7 year old broke down and through tears said “I just want a happy mom” and rushed over to hug me.
Here’s a little about my personality, maybe you can relate: I think things through logically which sometimes leads me to be a just ruler rather than a loving, nurturing mother. I have a very large personal bubble, so holding babies usually maxes out my physical touch meter, thus making it hard to love on my other children. I am very organized, methodical, and follow through with whatever I say I will do. That last part hinders me in my goal setting fairly often though, as I don’t want to set a goal unless I know that I can achieve it.
Because “becoming a happy mom” is a fairly intangible/immeasurable goal, I have thought long and hard about the little goals that I will set to achieve this. I thought it would be easier to break up my goals into smaller categories.
I decided to have goals in different categories:
Personal Goals:
Spiritual:
Physical:
Mental:
Emotional:
Social:
I figured it would be good to make goals in each category for my interactions with my kids as well
Goals with Kids:
Spiritual:
Physical:
Mental:
Emotional:
Social:
I made a chart that I can print out easily see my goals every day. (Get your Free Printable here).
How to Display your Goals
I love putting my goals in a picture frame and marking my progress with a dry erase marker.
It may seem like quite a few goals to master all at once, but much of it can just be simple reminders of things that I am already doing and want to have a more visual reminder.
A big part about goal setting with me is to have a visual reminder of the goals. I think if my kids will be able to see my goals, they will know that I am working toward being a happier mom too, even if I can’t achieve it right away.
I know I could easily brush off this Christmas wish as an over-tired child response, but I am going to take it as a challenge. My husband and I substitute-taught a Sunday School class years ago and the topic for the day was Parent/Child Interactions. There was a woman who told about how growing up her mom was always yelling at them. One day the mom told the children she was done yelling and that was that. This woman told of the difference it made in the home to have her mom not yell, and how hard that must have been for her mom to just stop. I want to be that mom. I want my kids to notice a difference. It will take work, but I will do it. That’s what a New Year, a new week, and new days are for, right?
I have written other great posts about goals and goal setting as our family has evolved. We used to make Live Lists (like a bucket list) with our kids on their birthdays. Here are some ideas on how we currently set goals with our kids.
