Creating Harmony With Your Kids: The Happy Life System Peacetime Pillar

Creating Harmony With Your Kids: The Happy Life System Peacetime Pillar

Teaching Your Children to Find Inner Balance and Peace

Understanding the Peacetime Pillar

Hey parents, let's get real for a minute. As a mom of four in my twenties, at the beginning, I was trying to do it all without really having a clear roadmap to keep coming back to.

I wore many hats, just like you. Running a business, being a wife, maintaining friendships all while trying to be the best mom I could be. And what I found was that I was constantly craving a steady foundation, a set of thoughtful habits to lean on when I felt on edge or burnt out and I wanted the same for my kids, too.

I constantly thought about how I wanted to show up as a parent and what family values I wanted at the heart of our home. One big value? Living in touch with our emotions and being in harmony with our feelings, both positive and negative.

Enter, the Peacetime Pillar.

This Happy Life System pillar is so important to me as a mom. Because life happens! It is never always going to be all sunshine and rainbows. So having this pillar to comes back to means you will be able to things like:

 Become aware of your emotions and know when to take a break.

 Learn to move into harmony and teach your children to do the same.

 Taking time to recenter and refresh, and modeling this behavior for your children.

You Can’t Feel Good All the Time… But You Can Do Something About It

The enemy of a strong **Peacetime Pillar **is conflict. If harmony and inner peace are neglected, you will find yourself living in chaos. You won’t be able to live in a state of pure happiness all the time. So, you need tools to ride those emotional waves when they hit you.

To create a life of beauty and happiness, you’ve got to take time to connect with your emotions, discover your breath, and tune into your inner voice.

Here are the four elements within the Peacetime Pillar:

• Acceptance: Understanding and accepting all emotions. This means recognizing that it’s okay to feel a whole range of emotions, both positive and negative. The important thing is teaching your children to accept their emotions. This is the first step toward emotional intelligence.

• Harmony: Finding balance amidst the chaos. Harmony doesn’t mean you’re happy all the time. It means finding balance and peace even in difficult moments. Show your children how to acknowledge their feelings and find a path back to calmness.

• Reflection: Taking time to think about your feelings. Encourage your children to reflect on their emotions and experiences. This practice helps them understand their feelings and learn from their experiences.

• Self-Improvement: Using these reflections to grow and improve. Teach your children that every experience, even negative ones, is an opportunity for growth. Show them how to use their reflections to make positive changes in their lives.

Today, diving deeper into harmony and how it can transform your life and the lives of your children.

Teaching Kids (and Yourself) About Emotional Balance

Harmony means acknowledging and balancing all the emotions we have as humans.

When you live in harmony, you can move through life being acknowledged, seen, and heard by those around you. You’re not white-knuckling difficult situations or pretending you don’t care or feel hard things. Because when you do that, eventually, those feelings will bubble up and spill over. For kids and adults alike! And we all know what that looks like: suddenly yelling or getting upset when one thing finally tips the scales. When that happens, it’s hard to communicate effectively or even process your feelings. That’s why having practices in place to find harmony matters.

Here’s how to start:

• Take 5 minutes when you need a break. Feeling overwhelmed? Step aside for a quick reset.

• Pull the car over and take a few deep breaths if you need some time before you get to your destination. It’s okay to pause and recenter.

• Step outside for a moment of fresh air. Sometimes a change of scenery can help you clear your mind.

And here are ways you can support your children (and really, even yourself) to find harmony:

• Recognize their feelings when things are good and bad.

• Talk with your kids about how their body feels when different emotions come up. Are they tense? Relaxed? And when they’re feeling negative, how can they get their body back to feeling calm so they can work through negative emotions?

• Guide them to take deep breaths and think about their feelings.

• Help them to process and handle their emotions constructively.

Here’s an example of this in play: Your child is at the playground, and someone else takes the swing they wanted. Instead of telling them to just move on, walk them through their feelings. “I see you’re upset. Let’s take a few deep breaths. How do you feel now, and what can we do next?” This approach teaches them to handle disappointment and find new solutions calmly.

My Special Practice Helping Young Children Release Negative Emotions

I have a special practice to share with you today. It’s one I used with my kids all the time when they were younger.

Releasing Negative Emotions Into a Stone

Step 1 Have your child hold a small stone. It can be one they always hang onto or one you find outside when you need it.

Step 2 Tell them to blow their negative feelings (anger, sadness, worry) into the rock.

Step 3 Explain that by doing this, they are letting go of these emotions, allowing the stone to hold them.

This practice teaches them that when negative emotions arise, they can honor them, release them and move forward.

Creating harmony within the Peacetime Pillar is essential for both parents and children. By teaching your children to acknowledge, process, and release their emotions, you are giving them tools to maintain inner peace and balance throughout their lives.

Remember, the goal is not to avoid negative emotions but to handle them constructively. Model these practices in your daily life, and you’ll see your children start to do this too. They’ll learn to take moments to recenter and find peace, just as you do.

Let's embrace the Peacetime Pillar and create a harmonious, balanced life for ourselves and our children.