The challenge: to praise your spouse and/or children:

You might think this one is easy to do, but I know for myself it is something that can easily become forgotten during my days.

Our days are filled with a whirlwind of things that just keep coming and going and moving and changing and it makes our days filled with busyness.  If I don’t purposefully make a point to praise my husband and child, then I most of the time just get so busy and I just don’t say it.

Why make the change:

This  answer to the question is very easy…..Because we ALL crave praise.  Each and everyone of us, enjoys getting praise from someone.  It should come from the people that are the closets to us, our spouses, parents, and children.

Praise a child and they will have a happier attitude, a better outlook on their day, and you can usually get a better work repertoire out of them.  But forget to say encouraging praising words to them and suddenly their days are filled with drudgery jobs and parents that bark orders.

Same is true for our spouses.  We both go to work just in different environments.  If we forget to say positive words of praise to each other, then when days get hard and long, it is much easier to look at things and become bitter towards the other individual.  But have a smiling happy spouse say to you, “Wow, you are doing a great job, even though that is really tough,”  and life suddenly gets more bearable.

How to make the change:

This week, focus on speaking positive words to your spouse and your children.  Think that the words that come out of our mouths, will go into our own ears as well as other people’s, and then they will drop down into our souls where they give us either joy or sadness.    We want to be people who speak joy and happiness into other’s lives.

Set your phone alarm clock to have to go off at different intervals throughout the day.  When it goes off, send a positive praising text to your husband.

When working with your child, over emphasize what they are doing by praising them.  Do it “too much” so that they know that you really do care.  Once you have a realization of doing it “too much” you will be able to notice more when it needs to be said.  It becomes more of a routine and more easily remembered.

Who are you going to start thanking today?

 

The challenge: to bake a treat this week

There is something that each of us may remember about walking into Grandma’s kitchen and smelling her delicious homemade sugar cookies.  Or the wonderful smells of homemade pumpkin pie cooking in the oven.  Whatever your memories may be, get back to them.  Embrace them and let your children, grandchildren, or just yourself enjoy some good homemade treats.

Why make the change:

How simple it is to go to the local grocery store and purchase a package of chocolate chip cookies?  We can even go to our local coffee shop and grab a whole tray of conveniently made treats.  But what about the simplicity in making some homemade cookies?  Besides the fact that they are much healthier for you then store bought ones, the taste can’t compare to fresh, warm treats out of the oven.

This challenge is all about simplifying your life and that includes your diet.  Take a look on the back of the package of baked treats.  Most of the ingredients are hard to pronounce and they are entering your body and doing damage to your insides.  You can easily make the same treat with about less than 10 ingredients.  Plus you know what you put into the treats and you can feel good knowing that your children are eating something that was prepared by you.

How to make the change:

We need to be teaching and training our children or grandchildren the fine art of baking.  Is it too hard?  No, baking is something each of us can do with a little practice.

Choose something simple.  Look at the ingredients, if it has many things and lots of steps to the recipe, then skip it and go on to something else.  Keep it simple until you are comfortable baking items.

These are some simple baking items that can be mixed in one bowl and they include:

• cookie bars–we have chocolate chip cookie bars
• muffins–we like pumpkin chocolate chip muffins
• pie–try our large family easy pumpkin pie

 Replace your store bought treats with one baked item this week.  Hopefully you will enjoy it much more and will continue doing this for the rest of the year.