Category: Relationships

Which of these do you have more in your family?

Fights, Quarrels, Malice, Anger, Hatred, Jealousy, Mistrust, Unforgiveness and Fear?

OR

Peace, Trust, Love, Humour, Happiness, Joy, Forgiveness, Friendship, Care and Togetherness?

There is no perfect family, every family experiences good and bad times. No matter what holds in your family, the bond you share with the people with whom you have gotten a great percentage of your features and attributes from, will always need to be made stronger.

Looking at the family as a support system, it is expedient that we make it stronger so as to stand the test of time. Parents as well as children have a part to play towards strengthening the family ties.

Gaining tips to achieve this will be of great benefit in this month of Love and always. Here are some amazing tips to help strengthen your family ties.

Tip #1

Respect: respect is reciprocal- this old saying is so true even when it comes to family life, having mutual respect for one another in the home is necessary in building a strong family. Children having respect for parents, husband and wife having respect for each other, parents respecting their children and children respecting one another. When there is respect in the home it creates an atmosphere of being thought of as important.

Tip #2

Express Love: actions speak louder than words. A lot of families love each other in their hearts but never express it with actions. Let there be no boundaries when it comes to expressing Love to your family. Saying I love you is important and adding actions to it makes it even better. Deliberately do things for each other and let it become a habit.

Tip #3

Do things together: some call it “family time”, making time to do things together as a family should not be downplayed. Let’s look at it this way, your family is the team you belong to and for you to win or score, you all have to work together. For your family to bond more, you have to do these more often: Laugh together, work together, eat together, play together, pray together, go for walks together, watch TV together etc.

Tip #4

Study each other: you may not have a Degree in Psychology but proximity affords you the opportunity to study your family members, at least the ones close to you. The reason for this is because the more you know about someone, the more you’ll better handle or live with such a person and vice versa.

Tip #5

Forgive easily: forgiving can be difficult sometimes but what unforgiveness does to you is even worse. So learn to forgive each other easily no matter what has happened, it might take a while but don’t let it take forever.

Tip #6

Treat your family specially: you are familiar with your family but that does not mean you should treat them with contempt as this is often the case. It’s sad to see people treat others better than they treat their own family members. this has to stop! Treat your dad, mom, brother, sisters and significant others specially. This will make your family stronger and knitted together.

Tip #7

Use kind words: some call it “magic word” every family has one or more, it may be “please”, “am sorry” “excuse me” or “can you?” these are polite  statements which express something positive to the receiving party. Use these and more kind words with your family, it will grow tenderness and kindness in your hearts.

Families are complicated yet wonderful and implementing these simple tips will help you strengthen your family ties. The beautiful thing is that it gets less complicated when you are knitted together in love.

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”– Mother Teresa

You can join in our daily Love dare throughout the month of February by following @DrMorayoJimoh for more amazing updates.

A persons personality can be described as a collage of habits which the person expresses. We are our habits and our habits make us. The more good habits we have, the better people we tend to be. Bad habits, which are negative behaviour patterns, however, hold us back from reaching our full potentials. Bad habits, as we know, are detrimental to our well-being; they affect us physically (e.g smoking and its adverse effects on the lungs) and mentally (habitual lying, See our previous post The importance of being honest ). You can conquer your bad habits of procrastination, overspending, smoking or even nail-biting and picking your nose, but first you have to assess the origin of such habits and circumstances that trigger them.

Some bad habits, such as smoking and overspending, often start when a person is under a lot of stress. Gratification is often used in such circumstances to take our minds off the stressor. This may not sound so bad initially, but this is how most bad habits begin. The reason being that when we gratify ourselves, the pleasure we feel is initiated by the release of dopamine from from the limbic system to the  pleasure centers of our brain. Behaviours that trigger this release are then more readily reinforced as we naturally enjoy pleasure. The problem is it is more difficult to be moderate which such behaviours and they soon interfere with our lives and become bad habits.

Most of the time, bad habits tend to ease the ‘here and now’ and provide immediate satisfaction, not thoroughly thinking of the future consequences or effect they’d have on us. This is seen especially in procrastination, which most of us are often guilty of. So if you are serious about conquering your bad habits and you are ready to make a firm resolve, the following actions are necessary:

1. Increased Will power

You have to make a strong resolution that you are willing to stop whatever bad habit it is. You have to remind yourself of it’s adverse effects in your life and that you can indeed control this behaviour. This is something you do daily to increase your willpower and subjugate the habit. Remind yourself that you are in control of your actions and not vice versa. You can even write it down in a diary or somewhere you can see it each day as a reminder. Stop for a second now. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and tell yourself, “I am in control!”.

2. Re-wire your brain

Some say we are creatures of habits and this is due to the way our brains are wired. The more we do an action, the stronger the neural connections relating to that action. This is how practice makes perfect. However, this is also how we automatically or subconsciously find ourselves indulging in our bad habits, the neural connection is usually strong. An environment or situation, that your brain has associated with you carrying out a certain action, could even trigger bad habits. Therefore, you have to re-wire your brain. Associate healthier actions with environments or situations you used to associate with bad habits. This is something you have to do daily for about a month (some say between 21 and 28 days before a bad habit is broken) in order for new neural connections associated with the situation to be established.

3. Reflect

Take time out to reflect on your actions and how they affect your body and well-being. Reflect on who you are now as a person due to this bad habit. Understand that at this moment you’re doing fine without it. Imagine the future consequences of your bad habits. The anxiety caused by too much procrastination or the disappointment you’d feel when you realize your broke again due to overspending. Whatever situation you can relate with. Stay relaxed and imagine how you’d feel if you finally got rid of this bad habit. Experience the momentary joy. Realize when your body begins to crave for this bad habit and what alerts your senses to it. Once you are able to do this, you’d find that you begin to know the initial physical and mental signs that often lead to you indulging in this habit again and can make a conscious decision to stop before you begin to consider it. (For a full mindfulness meditation experience go to  https://www.mobilehealthconsult.org/?page_id=1008)

4. Have a support group

Confide with your friends and family if you can and tell them about the difficulty your having is stopping this bad habit. You’d find that some of your friends may be going through something similar or even the exact same problem. They may have other ways of dealing with bad habits that they could share with you. Meet with a group maybe once a week to share ideas and to find support. This is one of the most effective methods of conquering bad habits. Find people you can relate with and vice versa and help each other.

Moderation is key

Remember to do all things in moderation. Not too little and definitely not too much. Especially things that bring us pleasure. Discipline is very important if we want to prevent ourselves from bad habits. Be moderate.

If you try or you’ve sincerely tried all these and you persist in relasping, it is advised that you seek a psychotherapist as you may not just have a bad habit but an addiction.

7 year old Yomi pushed aside his homework after one failed attempt as he gazed at the neighbors children playing outside, he simply believed that he couldn’t do it. His teacher had taught them the steps, but he found it a herculean task to perform. After all, he didn’t like numeracy. As soon as his mum spotted that he was leaving his numeracy home work for football, she immediately asked Yomi’s older sibling to fix the home work. 

Many children can be found in this same situation likewise many parents. They have this ” I can’t” mindset. Oh! its too tough, somebody help me! They complain the workload in school is enormous and their parents are quick to change schools. Such children who are easily provided a way of escape in the face of seemingly difficult tasks as a numeracy homework grow up to believe that life is a bed of roses  . They also give up easily and will not complete projects in the face of obstacles. They may grow up believing that their parents  have it all planned out for them. They become dependent on others and lack the ability to initiate projects or handle responsibility especially under pressure.  They may also be convenient to stay in their “comfort zone”, never venturing out to take risks.

Resilience can be defined as  an individual’s ability to cope and bounce back in the face of stress and adversity. Grit, a word associated with resilience can be regarded as  the ability to persevere when achieving long term goals.  Resilience determines a lot of things in life, school success, college success, and general success in life. According to Angela Duckworth, Ph.D., a psychologist who has researched on character skills that  may be responsible for success, she discovered that grit  matters more to a child’s ability to reach full potential than intelligence, skill, or even grades.

While some people are of the opinion that  resilient  is innate, research has shown that this “trait” can be taught and learned.

So just how are we supposed to build grit or resilience in a child? Parents, may ask.

Here are a few keys of building this life quality:

1. Help your  child see failure as an opportunity to learn.
2. Encourage them to always try again
3. Teach them problem solving skills e.g. STOP, THINK and ACT can be used in the face of challenges.
4. Avoid criticism or harsh judgment
5. Rewards in form of praise, Hi-5’s can be given positive behaviors are observed, when goals are achieved regardless of the obstacles.  
6. Avoid focusing on failure or negative behavior
7. Celebrate your children’s strength and cultivate their weaknesses
8. Build a close, loving  and positive atmosphere in your home
9. Don’t accommodate every need. This gives them a chance to develop problem solving skills
10. Model Resilience

With these 10 keys used consistently, your child will be well able to face the hiccups that life brings.