Money, whether you like it or not, can buy happiness. Is it better being poor and healthy or rich and sick? I believe the healthy and rich is the better option and I bet you do too.
A recent research has looked for the link between money and happiness and has found out that we can indeed buy happiness, but we get the happiness when we spend our money on someone else.
Read Buying Happiness by Giving »
If you are a teacher or a parent of a child who struggles with writing, here are some things you can do to help make life easier for them. Remember, they do not need to be labeled. They do not need a stamp of “Dyslexia” or “ADHD”. If you find they are struggling, lend them a helping hand and change some of the classroom rules to suite their need.
These days, when children’s eating habits have led to an increase in obesity, parents’ responsibility to raise food-smart children has increased too.
It is the quality or the nutrition in the food we give our kids, coupled with the teaching of good habits, that will determine our kids’ health as children and later as grownups.
Read How to Raise Food-Smart Kids »
Kids are like monkeys. If you teach them to handle disagreements by being a good role model, you can help them enjoy life and to cope and accept the experiences in life as they come.
Read Monkey See, Monkey Do »
Sleep is essential to many functions of the body and your thinking capacity is highly influenced by it. Success at school can be directly influenced by sleep, relationships can be directly affected by sleep and health has a direct connection to sleep. Therefore, happiness and sleep have a lot to do with each other.
When my daughter was born, I did not attend a sleeping school to learn about good sleeping habits and, sure enough, we were so excited with the arrival of the new baby that we tried to spend every second with her. When she was 11 months old, we discovered that we did not have a life.
One of the hardest things to measure is change. Whenever we are not happy with something in our life, we want to change it. But then, sometimes for years, we look in the mirror and we can’t notice the changes we go through. Only while looking at photos from last year do we notice the changes. We are different, but we feel the same.
Have you ever looked at photos of people from your high school reunion and through “They look the same, but somehow different”?
Gal (my husband) and I looked at some photos of our high school reunion (which we have missed – poor us!). Some of our friends had glasses, some were bold, some “grew sideways”, some looked older and we realized that we must look the same to them, the same but different.
Read Snapshots: Tracking Changes »
Ronit and I have a very good friend, who has been in a difficult personal situation in the past couple of years. He feels very frustrated by his circumstances and sees himself powerless to break out of them and live a happy life again.
Often, when he talks to other people, he uses sarcasm.
For example, one day he was contacted by a large company, which I was not familiar with. He got excited about it, but wanted to seem like he was keeping his cool, so as not to get disappointed if he did not get an order from them later on. So he said to me, “Gal, I just got off the phone with company XYZ”.
“What is this company?”, I asked.
“Oh, it’s just a small company nobody knows”, he said in a seemingly casual tone.
Last week, I introduced parenting the Socrates way, where I outlined the benefits of parenting by asking questions. So how to ask questions that will develop your kids and help them grow?
Let’s continue with this parenting technique and explore the “right and wrong” questions and the “right and wrong” answers.
Right and Wrong Questions
When I introduce this technique to parents, many of them ask about the right and wrong questions to ask their children. As you probably know (from reading previous posts), “right” and “wrong” are not words I like to use. I do not believe questions can be divided into “right” or “wrong”. I prefer to call them “effective” or “not effective”.
There are 6 things you can do to make sure your questions are effective.
It is amazing how many people struggle with life. Life has become so hectic and difficult for most people that many can only focus on what is going to happen today, tomorrow, next month and maybe, only maybe, next year.
I think if we were to scan people’s brains, we would find that their brains are busy, busy, busy, thinking about things like the dishes, the bills, the alarm clock and shopping, with only small breaks for planning for something like next month’s birthday party. People like this are in survival mode.
When I ask people about their plans for next month or next year, or even what they think is going to happen in ten years, they look at me as if I have fallen from the sky. They say things like, “Ronit, you are nuts. There are so many things we need to sort out now that we do not have time to think about next year,” and so life passes by and is taken over by things like, the council rates, lunch boxes and stress.
Read The Business Called "Life" »
There is a period in children’s development when they ask questions in response to everything you say. I remember the “Why” as my kids’ way of learning.
“Eden, please bring me the plate form the table”
“Why do you want the plate?”
“I want to put the egg on it”
“Why do you want to put the egg on it?”
“So you can take it to the table and eat it”
“Why do you want me to eat it?”
“Eggs are healthy. If you eat your egg, you won’t be hungry and you will be healthy”
“Why do you want me to be healthy?”
And this went on and on and on… If I remember correctly, most of these conversations ended with “because I have said so”.
I think that Socrates, the great philosopher, never got over this stage of his development and perhaps this is what got him going on his quest for knowledge and understanding of life. Mentally, Socrates was just a curious kid. His mind was full of questions and through them he gained a lot of wisdom.
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Reflections From: $5.99 
In the Outback with Jasmine Banks From: $5.99 
Be Special, Be Yourself for Teenagers From: $5.99 
The Will From: $5.99 
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