Creating a happy and harmonious home life is much the same as baking a cake, in the sense that you need the right ingredients in the right proportions – which can seem a little tricky at first, but once you have a recipe to follow, it’s child’s play.
If you’re interested in learning about more of the “ingredients” then you might want to read up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, as this article merely scrapes the surface by providing ten practical tips on how to achieve a happy and harmonious home life.
- HOME
Having a stable sense of home is clearly imperative.
This doesn’t have to be a fancy property however, it could just be a room in a shared house as long as you feel safe, independent and at peace. Your home should be your “safe place” where you feel comfortable, this level of comfort shouldn’t be limited to your house either, it should extend to the street in which you live.
The well known saying “tidy house tidy mind” rings true when it comes to creating a happy and harmonious home life – if you have a clean, tidy, and well-organised home it has a significant effect on your emotional wellbeing.
Furthermore, your sense of ‘home’ goes beyond the bricks and mortar, as it’s a sense of certainty and safety that everything is going to be alright – a shelter from the storm that life can throw at you from time to time.
Whilst it’s important to create an aesthetically attractive living environment, and for example, it’s reasonable to spend some time looking into traditional belfast sink options in order to spruce up your kitchen, it’s important you don’t get carried away with the “external” aspects of the home.
Living in a beautiful space certainly is uplifting and does contribute to the feeling of a happy home, but what’s more important in terms of the ingredients is that of independence, safety, and a sense of certainty.
- FINANCE
You don’t need to be rich in order to be stable.
You do, however, have need to have a reliable income in order to feel happy and harmonious, and ideally, this needs to be a secure and independent source of income that comes from a stable source, such as work, business, or even benefits.
- HEALTH & WELLBEING
Your health is your ultimate foundation, as you can have all the money in the world, a beautiful home, and great relationships – but without your health, life has a tendency to feel very disharmonious.
- YOU TIME
With such busy lives, particularly if you are raising a family or working in a high-pressure job it can be difficult to make time for yourself.
If you’re depleted and exhausted the whole time, you’re not going to be able to be fully present as a parent, partner or friend. Indeed, you might end up being grumpy, snappy and irritable which is why it’s so important you take time out for yourself.
- RELATIONSHIPS
It’s often been said that “no man (or woman) is an island” and when it comes to creating a happy and harmonious home life a supportive network of caring friends and family can be fundamental. That said, sometimes it can be the people in our life that cause disharmony and unhappiness. It’s therefore important to consider your relationships carefully and ascertain which relationships add to your sense of happiness and harmony, and perhaps more importantly, which ones detract from it.
- MINDSET & EMOTIONS
The thoughts you think create the feelings you experience.
At times, it can feel like your emotions control you rather than you controlling them, but it’s important to remember no matter what the situation you are in control of the thoughts you think, what you focus on, and the way you feel about things.
You ultimately decide where to focus your attention, and as the popular saying states “where attention goes energy flows”.
If you have a positive focus then you are likely to attract more positive things, and even if this weren’t to be the case, you will at least feel about the situation you are dealing with. Meditation, and in particular mindfulness meditation, can help calm and balance the mind leading to a more harmonious state.
- LEARN TO LOVE YOURSELF
The western world seems to be plagued with an emotional epidemic of low self-esteem, low self-worth and low-confidence.
We often look to external solutions to satiate emotional voids and we can have a tendency to think if we just get ______ then we will feel more happy and harmonious, but this is a potentially dangerous formula – as often, the external doesn’t satiate the internal and therefore, we are stuck in a cycle of wanting more, more, more.
The conclusion of this article, therefore, looks at three simple ways to learn to love yourself.
- STOP TRYING TO FILL THE VOID
We all have emotional voids within and on this basis, we’re all guilty of distracting ourselves from time to time, but this level of distraction and need to fill the void can become unhealthy; as this is when we see people living lives that are really out of harmony and turning to emotional crutches such as other people, drugs, or gambling.
The best way to deal with this void is to simply accept it exists, delve into the feelings you have around this, and look for nourishing ways to make yourself feel better.
- STOP DOING THAT WHICH HURTS YOU
There’s normally a trigger that causes physical pain – and similarly, there are triggers for your emotional pain. If you have a backache as a result of sitting in a chair all day, then the trigger is sitting in the chair – the paracetamol doesn’t take away the pain, it just masks it, and therefore to stop the pain you need to stop sitting in a chair all day without moving.
Emotionally, you need to do the same.
- REDUCE CONTACT WITH NEGATIVE PEOPLE
Having to deal with toxic, negative and depleting people is an unfortunate yet often necessary part of life. That said, scientific research now proves the negative energy from one person does rub off onto those around them, like a virus, and it’s therefore important to reduce your contact with negative people.
Comments are closed.