History Gives Us A Guide

The COVID19 pandemic is giving families around the world to stay home together, bond, and take stock of your life. This has not happened in 100 years but this is an opportunity to weave your family closer together, get to know your children better, and inspire creativity and authenticity in each member of your family.

My grandmothers told us desperate, painful stories of desperation and suffering during the Great Depression. While my mother, as a little girl in Kansas, got up at 4am with her other brothers and sisters to get in line with their wagons, inches of snow blowing over them, waiting for the train that delivered desperately needed food. My mother’s family was literally starving and thanked God for the government delivering food to starving people like her.

Along with the desperate stories my mother told me, there were also loving, family stories, of the creativity and fun they had creating a closely-knit life together during trying times. Let’s learn how to create a time in your family’s life that will create incredible, rich, family stories to last a lifetime.

Begin With a Great Pandemic Plan

What we know about stress and human behavior is we feel safe when we know there is a plan. Your kids are used to a plan and parents are used to a plan at work. Creating a home pandemic plan is essential to ward off tension, cabin fever, and volatile emotions. You want to create stability, positive, inspiration and some fun in this great plan.

Create Your Home Pandemic Plan

Begin by creating a schedule. Continue their school setting. Schools will have online learning that is the first priority. After you find out your children’s school lesson plans you can schedule the following plan to create fun, inspiration, and creativity.

Experience the Power of Your Family S.E.L.F. Care Plan

S= Serenity

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
~ Blaise Pascal, French mathematician

In our world we value action and to do lists, but we do not value reflection time. The greatest inventors, Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, and scientific discoveries are created in times of reflection not action mode. Use this invaluable time at home to gift your family with reflection time. Please teach your family the power of unplugging from our world to listen to the still, brilliant, creative voice whispering inside them.

1. Reflection Time
   Each person in the family spends 15-30 minutes alone in their bedroom, outside or in their closet. Teach your children the power, and mystery of reflection time. Being silent is not “doing nothing.” Reflection time is genius seeding time.
   
2. Meditation Room®
   When I started our Meditation Room® years ago I was shocked when we received tons of emails from parents going to our Meditation Room with their children. The kids loved doing this fun exercise with their parents. Relax, reduce stress, get your brain healthy, and have fun all at the same time. Enjoy 3-5 minute nature meditations. Your mind and body can travel from the Northern Lights, to an ocean beach, or to a forest with birds singing. You can also do a guided meditation with Dr. Hall.

E= Exercise

It’s essential to keep your mind and body moving especially during this time. Exercise creates endorphins, serotonin and dopamine which calm, de-stresses, and creates health for everyone. Exercise revs up your immune system and keeps you optimistic, energetic, and resilient.

1. Energize Your Brain

Creativity and Fun
Go online to Curiodyssey. This is an incredibly exciting online home for your family’s creativity, experiments, and games.

2. Exercise Your Body

Ecotherapy.
Research shows getting outside creates health, happiness, de-stresses, reduces depression and energizes you. Put up a badminton net, a basketball hoop, volleyball net in the backyard. Get a soccer or kick ball to get moving. If you live in a cold climate go on mindful nature walks each day. As you walk have each child tell you what they are discovering new that they have not seen or heard before.

Bootcamps.
Each person can take turns daily playing the drill instructor at your boot camp for 10-20 minutes a day. You can design your own boot camp with jumping rope a few minutes, sit ups, waist twists, running place, and other aerobic exercises. Have each person take their pulse before they begin and then again after the boot camp. This is a great learning experience to teach them the health of getting their bodies revved up as their blood pumps and rich, life giving oxygen flows through their body.

Online resources.
You can go online and have fun dancing, doing fun exercises and learning new modes of moving your body. Go to YouTube and discover the incredible resources to get your bodies moving

L= Love

Feeling love, connection, and acceptance is the root of all happiness and mental and physical health and wellbeing. It’s a great time to deepen your sacred connection to your family members.

1. Board games.
   Play some old fashion fun games like pick up sticks, jacks, and card games. You can order these inexpensive items online for delivery if you don’t have them.
   
2. Reading.
   Read, read, read. Research tells us that children that read are extremely successful and happy. If you don’t have books at home go online and download some digital books. Have each child pick an inspirational person they are interested in and do a presentation about that person.
   
3. Mindful Family Meetings
   Learn how conduct invaluable, loving mindful family meetings. Just go to this link at the Mindful Living Network.

F= Food

Teach your children that food is medicine. Food affects our mood, brain, and our entire life’s health and well-being.

Mindful Eating Everyday®

Having fun, experimenting, and teaching your family about healthy, mindful eating, can not only sustain their health, you can ward off the obesity crisis we are experiencing in our world today.

Have your kids plan one meal a day. Encourage them to be creative. This is a great time for healthy mindful eating education. They can create breakfast one day, lunch the next and dinner the following day. Teach them their plate is divided into four sections of approximately 30 percent grains, 40 percent vegetables, 10 percent fruits and 20 percent protein, accompanied by a smaller circle representing dairy, such as a glass of milk or a yogurt.

You can find other delicious, healthy recipes at the Mindful Living Network®. This site has great information on nutrition and servings for kids and family member. It’s a great time to discuss the critical nature of food choices with your family.

Don’t forget the critical Importance of drinking water and hydration for your health and reducing stress. It’s also important to teach your family about healthy snack choices.