For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Maybe. Tiger mothers, soccer mothers, French mamas, working mothers, stay-at-home-mothers: We each have our strengths. We don’t have a lot of empirical evidence about what brand of mommy is “best,” but we do have a lot of data about what makes for good parenting. I’ve spent the last 10+ years deep in that research.

Read this post from my Greater Good blog for the my top ten tips for being the best mom you can be.

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Researchers used to think that this low-level worrying about unfinished tasks was our unconscious mind trying to help us get things done by reminding us of what we still needed to do, and that the reminders–or distracting thoughts and worries–would persist until the task was complete. This in itself is a worrying theory for those of us who have never-ending task lists.

But now research shows that simply making a plan to deal with an unfinished task makes a huge difference in our ability to focus on other things–without being constantly reminded by our unconscious mind about what else we need to do.  When we don’t have a plan, in contrast, our thoughts will typically wander from whatever it is we are doing to our undone tasks. As it turns out, our unconscious isn’t nagging us to do the task at hand, but rather to make a plan to get it done.

Take Action: Before you leave work or hit the hay this evening, take a look at your task list and make a plan for completing unfinished tasks. Knowing what the next step is for undone items, and when you will do them, can make you a whole lot happier.

What task do you often worry about when you haven’t completed it? Does it help you to make a plan? Comment below.

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After his daughter Lotte was born, Dutch photographer Frans Hofmeester began creating weekly videos of her to document her growth. Lotte recently turned 12, and Hofmeester decided to edit all the footage so far into this amazing time-lapse video showing twelve years of growing up in just under three minutes.

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Thursday Thought: An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.” — Bonnie Friedman

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We may have been super-inspired by the incredible brain-boosting properties of exercise. We may have had every intention to start an exercise plan and stick to it. But then… we didn’t. Our warm bed sucked us in. We’ll exercise tomorrow.

What we need is willpower. Once we get in the habit of exercising—or of staying calm in the face of a toddler meltdown, of not checking our email after five o’clock, or of doing anything else we want to have the resolve to do—we don’t need to try so hard. But for now, because we are in the habit of pushing snooze—or yelling, or checking email compulsively all evening—we need self-discipline.

Read this post from my Greater Good blog for the 5 tips that will help you boost your willpower.

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Step 7: Teach Self-Discipline is my favorite chapter in the book Raising Happiness. Author Christine Carter writes about self-discipline, self-regulation, and how you can teach your children to self-regulate rather than always having to enforce the rules through bribes and punishments.

She gives simple instructions such as encourage self-talk (which is part of Step 5: Emotional Intelligence—labeling and validating feelings), have realistic expectations (Step 3: Expect effort, Not Perfection), reduce stress which, for me, starts with reducing my own stress—and that brings us back to chapter 1 (Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First).

But my favorite simple suggestion is don’t react to misbehavior; preempt it. I think it should be the parenting mantra for 21^st century parenting. What I love is not (only) that it’s a useful, commonsense reminder, but that Christine’s instructions on how a parent might actually preempt misbehavior evoke useful metaphors for problems.

Usually, we talk about problems as if they’re an obstacle in our path. We t

ry to work around the problem or get past it. We can’t wait to leave our troubles behind us—as if that problem were like a pothole that has nothing to do with the road leading up to it and leaves no impact on the rest of life’s journey once we get over it.

Other times we talk about problems as if they have an intrinsic nature. (This is how Christine talks about problems.) We get to the heart of the problem or the root of the issue. Problems might get triggered (implying that they are caused by other events) or transformed (a catalyst for change or “a blessing in disguise.”) Dealing with problems (or misbehavior) in this metaphor looks at the nature of the problem. This is not a rocky patch in the road to get through; it’s something more a like a puzzle that gets solved.

To solve the problem is to look at its nature. As a parent, this means I’m addressing the child and the situation in front of me—I’m not trying to adhere to a set of arbitrary rules set by an outside authority.

During the three months that my twins were intensive care, they were hooked up to machines that monitored their breathing and their heart rates. My husband and I fell into the habit of relying on the machines to tell us if our babies were okay, rather than looking at the babies themselves. The machines became our “outside authority.”

I knew my goal was to wean my reliance on the babies’ monitors (as we were not going to have such fancy equipment at home), but to do so seemed almost negligent. After all, those machines were important! They let us know when the boys stopped breathing!

That’s when I’d turn to the metaphors. Any problem—even the problem of ceasing to breathe—has roots. It is not a bump in the road that appears out of nowhere. People do not suddenly stop breathing—even very small people with a history of breathing difficulties. There are signs that can be observed and triggers that can be preempted.

In the case of the boys, a full stomach would sometimes trigger an episode of difficult breathing. So I became especially vigilant at mealtimes. Shallow breathing was another sign. So if I watched the twins’ chests rise and fall indicating deep breathing, I knew they were okay. And if I saw shallow breathing, I knew I could stroke their ribs or tap them on the back to help them breathe deeply again. Gradually I began to notice that there was another sign that preceding shallow breathing—a slight change of color in the boys’ faces. And in this case, I could pick them and hold them and that often did the trick.

Before, when I thought that the boys could stop breathing at any given moment, like that pothole that suddenly appears in the middle of the road, I was always on edge. And it seemed as if the boys’ breathing was worse than it actually was. But by watching the twins themselves (rather than watching the monitors) I realized that the vast majority of the time they were fine. Every day they were a little stronger and a little healthier which left me a little more relaxed and a little more confident.

Best of all, all that observation helped keep me in the present moment, which, not surprisingly, is Step 8 in Raising Happiness.

Like the idea of changing your perspective by changing your metaphors? Check out some of Janine’s past guest posts: Building a Village or Dumping on Your Friends?, How Does Your Garden Grow? and Empathy for the Mompetitor.

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I was just listening to one of Dr. Sara Gottfried’s webinars; in it she recommends getting or giving eight hugs a day in order to reap the benefits of the oxytocin that hugs can stimulate. Personally, I’ve found that just watching other people hug (specifically, in this video) can make me feel warm and glowy.

Take Action: Decide right now when and where you’ll get your daily eight hugs, and make sure those hugs get built into your daily routine. For example, hug your kids everyday when you get them out of bed, your partner everyday before you leave for work, someone at lunchtime everyday, etc. The hugs need to be “lingering” — quick pats on the back aren’t going to cut it. Bonus: lingering kisses and mini-massages also work.

Who will you hug and kiss each day? Comment below.

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 Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
 Follow Christine Carter on Twitter.
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We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” — The Buddha

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