For the past few weeks I’ve found myself reading books with titles like How to be a Happier Parent, Joyful, and The Happiness Project. Partly this was for the self-help aspect (not everyone’s jam, but I like it!); after all, a COVID winter when the pandemic has already dragged ON and ON is no picnic.
But mostly it was because in my work supporting other parents raising bilingual children (specifically in BILINGUIFY!), I teach that the best way to help kids love speaking and reading in Spanish is to make it fun. And the more I researched ways to do that, the more I became interested in how to be a more fun and joyful mamá in general.
So, based on the copious notes I had taken about joy and happiness—drumroll please!—the #funmamachallenge was born!
The fun mama challenge is a FREE 5-day group-effort (Feb. 1 – Feb. 5) to invite more felicidad into our lives. Each day we’ll focus on a different aspect of joy (play! color! ritual! ) and share simple, happiness-boosting ways to use it in our life.
What has become so clear after reading all the things about joy, is that being a joyful mom has so much more to do with the simple, doable, fit-it-into-the-everyday gestures than the grand ones. I hope you’ll check out the free fun mama challenge by clicking the button below, because JOY IS GOOD FUEL! And this just may be the reset your home needs.
You can get more details and sign up here, if you’d like!
After all, I think most of us feel that these ARE “the good old days.” This period—this time we have with everyone packed into the same house, where all our little lives are so very intertwined—it’s short in the grand scheme of things. This pandemic season will end; the kids will grow up. That’s all the more reason to make these days feel as beautiful now as they will seem in hindsight.
I don’t think there’s anyone who isn’t rather excited to put 2020 behind them and move on to a fresh new year. And since we were home for the holidays this year, I had a lot of time to plan and think through what I’d like to learn and accomplish in 2021.
Setting goals is one of my FAVORITE things to do each year (although it usually takes me about half the month of January to figure out what mine are).
I thought I’d share a few of my goals for 2021 in case you’d like to see. I always divide my goals into marriage, mom stuff, casa, self, and work which is so helpful both for keeping track of them and really thinking through how I want to show up in each of those areas.
Go on two dates per month. For the last few years, Josh and I haven’t been great about going on regular dates. It’s so hard to get out of the house with little breastfeeding babies, and then of course this past year with COVID, leaving the kids and going anywhere got even more complicated. But 2 dates each month seems like a doable goal, even if they’re just a walk or a drive to pick up food and eat it outside somewhere.
No phone/social media before 9 am. For the last two weeks of 2020 I took a social media break, which was so wonderful and needed. I’m back-ish (I downloaded Instagram to post some holiday pictures but then deleted it the same day after deciding I wasn’t quite ready). I’m still trying to figure out how much phone time is too much phone time for me, but one thing that’s been really helpful (and has made me feel so present and productive) is not looking at it at all for the first few hours of the morning.
15 minutes of reading out loud with the kids each day. Reading #3before3 is still what’s working best for me with three little kids at home all the dang day. But in the past few months I’ve been occasionally reading longer chapter books to the two older girls at bedtime if Josh puts the baby down and I have enough energy left. It’s a really nice way to end the day and I’m starting to catch glimpses of why bedtime stories are a thing, haha.
Wallpaper the sunroom. I’ve never wallpapered anything before but I found this amazing wallpaper that I think would look really great in our sunroom! It’s a kind of intense wallpaper so I’m just going to do the back wall (which is mostly windows anyway), and that seems doable for a first-time wallpaper project. Nervous but cautiously optimistic!
Learn 6 new piano pieces. I’m an intermediate piano player for sure, but I love winding down my day with a few minutes at the piano once all the kids are in bed. For the past few years I’ve been playing the piano at church, but since we haven’t gone to church during the pandemic I haven’t practiced as much. I think it would be fun to learn a new piano piece every couple of months or so.
Run 2 miles 50 times. I wish I loved running, but I don’t really. What I do love is how I feel AFTER I run, which is the only reason I do it. I know I CAN run 2 miles and have done it several times, but I’m kind of a lazy runner tbh. This year I’d like to run a straight two miles 50 times, which is basically once a week. We’ll see how this goes once summer hits and it’s a million degrees outside…
Meditate for 15 minutes daily-ish. This always makes me feel sooo much better and has been key to managing my anxiety during the whole coronavirus pandemic. Normally I just use whatever guided meditation looks good on YouTube, but I happened to read a lot about the benefits of transcendental meditation last year and I’d love to explore that more in 2021.
Launch a #funmamá challenge. For at least the past year, I’ve been so interested in reading and thinking about how to find alegría in our ordinary lives (remember this from last year?). And I’ve especially liked learning how to use my power as a mamá to bring more fun and magic into our family & home. More about this soon but I’m so excited to share what I’ve learned and also learn from others who do this so well!
Write 12 children’s books in 12 months! And last but not least… tan-ta-ra-raaaan! After four years of reading hundreds of picture books for Sol Book Box, this year I want to try writing some!
Have you heard that story about the photography professor who split his college class into two groups? He told them that one group would be graded on the quantity of photographs they produced, while the other group would be graded on the quality of their final photography project. At the end of the semester, it turned out that all of the best pictures came from the group that had spent the past few months taking tons of photos and refining their technique, not from the group that had spent the whole time studying and theorizing about what made a great picture without actually taking many.
I’m operating under the same principle and figuring that if I write a bunch of picture books, by the end of the year at least one or two will be good enough to move forward with!
Comments Off on 5 Ways to Find Alegría in One Minute or Less
Are you ok?
If there’s any question that will define 2020 in my mind, it’s this one. The other day I came across this: according to researchers who analyze emotions expressed on Twitter, 2020 is the saddest year in the 13 years since their study began, setting multiple “saddest day ever” records). We’re not only dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, but also with a “pandemic of human disappointment” as all of our events & plans are canceled, our regular routines thrown out the window, and our vision for what this year would be… evaporated.
So if you (like so many of us!) are contending with low-key 2020 blues, I want to share some quick ways to find alegría that you can count on for a little pick-me-up. They won’t cure more severe mental health symptoms that can strain your ability to cope (for those, look to a therapist, counselor or helpline ¡por favor!), but these small things can for sure change the course of a day.
1. Sit in the sunshine. Even before the pandemic, research showed that Americans spend an average of 87% of their time indoors, and another 6% in cars, so many of us don’t get nearly enough sunlight. Which is no good, because sunlight elevates serotonin levels, a neurotransmitter that is critical in balancing mood. It’s also super important for helping our bodies form vitamin D! Even one minute spent letting the sun warm my (sunscreened) face makes such a difference. Pro tip: roll up your sleeve during the winter so the sun can hit more of your bare skin!
2. Brinca. Photographer Phillippe Halsman worked with all of the biggest celebs of his day (Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, Audrey Hepburn), and he always made them jump. He believed that jumping helped people drop their masks and release the joyful self inside. And it really is nearly impossible to be grouchy while leaping through the air (try it!). Other effective ways to find alegría: skipping, hopping, or even just throwing your hands in the air.
3. Do something new. Staying mostly at home can make all our days almost identical. So even adding something small to the normal routine can brighten up a day. Order a chai if you normally drink coffee, wear something you would normally NEVER wear, eat dessert first. 🙂 Doing something new can help break the downward spiral of a bad mood and perhaps offer a moment of joy.
4. Look up. This one seems so simple, but it really works. We spend so much time looking down at our phones and our computers, so lifting the gaze opens up your posture and allows more light into your eyes. Both of those things can help improve mood and shift your perspective (literally and metaphorically). And looking up increases the likelihood you’ll see something happy, like a bird, a butterfly, or a whimsical shape in the clouds. I love hanging plants in my house, because they give us an interesting reason to look up!
5. Cheer someone else up. This one is basically a guarantee! Focusing on making someone else feel good takes the focus off your own less-awesome feelings. And thinking about ways to cheer someone up, whether through a kind gesture, a funny video or joke, or a thoughtful little surprise, give you almost as much joy as actually doing the thing. AND if you are successful in sparking someone else’s joy, you’ll probably “catch” some as you feel their joy boomerang right back to you.
It’s easy to overlook very small things like this or dismiss them as unimportant. But I’ve been all about the “small moments of joy” this year because, well, so many of our big ones seem to have been put on hold. Also, because emotions tend to work in “positive feedback loops” (meaning they compound and create more of the same emotion), even a few small moments of joy each day can have a meaningful impact.
Do you have a quick way to find alegría that never fails to boost your mood? I would love to know, please share it in the comments!
P.S. Our free “Momentos de alegría 2020” poster (pictured above) is the gift that keeps on giving! Download it here if you haven’t already & get our list of small, joyful activities for the whole family. We’ve been working our way through it, and checking off all of the happy things we’ve done together is a mood-booster for sure!
