iStockphoto.com

Instead wait for a time when you feel truly compelled to make a change and then create a plan of action. If that’s now, great. But don’t call it a New Year’s resolution!

Here are a few keys to making changes that you sustain:

Make sure it’s something you care deeply about.

If you think you should change, or if you can list a whole bunch of logical reasons why it’s a good idea to change but can’t figure out why you really, deeply care at an emotional level, select something else. Or keep thinking about your idea until you can figure out why you care.

Break it down into the smallest steps possible.

If you want to lose 30 pounds, what does that mean you are doing today? You might want to throw out the junk food and buy fresh fruits and vegetables. You might be creating an eating plan for the next week. Maybe you’re going for a walk. The more concrete and small your steps are, the more likely you are to make progress.

Think trends, not perfection.

If you want to change a habit, you’ll have days when you are unsuccessful. This is not failure, it’s simply how it goes. Rather than obsessing over slip-ups, make your next action in line with the change you want to make. And track trends over time. Are you following your plan 80% of the time? Congratulations! You’ll get there.

Keep reminding yourself why you care about making this change.

There is a part of our brains that seeks pleasure and safety. When the going gets tough, remind yourself about the pleasurable outcome you’re aiming for. It needs to be pleasurable, not just sensible. It’s sensible to have a certain BMI. It’s pleasurable to run in a 5K race with your friends. It’s sensible to save more money for retirement. It’s pleasurable to travel to Italy for an adventure.

What New Year’s resolution are you letting go of?

iStockphoto.com

Suddenly they’re at home a lot and are B-O-R-E-D. If you’re at work you may feel stressed about them having so much open time to fill on their own without adult supervision. If you’re at home, you’re probably going a little bit crazy.

Because when tweens and teens are bored, their go-to place is the nearest screen. Which is fine for an hour or two. But it’s not fine if they spend days glued to a screen. Besides being unhealthy it makes them very, very cranky.

If your teen has a seasonal job, drives herself places and has an active social life, then this post isn’t for you. But for the rest of us, here are a few tips on how to deal with bored teens and tweens at home for the holidays:

1. Before winter break begins, talk about expectations.

When people are in a good mood, brainstorm ideas of things your kids and family could do over winter break. It might involve games, ice skating, inviting certain people over, making a movie, baking cookies, or whatever sounds good in or out of the house. Post the list on the fridge and direct bored kids to it when they complain about how dull their lives are.

Also discuss your expectations for screen time. How much time can they spend on the Internet, DS, Wii, Kinect, iPod Touch, and iPad each day? You might have different ideas for different aged kids.

Talk about what kinds of chores you want them to do. Do they do more, fewer or the same number of jobs around the holidays?

Discuss your rules for having friends over when you aren’t at home, and any other limits you might need to reinforce due to an extended break from school.

Talk about your availability to drive them around. Are you willing to drop girls off at the mall next Wednesday? Describe your work schedule.

2. Listen to the boredom complaints – to a point.

Be neutral. Say “Uh huh” a lot. Don’t engage, and don’t solve. Say you’re confident that they’ll be able to sort it out. You could say what you do when you’re bored, if you sense they might be open to hearing that. (A lot of the time it’s just an easy invitation for them to argue with you about how ridiculous your ideas are).

I’m not a big fan of telling your kids that it’s not OK to be bored, or that “only boring people are bored”. Feeling bored happens to all of us, even us busy adults. Haven’t you been super busy and super bored at the same time? Sometimes we just get into a mood.

3. If you’re asked, be willing to brainstorm ideas on how to relieve boredom.

No, it’s not your job to solve the boredom issue, but if your son asks you for ideas, go ahead a offer a few. Sometimes we need to brainstorm with others to switch into a new mood.

4. Say when enough is enough already.

If your daughter is carrying on dramatically about how there’s nothing to do and she lives in the most boring house in the neighborhood and that if only you’d buy her a Kinect she could have a life worth living and not be embarrassed to invite friends over, you don’t have to keep listening.

If your son asks for your input and angrily shoots down your ideas, tell him you’re done talking about it.

Kids see us as easy punching bags, but don’t forget that you don’t have to put up with it!

Learning how to deal with feeling bored is a life skill. Many of today’s kids are unused to having long stretches of unscheduled time and quickly feel bored when there’s no specific plan. It’s good for them to find their own way through their boredom.

However, just because they’re bored and around the house a lot doesn’t mean you have to suffer, too. Spend time away from one another, speak up when you’ve had enough, and plan ahead of time of people to see and things to do during the break.

What tips do you have for dealing with your kids’ boredom?

She & Him

A small thing you can do today to lift yourself out of the blahs is to listen to some new music. Music can set a mood more quickly and effectively than almost anything else. Just like the right music sets a tone in movies that completely influences our experience, so can it affect us at home or at work.

Today find a new song or CD to download that you think will help create the mood you want to be in. Or tune into a different radio station and see what’s on it for a change. Our tried and true favorite songs have their place, but new music can refresh you in a new way. Browse around the iTunes library or another source for ideas.

I’m downloading A Very She & Him Christmas, by She & Him. Zooey Deschanel is adorable, and M Ward is pretty awesome, and together they embody a young, effortless charm that makes me smile.

New music, new mood.

What new music are you listening to today?

iStockphoto.com

And I also like having people over, but I can stress out about the state of my house. With two kids, a dog and a cat, it can turn into a mess pretty fast. The prospect of reserving hours to get it “guest ready” often makes hosting an event or having people come and stay feel like a big burden.

Housecleaning craziness descends on many of us at this time of year. It’s pretty easy to let the state of the house hover in a barely-acceptable zone for a lot of the year, and then it takes so much time to clean it before Thanksgiving dinner, a holiday open-house, or your in-laws’ visit.

A way you can avoid hours of drudgery (without paying someone else) is to spend a small amount of time each day cleaning. While not a revolutionary idea, it works surprisingly well for a 500 square foot apartment or a 4000 square foot house. It sounds deceptively simple, but it does take commitment and planning.

Here are four principles for avoiding housecleaning craziness:

1. Straighten up as you go.

Recycle today’s junk mail immediately. Put things back where they belong. Keep piles to a minimum (this includes dishes in the sink). Wipe down counters after dinner. Throw broken things away.

Ask each family member to adopt this habit, too. Yes, this will take some reminding. And it will be worth it.

2. Make your cleaning tools convenient to get to.

Don’t put your vacuum cleaner in the basement. Put all your cleansers and sponges in a portable caddy so you can easily tote them around with you.

3. Make a daily 15-minute plan.

The daily plan is for cleaning in a basic way a little bit every day. In a week’s time, you should touch each room. If you do a little cleaning every day for 15 minutes or so, you’re never very far away from being “guest ready”. No more hours of preparation just to enjoy having people over!

Basic cleaning doesn’t mean washing windows, dusting behind furniture, cleaning your oven, scrubbing grout and those kinds of things that could be done every once in a while. I’m talking basic dusting and vacuuming and bathroom stuff.

Your guest room may not need more than two minutes of attention each week, while your bathroom may take 20 minutes to clean. Come up with a 15-minute plan for each day that makes sense for your living space. It’s a little like the “Wash on Monday” rhyme. You might dust and vacuum the living room on Monday, the family room on Tuesday, clean the bathroom on Wednesday, etc. Just try to keep it to about 15 minutes.

Essential tip: Enlist family members to participate in this plan.

Other essential tip: Kids’ rooms are not a part of this plan, unless your kids are very young or your mother-in-law is coming to stay in your teenage son’s room tomorrow.

4. Relax

Real homes are not Pottery Barn catalogs. You want it to be sanitary and inviting for guests, but try not to worry about clutter and the general lived-in look. People are there to enjoy your company and have a good time, not to inspect the floor behind your toilet or run a gloved finger along your mantel.

If you and your family get in the habit of attending to your living space a little bit each day, you can feel comfortable most of the time and can get ready for special occasions with minimal fuss. Of course you’ll need to find some time to do the extras, but you won’t be living in a space that’s had no attention for weeks.

What tips do you have for avoiding housecleaning craziness?

iStockphoto.com

This was especially useful many generations ago when we needed to be on high alert against threat. But it’s kind of a pain now.

Our brain’s negativity bias means that the bad stuff sticks. We’re more influenced by negative comments, bad news, and unpleasant experiences than we are positive ones. Even our memories tilt toward the negative.

According to neuropsychologist and meditation teacher Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom, if we want to increase the positive emotions we feel each day, we need to take an active effort to internalize them. We need to notice something positive and savor it, ideally for 30 seconds.

Today I was taking a short walk when I noticed beautiful, red leaves gently falling from a very tall tree. I watched the leaves for a few moments as I walked and I really noticed how beautiful the scene was.

You might catch a glimpse of your son that tugs at your heart. You may have finished a difficult project at work today. Your father may have given you a big smile. The latte you had this morning might have been steaming hot and just the thing.

Notice the small moments. Savor them and lock them in. As Hanson points out:

Every time you take in the good, you build a little bit of neural structure. Doing this a few times a day…will gradually change your brain, and how you feel and act, in far-reaching ways.

What good stuff are you noticing today?

iStockphoto.com

It’s just 3 1/2 weeks until Hanukkah and a bit over 4 weeks until Christmas. So much to do! And you’re exhausted from Thanksgiving and possibly from a very short night in preparation for Black Friday deals.

Time for a sanity check!

• How would you like to feel in December? What kind of pace do you yearn for?
• What are you willing to let go of or change in order to feel that way?
• What are the three absolutely most important aspects of the holiday season you want to preserve or create?
• What expectations (yours and other people’s) can you scale down to make this the kind of month you want?

Remember to preserve white space in your calendar!

And don’t forget to breathe.

What will you do to keep this holiday season sane for you?

iStockphoto.com

Does your schedule have you driving 10 miles in 5 minutes? Are you running from one meeting to the next with no time to eat lunch, take an important yet unexpected call, or go to the bathroom? Are you late for most everything? Does one wrench in your morning’s schedule throw you off for the rest of the day? Are you feeling anxious just reading this?

If you pad your schedule with breathing space and wiggle room, you’ll not only feel calmer but will be able to respond to that day’s highest priorities much easier.

What do I mean by padding your schedule? Add more white space!

• Overestimate travel time by at least ten minutes.
• Plan an extra 15 minutes on the either side of most meetings and appointments.
• Keep your lowest energy times of day as free as possible.
• When you’re tempted to add “just one more thing”, don’t.

Some days will be fully booked, but try to keep those as the exception rather than the rule. If your obligations are too tightly packed in, your life feels like a house of cards where one little change brings the whole thing down.

And if you’re worried about wasting time during those white spaces on your calendar, it’s time for a re-frame! Those spaces are perfect for doing what calls to you right then. Breathe a little. Call a friend. Rearrange the spice drawer. Straighten your desk at work. Outline your next blog post. Spend a few more minutes with your mom. Figure out when the next college tour is. Take a walk.

The empty spaces are times for creativity, relaxation or getting something else done. You get to choose, and this feels freeing. And freeing feels good.

I know – you’re important and everyone needs you. But if you’re a slave to an overbooked schedule every single day, you’re going to resent it. Accommodating life’s surprises, good and bad, will feel nearly impossible. A sick kid or parent will drive you over the edge. You’ll have no time to get new mascara. You’ll consider turning down an impromptu invitation from an old friend to meet for coffee, and this will not be a good sign.

So get out your calendar and look at next week (I know this week is already booked!). Add more white space. Be merciless if you need to.

And let me know what happens!

iStockphoto.com

Say “inner peace” and most people conjure up images of Buddhist monks meditating.

My life, and I’m guessing yours too, does not resemble that of a Buddhist monk. My life is a typical busy life in a modern, Western, large city. I multitask. I run a business. I take kids to the dentist. I have a lot of leaves that may or may not get raked this fall. I have people to keep up with, problems to solve or worry about, and so on.

But our intense focus on busyness comes with a price. We often feel squeezed out of our own lives and stressed to the max. Women in the sandwich generation experience frequent caregiver stress and struggle to find any sense of balance.

I think of inner peace as a state of mind and a feeling of calm, regardless of what’s happening around me. Finding inner peace is often associated with religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, but you don’t need to subscribe to any religion in order to experience it. You also don’t have to devote hours every day to finding it.

There are many, many ways to explore approaching your life from a place of peace rather than stress. Here are just a few ideas:

Keep track of your energy reserves.

When the gas tank light on your car’s dashboard illuminates, do you keep driving for days, or do you pull into a gas station? You need to refuel too, and it’s much harder to do if you let yourself completely run out of gas.

To track your energy reserves, you first need to be aware of how you’re doing. Check in with yourself a couple of times a day and scan your body and emotions. What’s your tension level? Are you exhausted? Pay attention to the signals your body gives you, even if your mind doesn’t want to hear it. Stop at the gas station before you’re running on fumes or run out of fuel altogether.

Create more harmony in your environment.

You don’t have to be a neatnik or hire a Feng Shui consultant. Just take care of the excessive clutter. What areas of your living space make you feel tense? Spend a few minutes a day clearing, rearranging, decorating, or simply cleaning. Even simply getting rid of the holey, mismatched socks in your drawer can increase your sense of peace. Do as much or as little as you like, and be sure to follow the next step below as you do…

Set realistic goals.

By realistic, I mean easily doable. Forget about stretch goals; what will you actually do? Is it realistic for you to stay up until midnight tonight looking at your mom’s insurance claims? Are you really doing to make cookies for your son’s soccer team? Scale your expectations of yourself down and let that be OK.

This takes a lot of practice. The people in your life who count on you to do a lot for them may squawk when you promise them less than you did the last time. But setting realistic goals is key to you experiencing anything that resembles peace.

Keep a flexible perspective.

What you tell yourself about a situation determines how you’re going to feel about it. If you choose a stressed frame of reference, you’re not going to feel calm.

Every day offers you many opportunities to choose to see things from a flexible perspective. Is your mother-in-law dropping in an annoyance, or a time to connect? Is the slow traffic a nightmare, or an opportunity to relax a little and listen to music?

Forgive

Holding onto your feelings of anger, blame and disappointment makes peace impossible to experience. Forgiving yourself for your mistakes, and forgiving others for their foibles and wrongdoings, whether they be small or large, is a healing process. You don’t have to confront anyone or condone or excuse bad behavior. You don’t even need to reconcile in order to forgive.

Forgiveness can begin with trying to understand someone as they are. It’s not easy, but holding onto grudges is even more wearing.

What helps you feel more at peace?

iStockphoto.com

Not to say that prior generations’ parents didn’t value achievement and success or that today’s parents don’t value independence. But priorities and norms have shifted.

My parents are part of the Greatest Generation, and my brother and I are Generation X. My kids and my brother’s kids range in age from 9 to 13, which makes them Generation Z.

My dad and I both have many memories from our childhoods of doing things on our own, going places on our own, and solving problems on our own, starting from a pretty early age. Whether we lived in a city, small town or suburb, we were expected to find our own summer entertainment, get ourselves places via bus or bike, and clean, mow the lawn or help out with cooking earlier it seems than many kids do today. Maybe you can relate.

I don’t exactly have “free range” kids, and yet I try really hard not to be a helicopter mom. I’m much more involved in the day-to-day happenings of my kids than my parents were in mine. Norms have changed around this. There are a lot more organized activities than there used to be, and expectations of parental involvement, whether it be chauffeuring, fundraising, or volunteering at school or for sports and other activities, are high. Time for chores or just to do nothing is at a premium, for everyone, parents and kids alike.

There are pluses and minuses to these changes. I really know my kids well and I feel very connected to them. Yet I also feel that I can go overboard with doing too much for and with them at the expense of my individual needs or the needs of my marriage.

Also I can fall into the trap of bailing them out when they’d be better off failing and figuring out how to recover from it. Rescuing them deprives them of the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and to gain confidence in their own competence and self-reliance.

So how do we inspire independence of tweens and teens in a parenting era of protective micromanagement? Here are a few ideas:

Let them know you value them becoming independent, and that you see independence as both a responsibility and a privilege.

Learning how to be more self-reliant and operate with more independence can be both exciting and daunting. Sometimes you’ll be the one pushing for their increased independence (wouldn’t we all love our moms to pack our lunch every day?), and sometimes they’ll be asking for more rope than you may feel comfortable giving.

Ask for their ideas about how they want (or need) to become more independent.

They’re going to want the fun things – that’s OK!

Start small and clarify expectations.

You might start with them getting themselves up with an alarm, making their own lunch and getting off to school on time themselves.

As they master steps, add more.

This might mean time management around homework, doing household chores without you reminding them, getting them a city bus pass, them spending time at a public place with their friends and without an adult, etc. The specifics depend on the age and temperament of your kid.

When they mess up, support them without rescuing them.

Expect complaints. But hang tough!

Think back to when you were 10, 13 or 16 – remember how you flubbed up and learned how to fix it yourself or avoid it again the next time around? If they need some extra tools or tips and are open to your help, offer it. But let them experience the consequences of their choices.

Celebrate!

Our job as parents is to help guide our kids into independence. If you enjoy having your kids dependent on you for too many things for too many years, it’s unhealthy for you and unfair to them.

Decide to celebrate their independence rather than mourn their separation from you. Remember how exhilarating it was to become your own person, separate from Mom and Dad? Your kids deserve that thrilling experience, too.

How are you supporting your tween or teen to be more independent?

iStockphoto.com

It helps you. Yet it also makes you crazy. You follow it, ignore it, rebel against it. You refuse to write it down for a while. You pare it down to the essentials. You build it up to include every tiny thing you’re worried you’ll forget.

However in the process of all this madness, you’re forgetting one important thing:

Your life is more than your to-do list.

Oh. Right.

But in order to really experience life as more than your to-do list, you’re going to have to adopt another productivity tool. The good news? It’s cheap and not difficult to understand. The bad news? It goes against most of the habits you’ve been cultivating your entire adult life.

It is the opposite of the to-do list. I call it the “I’m Not Gonna Do This” list. You can call it the Not-To-Do List, or the No Way José Collection, or whatever appeals.

Some of the items you put on this list come from your to-do list, and others come from simply noticing what thoughts or feelings are causing you distress. Here is an example of an I’m Not Gonna Do This list:

• Worry that I’m not calling my father often enough
• Nag my kids
• Notice dust
• Skip my workout this weekend
• Eat until I’m stuffed
• Drop the dry cleaning off myself
• Lose my patience with my mom
• Read for two hours on the Internet about Alzheimer’s
• Spend more than 30 minutes at the grocery store
• Turn down an invitation from a friend

This kind of list may strike you as unnecessarily negative. Isn’t it more affirming to write down that you’ll be patient with your teenage son about his study habits rather than to tell yourself not to be impatient?

However, writing down a list of what you aren’t going to do shows you just how much time and energy you’re wasting on what doesn’t matter. This can be an extremely eye-opening and powerful experience.

Imagine how freeing it could be to stop doing, thinking or feeling these things. Imagine the relief you could feel if you stopped carrying all this around. This is your chance to drop some of the load you’ve been bearing, perhaps never having realized its full weight.

Your to-don’t list is as important for you to consult as your to-do list. It keeps you aware of habits, tasks and people who don’t serve you so you can preserve your precious time and energy for those who do. You want more space in your life so you can notice all of its joys. Start by deciding what you’ll ignore, what you won’t do and what you’ll stop doing. And let me know what happens!

What’s on your not-to-do list right now?