Why is your house so stressful? Why is everything such a fight? It doesn’t need to be. Sure, school is important. Rules and respect and basic cleanliness matter. But these things aren’t that important. Indeed, most conflicts that pop up while getting ready for school or sitting down to dinner or finishing household tasks aren’t that important.
Here’s a magical phrase worth thinking about as a parent. It’s from that great Lionel Richie song (and Faith No More cover): Easy like Sunday morning…
What if more of your days were like that? When you had less you were trying to force through? When you were slightly more relaxed? If you understood that it was your kids’ day too, that there was nothing that really had to happen?
It’s a motto worth trying to apply on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays alike. Of course, there’s still stuff that has to get done. But we’ve taken the pressure down a notch. We’re sidestepping the power struggles. We’re giving everyone some space. We’re running things at the right pace. We understand that today can be a good day—and whether it actually is or not is up to us.
Because it is up to us, we do have that choice. It starts with us choosing to set the right mood for the whole house. Your kids deserve a happy and safe place to wake up every morning. They don’t need or want to be yelled at or nagged. You don’t want to do those things either. It’s not good, it’s not pleasant, for you or them. So relax. Take a beat, take a breath.
And when you feel the tension rising to the surface, when you sense a possible conflict around the corner, just repeat that magical phrase as a reminder of the mood you want to set. You might even sing it out loud if you want: Easy, like Sunday morning…
P.S. If you’re looking to avoid falling back into bad habits when stress inevitably announces itself, consider checking out our Daily Stoic Spring Forward challenge. We all think of March as the month we tend to get started on our spring cleaning, but how many of us spend the time to get our whole houses in order? Not just our physical spaces, but our minds, our routines, our assumptions? The challenge is designed to push you to examine those parts of your life, your choices, your relationships, and move you closer to living your best life. Become the person you aspire to be and enroll at dailystoic.com/spring today!
