Hi Friends,
I stumbled upon this blog "challenge" the other day and really liked the concept. I wanted to share it with all of you. It's called the "Joy Dare."
Basically, its a daily calender with a guided reminder for ways to be grateful for at least 3 things everyday. Let's face it. With busy lives with foster kids (or any busy family life,) all those appointments, school functions, melt-downs and meetings...it's easy to forget to be thankful for small blessings. This is an important habit to teach our kids, I think, and this is a beautiful way to remind us to do it.
Check out the article below and follow the link to get to the illustrated downloads. Post them on your fridge and go over them everyday with your kids. Read them before school to remind them to think about the three things, then review after school or around the dinner table. This could be a nice ritual to help focus on positive things even on dark and moody days.
Enjoy.
The Joy Dare
It’s habits that can imprison you and it’s habits that can free you.
But when thanks to God becomes a habit – so joy in God becomes your life.
And with this habit of keeping a gratitude list? You:
1. Have a relative absence of stress and depression. (Woods et al., 2008)Who doesn’t want all that?
2. Make progress towards important personal goals (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
3. Report higher levels of determination and energy (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
4. Feel closer in their relationships and desire to build stronger relationships (Algoe and Haidt, 2009)
5. Increase your happiness by 25% — (Who wouldn’t want a quarter more happiness!) (McCullough et al., 2002)
So! Print out each month’s Joy Dare!
1. Each day of the month has a prompt to look for three gifts.
2. Print it out for the fridge, for the kids, for your family gratitude journal — and take the dare to live in fullness of joy — right where you are!
3. Joy is a function of gratitude — and gratitude is a function of perspective. So take these prompts to help you see and change perspective — give thanks — and live all His joy!
4. Use the daily joy dare prompts — to help you count your own One Thousand Gifts:
Read more and get the collection at http://www.aholyexperience.com/joy-dares/
Lovely! At dinner each night we all say the best part of our day. I originally was trying to get everyone to say something they're grateful for, but that concept seemed to elude them, so this seemed a bit more tangible and it still gets to the heart of gratitude.
ReplyDeleteRight! It can be hard to grasp, that's why I kind of like the guided aspects of this... we will see how it works out. Really, any way you can remind to be grateful in good times and bad is a wonderful thing.
DeleteI LOVE this idea, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting Mitzy, I think any reminder to be grateful is good for the kids right?
Delete