How Do You Make a Habit of a Daily Heroic Minute?

Help me out here.

About a year ago, I shared about what the saints say about mornings and have been trying to put into practice the things I wrote about. 

Truth be told, I too often fail.

Despite waking up and praying my Living Rosary decade before my feet hit the floor and mentally naming some "excitement" to get me going with motivation and thanksgiving, more often than not, I stall out right about there.

I fail to conquer myself, get lulled by some of sort of laziness of mind, body, spirit - or all three, and stall out.

Instead of listening to the wonderful piece of advice that St. Josemaría Escrivá wrote about in his book, The Way and living by it, I fall prey to a pattern of false starts. 

I don't want to.

I want to tap into God's help and conquer myself - experiencing the first victory of the day right at its start. Yet... some days, I don't.

Indeed, although I do go through successful spurts, I am still working on making a small act of mortification a consistent daily haabit and would love to hear your thoughts.

Do you experience a heroic minute more days than not? Did you struggle with making a holy habit of embracing such minutes? What did you do to conquer the vice of stalling out too soon? Why is practicing a "supernatural reflection and...up" so much harder than it sounds? 

In person, in comments here, or with a comment on the Training Happy Hearts Facebook page, please inspire me by sharing about your successes with being "well ahead for the rest of the day" after conquering yourself from the first moment.

I truly want to better build this holy habit in myself and also pray that it will be taught to and caught by my kids.

I appreciate your help.

May we all get better at following this wisdom:

“Conquer yourself each day from the very first moment, getting up on the dot, at a fixed time, without yielding a single minute to laziness. If, with God’s help, you conquer yourself, you will be well ahead for the rest of the day. … The heroic minute. It is the time fixed for getting up. Without hesitation: a supernatural reflection and… up! The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body.”

~St. Josemaría Escrivá 

Pray Unceasingly with a Cemetery Prayer Peg

"Pray without ceasing," St. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

In an effort to do just this, I began establishing "prayer pegs" with my children years ago as a way of building "Holy Habits" that flow naturally, seamlessly, and rhythmically within our day-to-day lives.

What's a Prayer Peg?

Just as one can peg laundry to a line - simply, without great ado, and yet with purposeful intent - one can attach blessing, praise, thanksgiving, petition, and intercession to specific daily activities in order to form intentional habits of unceasing prayer.

This, in essence, is what I call "prayer pegs".

A prayer peg is simply an act of praying a distinct form of prayer in connection with a particular regular activity.

A Prayer Peg for When We Pass a Cemetery

One prayer peg that my family has established is to pause all conversation and thought when passing a cemetery so that we can pray:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace through your mercy. Amen.

Upon concluding this prayer, we sometimes add specific intentions for our own beloved dead or for the dearly departed of our friends. While, at other times, we simply return to whatever we were saying, thinking, or doing before we noticed we were passing a cemetery.

Either way, because we live around the corner from one cemetery and pass many others during our day-to-day travels, our purposeful prayer peg encourages us to regularly raise our minds and hearts to God while living out part of the seventh Spiritual Work of Mercy: praying for the dead.

Often multiple times within a single day, whether walking or driving, one of us will note a cemetery and deliberately begin to pray. Then, the rest of us will join in.

Praying when passing a cemetery has become a holy habit for our family that was easy to establish and continues to help us to respond to St. Paul's exhortation to pray without ceasing.

Do you pray a specific prayer when passing a cemetery? What prayer pegs work for you and yours at other times during your days?

What One Simple Habit Helps Us Break the Grip of Vice?

Do you find yourself and your family sometimes forgetting to practice an attitude of gratitude?

Have acerbic tongues and overly critical eyes ever infected your household?

Well, you're not alone.

Despite a desire to train happy hearts in our home, my family sometimes falls prey to unmeritorious habits:

Complaining. Criticizing. Fault-finding. Nit picking. Ingratitude. Contemptousness.

A host of ill tendencies begin to tarnish our souls, and I sadly notice a developing practice of lambasting, instead of loving one another.

It's ugly, but it's not irreversible.

One simple habit nips such negativity in the bud:

Gratitude and celebrating greatness!

Years ago, I developed a practice of "celebrating greatness" on days when the simple act of piling into our minivan brought more mayhem than merriment to my family.

The practice was simple:

I would ask, "Who wants to hear about their greatness?" and, then, I would name something specific that I had seen or heard each of my children doing well earlier in day, or I'd describe a special moment when I had witnessed them all working or playing together with virtue.

After that, my children would begin to pipe up with their own ideas - spontaneously celebrating one another's individual strengths and, sometimes, commenting on their own as well.

Before we knew it, negativity dissipated and virtue once again became our focus.

Celebrating greatness became a valuable practice for resetting our mouths, hearts, and minds.

Yet, it was more of a reaction than a preventative habit for happiness. We used it more often to reframe or heal rather than to ingrain and promote.

Recently, that has changed.

Overtiredness, puberty, neuro-differences, and more have been getting the best of us all too often lately, and I recognized that my children and would do well to more regularly heed the words in Philippians 4:8-9:

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."

Phil 4: 8-9

So, I decided to get proactive about things and to build a habit for happiness and peace - a habit of gratitude and celebrating greatness. 

The way we are doing so is easy:

During our first car ride of the day, at bedtime, or both, I say, "I'm thankful for..." and name something specific about the day. Then, I ask each of my children - and my husband when he is with us - to follow suit.

After that, I ask who wants to celebrate greatness first, and we each take turns naming something about one another that we are thankful for that day or that we noticed as positive.

Granted, sometimes, due to grumpiness, one of us struggles to find good in the day or in one another. However, usually another of us is more than happy to help out - offering ideas of things to be thankful for and recalling meritorious moments.

Because we know that at least once a day we'll each be asked to verbalize gratitude and greatness, we tend to focus on the true, noble, right, pure, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy a bit more.

Our habit of sharing gratitude and greatness shines a spotlight on virtue and helps break the hold that vice sometimes grips us in.

Might naming something your thankful for and something specifically good about one another on a daily basis turn into a habit for happiness in your family too? What other practices for peace and love do you promote?

You Never Know which Habits Will Stick... and How Much Hope They'll Bring

My oldest has been in a tween-ragery stage and sometimes the blustering is still full blown at bedtime. Yet, no matter how silly or sullen he's been being, I almost always see him go out to our living room helves, grab his little blue book, and pray his bedtime prayers, which, by now, he's more or less memorized.  

So why does he grab his blue book? Why does he flip to its final page to pray an Examen and Act of Contrition?

Why doesn't he just pray his bedtime prayers from memory? 

Why is it his particular habit that has stuck for him when so few of the other habits we attempt to build here have not?  Seriously, why this one?  

Habits we have been encouraging for many more years have been rejected or are still in development.  Some of the other prayer habits that the same prayer book tool promotes have been ignore.

Other prayer habits - like morning prayers - are oft only habitual with my son when done as a family.

But the Evening Prayers ritual? It has become a strong habit.

Why?

To be honest, I just do not know, and I am no sure I ever will. I am, however, ever-grateful to his prior co-op teacher for initiating this independent prayer habit and to the Spirit for whispering to my son each night, prompting him to pray even when he's being stormy.

Bedtime prayers with his falling apart blue book. Undoubtedly, the act or praying them brings grace to my son, and, surely, witnessing my sometimes challenging tween grab his prayer book brings hope to me.

Lately, there are many nights when, by bedtime, I am spent.  Drained. Discouraged. Weary from efforts to connect, correct, redirect, reset, and, of course, love my son through the challenging phase he is going through. The glaring difficulties of the day sometimes make it hard for me to reflect upon the quieter moments of sweetness, virtue, and Spirit-led growth that are there.

Then, my boy's hand opens his blue book, his lips move silently in prayer, and the Spirit reminds me - Momma, not despair, prayer.  

What habits are helping you and your tween or teen make it through more challenging day and nights?

What Do You Do When You Get into the Car?

"Mom, you forgot to pray a decade," piped up a little voice from the back of our minivan this morning just as my husband and I had entered into a conversation.

Although my little one had interrupted my husband and me, his words made me smile.  

In my head and my heart, I prayed:  Thank you, God, for my youngest.  Thank you for affirming a positive and meaningful habit is being built in my children.  Thank you for this time.  And, thence, I began the simple Prayer Peg that we've attached to our regular entry into our minivan.

Basically, almost every time we get into our van, we say a brief prayer pf some sort of another, and, if it's the first time in a day that the children and I hit the road together, we pray a bit longer.

First, we pray the Guardian Angel prayer.  Then, we pray a decade of the rosary together, pausing between each Hail Mary to vocalize special intentions for friends, family members, those in the vehicles around us, the world at large, etc.

Sometimes these prayers are truly beautiful and reverent.  Other times, well, at least they are shared.  All the time, they are heard, we trust, and for that, we are most grateful!

Do you pray, too, each time you enter your vehicle?  Spontaneous prayers, meditative prayers or traditional prayers?  What other Prayer Pegs have you added to your daily life?

 

Raw Foods First: My Happy New-to-Me Habit

Image Credit

With New Year’s Day less than 24 hours away, I am tempted to delineate goals for 2013.  However, history proves that I am not good at long-term goal setting anymore, and that even some of my shorter term goals fall by the wayside as life with kids, husband, home and work rolls along.  Thus, I have reigned myself in. 

Instead of setting myself up for defeat by writing out resolutions, I have decided to pick a Happy New-to-Me Habit to work on instead.

The first habit I am picking is one that supports our family food goals:  I begin each day by eating something raw. 

Now, I cannot say that this is a completely new concept for me.  Many years ago, I tried living the Fit for Life diet and, even more recently, I modeled Fruit First in the morning for the kids.  However, these eating choices did not last.  I quickly slipped back into my carboholic ways, grabbing starches instead of produce as my first morning choices.  The habit of morning Produce Power never stuck.  I craved both the convenience and the satisfaction of other foods. 

That’s where raw foods come in.  “Raw” can include more than just fruits and vegetables.  Raw foods can even include an occasional treat.  And, better still, I have a feeling that once Raw Foods First becomes habitual for me, the habit might get picked up by my whole family.  The kids may model after my new eating habits.  Mike may.  And, then, who knows what additional habits will happen.  I may even be ready for a big step I envision – adding more living foods to my diet.

But one habit at a time.

For today, Raw Foods First is it. 

And, yes, I said today.  Why wait for the New Year to begin?  New healthy habits can begin any day.  I am eating raw as I post this.

What habits do you hope to form in 2013?

Resource Round Up: Handwashing Printables, Songs and Other Helps

The other day, I was inspired to share our Handwashing Chart.  Since then, I have realized that September 18-24, 2011 is International Clean Hands Week.  That's only a month away.

In honor of International Clean Hands Week, I thought I would share some of the free resources I have been checking out for planning some early school year curriculum, habit training and practical life activities while highlighting the importance of handwashing.

• Slater Software offers a Washing Hands Social Story.

• Caught Dirty Handed is a fun experiment we might try here at home which tests the effectiveness of different hand washing times, techniques and materials.

• The Scrub Club offers a song recording for handwashing, online games and videos, parent tips, a teacher guide and downloads in Spanish, French and English.

• Little Acorn Learning shares Handwashing Songs.

• CSU Extension offers various a Leader's Guide, Pictorial Quiz and Coloring Book for handwashing.

• A Handwashing Chart is our very own printable to hang up by your sink. 

• Henry the Hand offers a variety curriculum materials, including a free curriculum kit.

• School Nurse Janet Friederick and the Prescott Early Childhood Center Students present a five-minute handwashing video.

• Glogerm offers handwashing lesson plans and printables for grades K-6.

• GoJo offers educational materials including online video games, posters and K-5 lesson plans that feature their fun-loving mascot character Clean Gene. 

•  The University of Nebraska-Lincoln offers free posters, handouts and game materials for "Sinking Those Germs".

• The Minnesota Department of Health offers comprehensive hand hygiene resources including posters, information, curriculum plans and printables.

• Wash Your Hands provides a booklet, video and posters in both English and Spanish.

We'd love to hear about your favorite handwashing songs, books, materials and strategies, too.  Please leave a comment or link

This post is being shared at We Are THAT Family's Works for Me Wednesday, because our Handwashing Chart and keeping germs at bay through handwashing work for us!

Sleep Interview with 5 ½ Year-Old Luke Who Can’t Shut Off His Brain

On a hot summer night...

The kids stripped not only themselves, but one of their pillows, down, before finally crashing in Luke's bunk.

“Just like sea otters, children love to play all day…   

God knows that all animals and people need rest.   

He wants us to get sleep so we can be healthy and happy.   

When we sleep, our bodies grow and get stronger.   

Playing and resting are both important.”

The other morning when the kids and I read this portion of the “Playful Sea Otters” devotional in our Five-Minute Devotions for Children, Celebrating God’s Word as a Family book, I was reminded of the S-O-S Best of the Best topic for this month:  Sleep and Children with Invisible Disabilities.

This topic resonates with me since I have been living with interrupted sleep– and sometimes outright lack of it – myself for the past five years due to the usual mama stuff of nursing babies and attending to the night wakings of three young children, compounded by the challenges of having a child with an “invisible disability” whose sleep is definitely affected by his uniquely wired brain.

A  5 1/2 Year Old Explains Sleep

Truly, Luke’s take on sleep is a bit different than most kid’s.  Here it is, in his own words, with Mom commentary in italics.

Mom:  What is sleep?

Luke:  Awake time. 

Luke has gone through periods where he has outright fought going to bed and other periods where he got up and up and up and up.  He is currently able to rest in bed, but will often not fall asleep for hours, calling out to us randomly when we think he must already be asleep.

Mom:  What do you mean by that?

Luke:  I mean I stay awake every night.

Mom:  Why do you stay awake every night?

Luke:  Because I can’t shut off my brain.

When Luke was quite young, we thought it was light that prevented him from sleeping.  Once he became verbal, we realized his trouble sleeping had a lot to do with his mind.  He continued to have trouble calming down to sleep, and, also, began to pop up with the most thought-provoking, is-he-really-thinking-about-that-at-his-age questions and comments after we thought he was sound asleep. 

In recent times, we have been able to help Luke calm his body and mind a bit by:

• using our 5 T’s routine
• allowing him to sleep with others
• giving him things to focus on – such as a space mobile of late since he loves space
• listening to stories and music on CD’s
 

 A current favorite bedtime CD of his is Essential Sound, Calm, Music for Healing and Wellness, which we were lucky enough to win from Pediatric Occupational Therapy Tips some time ago.  As Dr. Zachry suggested in her giveaway post, the soothing classical music on the CD seems to “naturally slow down the heart rate and relax the mind through simple harmonies and slowing tempos.”  It has not proved a full-proof panacea for Luke's ever-active brain syndrome, but it sure seems to help!  Thank you, Dr. Zachry.

Mom:  Why?

Luke:  I just can’t.

Thankfully, although he thinks he can't, he eventually does.

Mom:  Do you ever sleep?

Luke: Ah.  Never.

Mom:  Truthfully?

Luke:  Never.

Mom:  So, when it looks like you’re sleeping, what are you doing?

Luke:  I am pretending.

We believe that Luke knows that he actually sleeps, but he has insisted for years that he does not.  Even when we have showed him pictures of himself sleeping, he has claimed – sometime playfully, at other times, quite willfully – that he was just pretending or that he was simply resting.  We know his claims actually are true at times, because there have been times when we have thought he was definitely asleep, only to discover he was not.  But, we also know that he does, in fact sleep, of course.  The  floppy arm test, moving him, etc. prove it. 

Truth aside, we have discovered that if we persist in trying to prove that Luke does, in fact, sleep, as opposed to just resting or pretending to sleep, he  tends to get so wound up that he takes longer to get to sleep.  So, we play along with his declared “I am pretending” perception for now...

Mom:  Do you feel better after you pretend to sleep for a long time?

Luke:  Yes.

Mom:  Why do you think you feel better?

Luke:  Because I shut my eyes.

Mom:  What does it do when you shut your eyes?

Luke:  Helps me.

Mom:  How?

Luke:  It makes them not watery.

Just recently, Luke has begun to notice his body’s tired cues.  When he complains of different physical feelings at night, we explain that these are ways his body is telling him it needs to rest.  Understanding “sleepy cues” is something we are working on making Luke more cognoscente of.

Mom:  When you get up in the morning, do you feel better than the night before?

Luke:  Yes.

Mom:  Why?

Luke:  Because I pretended to sleep and I started to, but I didn’t really. 

Again, for some reason, Luke prefers to believe that he doesn’t actually sleep.  We can deal with this as long as he is, in fact, sleeping better.

Mom:  Is sleep important?

Luke:  Mm hmmm.

Mom:  Why is it important to sleep?

Luke:  It helps you grow…  That’s all I know.  Please stop.  I’m tired.

Hoorah!  It has taken years to get Luke to recognize that sleep is important.  But, as his answer hints, he does not like admitting it. 

Mom:  If you’re tired, why don’t you go to sleep?

Luke:  Because I don’t like to.

Honesty is a good thing.  Finding ways to make going to sleep something Luke likes to do would be even better!  We’re open to all tips.

Mom:  What are some things that help you rest at night?

Luke:  Thinking about outer space…  The 5 T’s…Telling stories…

Luke often latches onto a specific theme or topic for months or even years.  His current passion is space, so we encourage him to think about it when he is in bed as a way to relax or at least keep relatively still,  Thus, we sometimes hear him telling stories about the space drawings he has decorated his bedside wall with or find him looking at or reaching up toward the planet mobile we hung near his bed.

The 5 T’s is our bedtime routine, which both Luke and Nina follow.  We posted about it with a printable here. 

Admittedly, we have periods where we get lax with our 5 T’s – especially when Daddy is in charge of bedtime and the kids manage to get him to lay in bed with them for the “talk” portion.  That's when the "telling stories" comes in, too.  The 5 T's get elongated into a Luke-can-outlast-Daddy fest.  Daddy enjoys talking with the kids about their days.  They beg him to teach them some German and to tell them made up stories.  Then, after Nina drifts off, Luke cons Daddy into staying longer, chatting about all manner of things until Luke outlasts Daddy in staying awake...

Luckily, the 5 T's seems to be the easy enough for us to get back into.   In fact, of all the things we have tried to make bedtime more peaceful for us all – and we have tried MANY – our 5 T’s for Bedtime seem to work best as a wind-down cue for our children.

Mom:   Is sleep a good thing or a bad thing?

Luke:  Good.

And, with that, I will close.   

Sleep is a good thing, and, if nothing else, we consider it a victory that Luke knows that it is.  We all seek what is good!

How has sleep been at your home lately?  Do you have a child or know a child that is sleep-challenged?  

“Invisible Disabilities” or not, learning effective sleep hygiene is important for all children.  What routines and resources have you find most helpful for this?

Routine and Rhythms: Our New Morning Lotto Charts

Nature has rhythms.  Life does, too.  But, somehow, we keep getting off beat here at Jammies School. 

To help us get back in tempo, I was planning to simply resurrect our Wake-Up Time and Daily Rhythm Charts, which remained effective until cards began to go missing.  However, as I was about to click “print” in order to make replacement cards, Jack scooted across the floor.

 

“Ah!” I realized.  No need for our newly mobile Jack to be gnawing at cards that might get dropped on the floor.  Nope.  A revised system was in order!

 

Thus, the kids and I spent yesterday morning creating and giving a trial run to our new Morning Lotto Cards.  I made the main framework for each card and, then, Luke and Nina sat on my lap to select their own images from Microsoft Office clip art to personalize their own cards.  (They helped Mommy make one for herself and insisted on making one for Jack, too.)  

 

 We hung our Morning Lotto Cards in the hallway in page protectors and put them to inaugural use by “x”ing things we had already done that morning and “o”ing things we had yet to do with a dry erase marker.

 

You should have seen how motivated those x’s and o’s made the kids to complete their current morning routines.

 

My hope is that we will go for coverall Lotto every day until our early morning rhythm gets back on track.  Then, I am going to roll the Lotto cards into a larger plan I have incubating to capitalize on Luke’s desire to earn some money and mine to have a better ordered home and more consistent habits for all.

 

I can also seem them working into kiddo workboxes and Momma workboxing when we get that set up down the line.

 

If you’d like to borrow our Morning Lotto Charts, you can simply click on the photo of each one below and it should come up with one large enough for you to print.   You’d just need to tape your own names and photos over the appropriate parts at the tops.  

 

 If a full-sized version does not come up, or if you would like a Publisher copy to adapt for your own use, simply leave a comment with your email address and I will try to upload one to send you via email.

 

(And, if you can give a simple tutorial on how to upload documents like this in a free, easy way at one of the document sharing sites, please do.  I have yet to get that technically savvy!)

 

Enjoy!

 

This post is being shared at 5 Minutes for Mom’s Tackle It Tuesday and We Are THAT Family's Works for Me Wednesday. Click on the links there to see other projects folks have been tackling and tips they've been sharing to make their homes and lives run more smoothly.  It is also being shared as a part of For Thy Sake: Teaching Children to Value Family Work.

Guest Posting at Size Tracker

Sibling hugs after scarecrow building last month -- one way we re-use clothes that we are ready to purge.

We've been busy with homeschool get-togethers, play dates, Thanksgiving preparations and being present in the moment, so I have not been taking many pictures nor posting much this week.  I will get back to fun and informative, picture-filled posts soon.  In the meantime, I wanted to share that I was asked to guest post over at Size Tracker recently.  If you're headed into a seasonal clothing sort in preparation for the winter weather or in the spirit of pre-holiday out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new ideals, you might find my Kids' Clothing Management post helpful