This family routine gives me daily joy

This family routine gives me daily joy

Every night, as we cuddle our children at bedtime, we have the opportunity to round off their day in a loving, caring way. Those evenings my kids sleep faster and better and my own evening starts better too. Isn’t that right? Because when we send our children to dreamland with their hearts full of love, we get peace of mind and calm hearts in return. It feels to me like meeting my kids heart to heart at bedtime. Some evenings I even feel I get a glimpse of their soul. In those moment, I feel “daily joy“.

What gives you every daily joy?

Travel the inner worlds with your kids

“To travel is to live,” wrote H.C. Andersen, the famous Danish writer. I welcome that. I myself have lived in seven different countries and have traveled more than most, but only at a late age did it dawn on me that the inner journeys are at least as exciting and often also more magical as traveling the world. As with all other travel, I want to share my experiences with my kids. Just as I love to travel with them and show them the world, I love to travel with them and explore their inner worlds with child meditations as well.

I have traveled to The Valley of Hearts and have visited The Love Mountains many evenings a week with my girls since they were quite young.

As a mother, I get a unique opportunity to get really close to them, nurture them, heal them and fill them up, while I teach them the art of knowing how to do it themselves. Hear more in my TEDx talk on how it feels and why it is necessary in a world that is rushing away at lightning speed.

Every day joy vs holiday joy

When we travel the world, like last year, when my husband I took parental leave and brought the kids to New Zealand and drove the south island thin in a campervan, I am gripped by an intense holiday joy. In small glimpses in special moments where a sight of beautiful nature, the grandeur of adventure, and the love of my family creaty an intense HIGH ON LIFE feeling, I feel extreme joy and fall in love with life again and again creating an intense feeling of appreciation and gratefulness. Moments that I recognize from when my children came into the world in Croatia and Canada, when my husband proposed to me on top of a mountain in New Zealand, and when I got  to marry him. Holiday joy is a happiness that is tied to the special moments that cannot be repeated and therefore becomes completely unique to us. What gives you holiday joy?

It is said that we should strive for an everyday life from which we don’t need a vacation. I like that thought and have created a working life that I love dearly. I love writing books. But there are many other tasks around than writing, and there is an everyday life that has to run with a lot of logistics and chores. So for me, holiday happiness is still very special.

Chasing joy

I don’t believe it is a goal in itself that we should walk around chasing joy. It would just give a lot of performance pressure when the laundry, angry kids, stressful everyday moments and dog shit in the garden grow one over the ears. But I believe that we can find small oases of happiness and joy in everyday life if we stop and sense life a little more. I believe that everyday happiness hides right there behind the senses. The task for us is to wind down and look for the peace.

When I travel with the kids into The Valley of the Hearts and turn up our Heartlight in The Love Mountains, I feel the daily joy I strive for. I believe that a happy life consists of a long string of pearls of small moments of everyday joy, spiced up with the great moments of intense holiday joy.

I love hearing from you:

“I have now read the first meditation of “The children’s meditations In my heart” for my 2 sweet boys of 3 and 5 years every night for 3 days. Already the first time I read the meditation to them, it opened up a very special universe of love between me and them.

It was so liberating to be able to put into words my great love for them, and feel how much they enjoyed feeling the warmth and love in their bodies. At the same time they became calm and relaxed and could fall asleep more easily. 

For the first time in a long time, they have both slept through the night and my big boy is far less bothered by “bad dreams” My oldest son of 5 subsequently told me about one of his very touching dreams: “Mom, I dreamed I met a friend who had a cold heart. I gave him a big hug and then his heart warmed up again “I was so happy and touched. I am deeply grateful to have found a way to express my great love for my children, and I look forward to getting even closer to them and filling them with love in the future. I myself have practiced mindfulness for some years, but how wonderful it is now to be able to involve his children in the magical world, where they learn to find peace and self-love.

I work as a doctor myself, and would definitely recommend child meditation and mindfulness to families who want to get closer to their children and have a less stressful everyday life.”

Doctor and mother of 2