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Three tips from psychology professor Mark Holder

Helping your children receive the mood-boosting benefits of spirituality can involve adopting some very simple approaches to life. Psychology professor Mark Holder recommends three ways you can help your children get started:

• Encourage them to volunteer for a cause that matters to them.
• Plan acts of kindness, which adds to personal and communal meaning.
• Encourage them to increase their awe and appreciation of beauty. One way is to help them create a photo album of things they find special or beautiful.

Six tips from Dr. Sonja Lyumbomirsky

Dr. Sonja Lyumbomirsky, author of “The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want,” suggests encouraging your children to:

• Count their blessings: Either on paper or out load, making lists of things they’re grateful for helps children get the big picture.
• Cultivate optimism: Practise finding one positive aspect in each negative circumstance, no matter how small.
• Practise acts of kindness: Studies show there is an instant and lasting good feeling to be gained from helping others.
• Replay and savour life’s joys: Pay close attention, take delight. and go over life’s momentary pleasures and wonders – through thinking, writing, drawing, or sharing with another.
• Learn to forgive: Ask your child to choose one person who they believe has wronged them and work toward finding a way to let go of the anger and hurt.
• Create regular rituals that remind your child that there is a higher purpose to life and about the things they share with every being on Earth

This information was originally published in an article in the Ottawa Citizen in 2010. Unfortunately that article is no longer available online, but I thought that the advice was worth sharing.