Making Your Home Sing Monday

Momstheword says, "Every day you are doing something to make your house into a home for yourself and your family (if you have one). ... what are you doing or going to do today to make your home sing?It can be an attitude or an action. Motivation, our attitude, baking, encouraging our husband or children (if we have either one), organization, cleaning, saving money....the opportunities are endless."

Making Your Home Sing Monday is simply a way to get yourself to focus, even for a moment, on the power you have to design your own life. To deliberately fashion a home for yourself and your loved ones that suits you all. To be conscious of the effect you that have and can have on the atmosphere in your own home. That is some powerful stuff. Have you ever thought about it? Truly? Have you looked around and thought about how you are contributing to the mood of your home? I think a lot of us tend to look outwards when we're trying to solve a problem. After all, isn't it much easier to blame your husband or your kids for whatever isn't right in your house? You know you work so hard to take care of the home. Do you stop to think that how you think about that caring is as important as the physical effort you put into it? Honestly, I know a lot of people who don't... Don't take ownership for the disharmony in their homes... Don't take ownership for the messiness of their homes... Don't take ownership for the unacceptable behavior of their children...

Taking ownership isn't easy. Taking ownership daily is even more difficult. But the rewards are boundless.

Do you watch Biggest Loser? You know I do, right? Last night I was watching it via hulu.com (you know about hulu.com, right?). If you watched any of this season, you know that Miggy was an entirely unpleasant woman until a week or so before she was sent home. She was belligerent, hostile, and so negative. Truly. The only redeeming quality she seemed to have was her dedication to her daughter (even as you wondered if that was, in fact, a healthy thing). Anyway, she was sent home at the end of episode 7 and was transformed. Truly transformed. She was almost unrecognizable as the same woman. Why? As she put it, she had been so negative in her life, so filled with negativity, that it impacted everything. Since leaving the "ranch", she started meditating and "releasing the negative energy" and living her life with positive energy and it showed. Oh, don't get me wrong...she still has quite a bit of weight to lose and her life isn't perfect, but her entire countenance has been transformed. She herself described it has having an "unbelievable impact" on her life and it showed. It was actually awe-inspiring to witness.

So, what does that have to do with Making Your Home Sing Monday? Well, after wallowing in some negative energy myself (getting sick and staying sick does that to me) and feeling it weigh us all down, I've decided to stop it...right now...this moment...and I've decided to choose the positive. Just as I'm no longer yelling at my kids (and, boy, do they think me very quiet is scary!), I'm not going to harp on things. Our lives are good lives (notice I didn't say perfect) and I am going to make sure we operate from a position that recognizes that. Yes, chores have to get done, bills have to be paid, tasks are looming in front of us, but how we view them, the words we use to describe them and the manner in which we fulfill our responsibilities can be transformative.

So, this week, my home will still be humming right along, but we're kicking the negativity to the curb and we're owning the atmosphere in our home. (Oh, and the sunshine isn't hurting our efforts, either!)