Author: TheBossOfBalance

Dear Readers,

I know, you thought there were only 5. Well technically, according to this site, it’s 5…. but stick with me, I will explain.

There could be more, but I know there are at least six, because my sixth love language is sleeping in.

I know the science does NOT back me up here. The snooze does not actually offer any additional rest, and after a few months of “not snoozing” and ACTUALLY getting up with an alarm (so no one can tell me I didn’t give it an opportunity to work) I certainly feel more rested when I snooze so go ahead and call it psychosomatic, but it works for me.

That’s sort of the point to this whole post, do you know your partner well enough to say at least what their five love languages are? If not, why not?

Take a guess before taking the quiz, make it into a game and see if you are right…

With Valentines Day around the corner, dig into it, and figure out what they are. This quiz takes about 10 minutes.

https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/

Go ahead and take a few minutes to do it, then send it to your partner and then make it into a fun exercise, so that you can invest in your relationship and make it stronger this holiday. This will help you to pour into your relationship the other 364 days of the year.

So one of my goals in our relationship is to uncover what his sixth, seventh, and eighth love language is, because that requires more than a 10 minute quiz, it means that daily, I need to look for the things that really make him smile, because that’s the advanced citizenship I am looking for in my marriage.

I am definitely not perfect at this, and I am working on it, along with my husband, and here is a newsflash.

We fail a lot more than we succeed.

It’s a constant work in progress, and it’s HARD. Then there are moments like this one. I am so glad that someone snapped this picture when I wasn’t looking.

So do you want to do just the bare minimum for the price of entry for your relationship or do you want advanced citizenship in your relationship ?

Think About It.

Jennifer Haston- Author, Speaker, Activist- helping people live their best lives. Inspiring one person daily!

Dear Readers,

This seems to be pretty simple advice, but it’s actually pretty hard.

Here’s the part where I admit being human (darn you, Dr. Litt!!)

and not always filled to the brim with joy when other people have good news.

On some level, if we are fully honest, when you hear the good news of others, we might say (only to ourselves of course) you “Wait, wait, don’t I deserve

<Insert your desire here>

Well, maybe, but at this point in time, you don’t have it, so smile and think ahead to the time when you will and feel happy for them now.

What’s the alternative? Being ticked off about their good fortune because it happens to not be your “turn” (no matter how much you might think you are “due”)

Chin up, it will be your turn soon, and wouldn’t you like for people to be happy for you when it is?

My ability to celebrate others has really been tested lately. I have alluded to the past year of struggle for our family including some of our friends. It’s been HARD, (like pull your hair out, spit on your neck, angry at the world, HARD.

and there is no amount of “spin” or “Pollyanna Positvity” that makes it less HARD. I felt like pulling my hair out MOST of the time.

Trust me, I gave it my best shot, and painted it (it being the massive gaping hole of suck combined with a massive “waiting game” all the bright pretty colours I could find and it still sucked.

I think the waiting was the hardest part of all of that.

A word on that here from my good friend and fellow writer, Senator Green.

The wait is longer than we’d like. Longer than we think we can take. It’s a lot of microsurrenders.

-Senator Green

I would like to (wary of “tempting the wrath of the whatever from atop the thing” knocking on wood, ((thanks Jeremy))

as I type this) to think we are heading into a period of unparalleled growth and prosperity due to the season we just ended being the polar opposite of that, and that definitely makes it easier to view other people’s good news through that “attitude of gratitude” I constantly coach to my clients, and eventually my daughter.

I think it comes down to this. The difference between envy and jealousy.

A lot of people use these words interchangeably and this is as good a time as any to clear this up.

Envy- means I want what you have.

Jealousy- means not only do I want what you have, I don’t want you to have it.

I do my best to live a life of abundance, always preferring to believe that there is more than enough for everyone, and you having joy does not mean I, or anyone else, has less as a result of your portion.

So, I might envy your good fortune while also expressing happiness that it’s your “turn” but I will NEVER be jealous.

Think About It.

Dear Readers,

This past two weeks my partner and I did an experiment.

After about 9 years of the same arrangement, we decided to change the rules of how we manage our household.

As we were both bemoaning how hard each other had it, so we decided to put each other’s shoes on to see how it felt.

No, that doesn’t mean Jeremy is now wearing my blue Chucks, or even my sparkly red sneaks.

It means that I am doing the grocery shopping and cooking,

and he is doing the dishes and Vivienne’s laundry and towels.

I definitely had some doubts about this but in fact it has been extremely eye-opening for us.

The first thing we had to do was let go of control (for a control connoisseur like me, it’s been hard) over how our respective tasks would not be done on the same way because they would be done by (gasp!) someone else.

First things first, I took Vivienne grocery shopping with me, which is a job within a job, so seeing it from his perspective was very helpful. She is an adorable handful, and that took some maneuvering (also known as, she would grab something and put it on the cart, and I would have to take it back out again) such fun!!!

<insert heavy sarcasm here>

I did have to call Jeremy 5 or 6 times to confirm the brands he normally gets and questions about what was on the grocery list. It was not lost on me that he answered each time and never lost patience and said, “Figure it out!”

It was okay once I got used to the dance of keeping her away from the shelves and out of grabbing distance. It wound up working out to have her with me when checking out, because she put items on the cart! Thanks Vivienne!

She is such a great helper, she helps with dishes too.

In fact, just last night, we were decluttering and I asked her, “Give away” or “Keep” and surprisingly she opted to give away two bags of toys. So happy that she is already learning to let go of stuff!

But now for what you are waiting for, it’s been two weeks, I have cooked twice (we do batch cooking) and shopped once. Jeremy has done several loads of laundry and dishes, so as we were talking about it, we both uncovered that we are pretty happy with this arrangement. In fact, we used the phrase, “getting off scot-free” okay, that was me, not him, but we are both happy with the role reversal.

Is it permanent? Only time will tell, but I really like it!

The biggest takeaway for me, two weeks in, is how hard shopping and cooking is, so I greatly appreciate all the years that Jeremy has been doing these tasks.

It hasn’t all been wine and roses, we are still duking it out over the dishes.

I am confident we will “figure it out” and for now, it’s still all on the table.

So, what’s your household duty? Can you do a switcheroo like we did to see how you like it? You might even find a new way to do things while experimenting.

I encourage you to experiment and see what you learn and as always, report back!

Think About It.

www.youtube.com/watch

Chasing Your Happy!

! Jenn Haston- speaker, writer, author- Inspiring YOU to your best l

Dear Readers,

(Vivienne is chasing her happy in artificial snow, that’s right, it was 72 degrees out, hence the lack of coat!)

This past weekend was my birthday and I also consider it a “new year”.

That concept is a lot easier to sell in January, but I digress.

In general, I am a pretty happy person and “chase my happy” on the regular but of late, given the aforementioned tsunami of stress and setbacks, I have been having a hard time “finding my happy” and then this past weekend while observing a friend eat her nachos with “dancing fingers” heard her say, “I should get a napkin”, another friend, observing this said, “chase your happy” and it just struck me as such a great phrase so it’s sticking with me as I cast about to consider what to write about this week.

Me “chasing my happy” means asking friends and family to “bring kindness back on my birthday”

My goal is to make acts of kindness commonplace, not random- Professor Haston

On my birthday, my sweet husband made it possible for me to experience something I didn’t even know I wanted…

I am now a bonafide Disney Princess!!!

Any princess worth her salt, has birds that land on her hand, right?

It was a super fun time and watching Viv chase “her happy” with ALL the fish was pretty cool. “Finding Dory” is a frequently watched movie in our house.

So as we hit the midway mark to the week (tomorrow), I have this to ask…

What are you doing to “chase your happy”?

Think About It.

Jenn Haston- speaker, writer, author- Inspiring YOU to your best life.

Dear Readers,

Last week I referred to people having problems in their marriage.

With permission, I have gained from my partner, I have this to say. I am “people”

These pictures make it look like we are the perfect couple and always smiling but that’s only half the story, friends.

It’s not as if I have a picture of us fighting that I could show you… but trust me, they exist.

We work hard at this marriage thing.

It’s HARD. Way harder than anyone talks about. Why is that? Do we think if we don’t talk about it, that it will somehow be less real or stressful? Well, I don’t think so. There is nothing so gratifying as when talking to a friend that you hear those words, “you too?” and you feel that innate sense of connection.

My partner and I have been together for the better part of 11 years and married for 8 of those years. We have weathered the storms of getting out of debt, miscarriage, and several other tsunamis of stress and complex and intimate details I won’t share here, maybe ever.

We all have chapters we would rather leave unpublished.

So the thought I had recently is “why is it so hard?”- I mean, I love him, he loves me. We laugh together, we dance, we cry and we even sing together sometimes.

We also do not agree and get loud and emotional when we don’t. In other words, we fight.

I have heard it said, It’s okay to fight in front of your child, but also be sure that they see you make up or resolve it. I think for the most part we do that well.

I used to think that didn’t make too much sense, after all, won’t it scar them for life to see their parents fighting? Well, my guess is that like everything else, unless you model behavior for them, how else do they learn?

I sure didn’t learn how to fight from my parents. They fought and never resolved anything.

My father did a lot of avoiding fighting and so when it comes to our marriage, I definitely do not want to repeat those mistakes, so instead started making all new ones. But seriously, we have help, we take advice and we choose every day, every hour, every minute, every second to be married, and we choose each other.

It’s a hard thing for me to be so selfless for someone else and I am glad to say, he returns the favor and we definitely do the dance of healthy compromise and we find our way down new paths every day.

It’s not easy, AND it is worth it.

Think About It.

www.youtube.com/watch

Haston Helping Hands speaker, writer, author- Inspiring YOU to your best life.