No More Jenga Living
“Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.” – Anthony Brandt
Does your life feel like a game of Jenga? You know the game, where you build a solid tower of sorts with 54 long blocks that fit together. Players then take turns to remove one block from the tower and place it on the top of the tower, creating a progressively more unstable structure, until finally the tower collapses on itself. Do you feel like that? Like you live in a space of nervous anticipation of when that one final little block will be the one that makes everything tumble to the ground in a pile of chaos and destruction?
The Jenga Problem:
I suppose we have all experienced this feeling to a certain extent within the past two years. We are all painfully aware of the toll that this global pandemic has taken on our lives, which was already navigating through a complex VUCA world. The hard truth is that this uncertain, complex times we live in has not only influenced our workspace, but our families has felt it to a great extent, yes it has gotten very personal, it has hit home as the saying goes. And in the fast-paced world we live in, we find it difficult to build healthy structures where needed, or maybe we do not even know where it is needed! Right now, we are just paddling to keep head above water.
Now for the most part, we can be pretty resilient with this jenga juggle that happens, but when it starts to impact our families, the core of our environment, which should be our safe space, that’s when the dreaded tumble can become very real. To add to the pile of impossibles, we struggle to find the time to invest into that structures that sustains the rest. We can almost call it our foundation, right? If our family life is unstable, the rest is pretty much a jenga disaster waiting to happen. So, let’s build a backbone to this unstable jenga tower, so no matter what happens to these blocks, the backbone will be stable! What is this backbone, you ask? It’s called Family Resilience and it is what we will explore in this series.
Why family resilience?
I am sure you are familiar with the concept of resilience as it has become something of a buzz word the past two years. We all need to be resilient and keep keeping on. But resilience is so much more than just holding on for dear life, it’s the ability of a person to deal with, surprises, changes and unexpected setbacks in a healthy manner. Living in the time that we do, I am sure you can see the value of growing in our ability as family and individuals to deal with surprises, changes and unexpected setbacks in a healthy and meaningful way! I mean, let’s just work with 2020 and we can all put a check behind surprises, changes and unexpected setbacks, and they just keep coming, that jenga experience.
The thing about resilience though is that it is not a checklist where you reach a certain point and you have arrived. It is rather continually building and growing in certain competencies to deal with life’s challenges in a healthy and meaningful way. With the festive season upon us, it is the perfect time to invest in growing within your family resilience to make sure that backbone is growing stronger come 2022. In this blog series, we want to equip you with a few pointers and tips on how to start growing your family resilience this festive season.
But first a few tips to get you going with your family resilience:
- Be kind and gentle with yourself. Remember you cannot take care of others when you are running on empty. So, during this festive season make time to invest in yourself. To start creating habits that will keep you healthy and functioning optimally in the new year. A good starting point is getting sufficient sleep – adults need at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night.
- Be kind and caring to the individuals in your family. Make time this festive season to find out what the individual members of your family love doing (if you do not already know). Then take time to spend individual time with each member doing something they love with them.
- Spend quality time together as a family. The danger of the festive season is that we are “together” as a family but everyone is doing their own thing. When in fact this is the perfect opportunity to spend quality time together. Have game nights, with a no phone rule and have some quality fun time together.
Contact the office for possible Family Resilience consultation and development.
