simplify + structure = family success

Every parent I know wants to feel they are being successful in their home. That the effort they are putting in to raise happy children is making a difference and what they are doing will continue to influence generations to come. Of course the definition of success is different for every family and for our family it involves keeping life simple and staying true to our values and structure to find family success. 

I have been working on simplifying our lives and adjusting our family routine recently and to help inspire me I have been reading, Simplify Structure Succeed, by Shannah Kennedy. It is a book that includes practical tools, tips, templates and case studies to encourage you to develop life strategies for optimal living in a modern, fast paced world. I really enjoyed going through this book and it helped me to work out some goals that I want to work on for the rest of the year. I am going to share them with you in a blog post tomorrow. For today, I wanted to share with you some great tips I discovered on each of the three topics in Shannah's book.

Simplify

I have always loved the word simplify. To me as a mother of a large family it is essential for my survival and sanity. At times in my life though it has seemed out of reach and lately it has been something I have been craving more and more. Shannah helped me to see what is draining me in my life, what I am allowing to suck energy and why I am feeling mentally cluttered. You know that feeling when you can't even think properly because your mind is so full of information and even deciding what to wear seems to much of a decision! 

After reading this book I have come to see that simplifying my life is necessary, as simplifying = clarity.  I need clarity in my life to see the big picture, to see clearly what goals I want to achieve and to get a vision of where my family needs to go to find happiness and success. 

Structure

Creating structure or routine in our family lives is important to provide a balanced life. A routine has given our family peace of mind and provided our children with a sense of security in knowing we have a set routine to follow each day. It also allows us to take advantage of opportunities that come our way and to be spontaneous. I was reminded from Shannah to use my time wisely, to protect it and to plan time in my schedule to look ahead, to dream big and to schedule in moments to achieve my goals. 

It is easy to feel like creating a structure or routine is too hard with a large family and it is easy to blame others for not being successful at it. When we take responsibility for our family situations we can then commit ourselves to working out a plan that will work for our family happiness.

Succeed

Once we have worked out how to simplify our lives and what structure we feel is best for ourselves and our family we can plan in how we are going to be successful in making it happen. This will be individual and different for each person and family. There is no right or wrong answer in how we go about achieving this. That is the beauty of it, our vision is unique and will be different on how we want to move forward in our lives.

Finding success as a family often means getting out of our comfort zone, trying new experiences and pushing ourselves, but not so much that we all fall apart in the process! Shannah encourages us to celebrate our journey, our achievements and to not be afraid of failure. Planning our own strategy is the fun part and working out own recipe for success can be inspiring and unifying as a family.

One of the things I really enjoyed about Shannah's book was the layout. Bright images throughout the book, plenty of room to take notes and inspiring quotes to help you ponder as you are reading. I loved her encouraging attitude and simple, useful tips. To read more about her new book out you can click on her website: Shannah Kennedy: Life Coaching. 

So after reading Shannah's book, I have now worked out my personal goals I want to achieve and I am also refining our family goals we can work on until the end of the year. There were not too many changes I felt we needed to make as a family but more a few little parts of our life that we have let slip that need to be focused on some more. Looking forward to sharing some of them with you tomorrow. 

Are there any changes you think your family needs to make to find family happiness?

*I was given a free copy of this book to read and was not paid to write this blog post. I am writing and sharing it because I really enjoyed the book and believe it will help others if they read it.