Collaborating on a Family Mission Statement

Welcome back and congratulations. You've made it to the final section of our "Mindful Parenting Collection." In this section, we're gonna discuss lessons and exercises that you can do together with your whole family as you work toward becoming more mindful together. In this first episode, we're gonna talk about creating a family mission statement. Now, the first thing that might come to mind is this sounds so corporate and formal. But John, can you talk a little bit about why it's so important for families to have a mission statement of their own? You're right to call out that this whole idea might seem a little strange to think about, that people under one home need to have some document that aligns what is important in our family. But when you reflect on the interactions that your family has, there often are some really important core themes that come up again and again and seem to matter to who you want your children to be, to how you want them to behave in the world, now and in the future, and making these known values that your family hold, and doing this creation in a collaborative way. And the fact that this is a living document, one that is discussed now can be adjusted based on feedback. All these things are important ways to build buy-in with our kids in the creation of it. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. When you do something as a family, and you have this list of these collective agreements, they give you a path forward. So when I'm helping families craft their own mission statement, I start with values. When you focus there, you can start to feel more authentic and live with more integrity. Even younger kids can start to identify what's important to them. And there are different ways of getting them to talk about this. You can ask questions like, "What makes a good friend?" Or, "What do you appreciate about your teachers at school? What characteristics?" And as they start talking about these qualities that are really important to them, you can start to extract certain values and write them down. And then talk about ways that you live in accordance with those values, right? So if you value honesty, you notice urges to lie when they (laughs) come up. You take a deep breath, and then you remember how good it feels to tell the truth. I like to use a printout of words that you can circle. You can start by identifying maybe 10 that are important to you, and then narrowing it down to 5 and then maybe to 3. And the narrowing down helps you to hone in on the real vital ones, the ones that are non-negotiables for you. And then you can put them together and do it in all kinds of creative ways. I like the idea of collaging or painting or coloring, and then making it your family, not document, but...