Our Family Mission Statement

This post was written for inclusion in the Mindful Mama Blog Carnival hosted by hosted by Kelly of Becoming Crunchy and Zoie of TouchstoneZ. Participants are writing posts about what mindfulness mean to them. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
***
******************************************************************************************************************************************* For me, Mindfulness is synonymous with Intentionality.
Intentional Relationships.
Intentional Homemaking.
Intentional Learning.
Intentional Stewardship.
Intentional Health.

I'm a person with good intentions.  But I'm also a person who easily loses focus. 

So to focus on living with greater Intentionality, I wrote a Family Mission Statement.  (I first became interested and inspired to write a Family Mission Statement by Simple Mom.  I didn't follow her suggestions, but I knew that I needed a focus for our lives as a family.)

I needed to include a basis for how we make decisions that affect all six of us, a deliberate commitment to living better, smarter, happier and healthier.  I needed to have a firm 'reason' for the choices that we make as a family (which are so often misunderstood by others) and I needed to make peace with life outside of the 'bubble' of our family life.  I came up with this:

We choose to live in Freedom and Joy.
We love each other with Patience and Kindness.
We work for Beauty and Order.
We bring others Harmony and Trust.

We choose to live in Freedom and Joy.

This explains why and how we Unschool.  It releases us from guilt when we say 'No' to activities that make us miserable.  It even helps us to make big decisions.

For example, Partner-Guy and I have often struggled to make peace with the fact that I get to stay home with our children while he goes out to a job that he dislikes and is ill-suited for.  But the truth of the matter is that his job provides both a generous compensation and 12 weeks of holidays each year.  Because of his job, we always have evenings and weekends together and we can afford a comfortable lifestyle.  If he were to quit his job and look for a new one, it is unlikely that we could maintain the same 'level' of Freedom and Joy as a family.

We also try to look for the Freedom and Joy when we are arranging activities for the children or planning extended-family get-togethers. 

Above all, the principle of Freedom and Joy reminds us as the parents that we are NOT the bosses of our children and that they are equally worthy of living in Freedom and Joy everyday.

 We love each other with Patience and Kindness.
Living in Freedom and Joy does not mean that we live without struggles and frustrations.  It helps to remind ourselves how to love each other.  I always love my children, but I certainly need them to remind me to show them greater Patience and Kindness sometimes. 

I also needed to improve my relationship with my Partner-Guy by being consistently more appreciative of him.  An increase in Patience and Kindness has greatly improved how I treat him and has tremendously increased my esteem of him.  It's amazing how hard it is to criticize someone when you are trying to be Kind!  (And for all the relationship-advice books I've read, NONE of them have ever said "Treat your mate with more Patience and Kindness and see what happens.")

 We work for Beauty and Order.
Eating healthfully, being gentle to the Earth, making our house a Home and even trying to earn an income--all of it is covered by this part of our Family Mission Statement.  For me, being mindful about every aspect of being a homemaker and a wage-earner is about Beauty and Order. 

I see the Beauty in eating an Ontario-grown pear, but none at all in eating an Oreo.  I see natural Order in hanging my laundry outside to dry 12 months/year and none at all in running my air-conditioner day and night during the summer instead of enjoying the rhythm of the seasons.  And when I return to the workforce, it will be in a manner that allows me to work for Beauty and Order in the lives of others.


We bring others Harmony and Trust.
Oh, this was a hard one to figure out.  I started with "We seek Harmony and Peace with others" but that made it the responsibility of others to be harmonious and peaceful.  I needed to work on myself and approach to others, especially those who make choices that are so different from ours.

I decided that if I can show other people that I can live in Harmony with them, regardless of the choices they are making, that I can be accepting and trustworthy.  In other words, I can be counted on to be a problem-solver, not a problem.

Mindfulness = Intentionality
So now that my Family Mission Statement is in place, I am so much more focussed on achieving the life that I want and acknowledging my children's efforts to achieve success in their own lives.  My relationships are happier, I experience less guilt, I have greater authenticity and we are focused on what we all actually value.
We're living intentionally.

Have you written a Family Mission Statement?  I'd love to read about it!



***
Visit the Mindful Mama Blog Carnival Homepage to find out how you can participate in the next Mindful Mama Blog Carnival!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• An Alternative Approach to Parenting Mindfully Through Present Moment Awareness Amy at Peace 4 Parents offers an experience of present moment awareness as a pathway to mindful parenting.
• Define: Mindful Alicia C. at McCrenshaw describes the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings for Engaged Buddhism and attempts to describe how she can apply them to her non-Buddhist life on her new journey toward mindfulness.
• This is what mindfulness looks like in my life Charise @ I Thought I Knew Mama describes what mindfulness looks like in her life in the form of poetry.
• Practice, Practice, Practice: Becoming a Mindful Mother Erin at it's OK shares her definition of mindfulness, and her struggle to develop a regular practice.
• How Meditation Makes Me a More Mindful Mother Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares her methods for sneaking meditation into each and every day in an effort to dig deep and be the most mindful mother possible.
• A Simple Practice Kat at My Mental Oddities outlines a simple practice with children
• Our Family Mission Statement Patti @ Jazzy Mama writes about how living mindfully means living intentionally. She created her Family Mission Statement to help her family stay focused on their goals and values.
• I REALLY Miss Being Mindful! Tracie of Purposeful Practices shares what it’s like to find and then lose your mindfulness practice.
• My Job Made Me a Mindful Mother Amy at Anktangle tells a story about how a mindfulness practice she used to utilize in her job as a nurse still impacts the way she mothers her son today.
• Now Amanda at Let's Take the Metro shows how mindfulness is all about living in the moment.
• Stepping into the Unknown To Rachael at The Variegated Life, mindfulness is a way of stepping into the unknown.
• Derailed Kelly of Becoming Crunchy explores what mindfulness looks like in her new, somewhat more hectic life.
• Mindful Mama Zoie at TouchstoneZ learns to stop struggling by being present with uncomfortable realizations.