Introduction: Why having a happy and healthy family is essential to your success

Every person has obligations and responsibilities outside their family. However, while it’s great to have personal aspirations and goals, we should also take care of our family’s happiness. It’s not a great idea to give up time with our children and parents in order to have a successful career, because having a happy and healthy family is essential to your personal success.

Work and family are both incredibly important to your life, but it can often be difficult to find balance between them. We’ve all experienced what it’s like when work keeps you too far away from your family, or when you worry so much about how a situation is affecting your home life that you don’t know what to do. Difficulties like this can lead a person to depression, which makes it even more difficult to meet obligations at work or at home.

A happy and healthy family life is important for success, not only for the individual but for society as a whole.

For example, a whole host of statistics and studies show that there are benefits for children who grow up seeing and feeling that there is a close bond between mother and father. Research suggests that this stability brings better mental, social and physical health outcomes, outcomes such as educational attainment, better self-esteem, reduced teen pregnancy and poverty rates.

With a good family life, adults are less stressed and will be more productive. One study also found that 74% of those with a good family life felt less stress than those who focused only on themselves and were deprived of closeness to their families. The small pleasures of family life can increase our happiness exponentially, giving us the motivation to set or stay committed to our goals.

If a person has a happy and healthy sense of belonging to their family and their workplace, they are less likely to feel isolated or depressed.

An individual’s emotional needs in a work environment are very similar to those within the family. The more emotional support a person has, the better they will feel about their personal life and relationships. Employees who have time and attention directed to them by their employer have lower levels of stress and anxiety. Employees who do not have the attention they need from their employers may experience higher levels of stress and anxiety. Emotional support is important in maintaining high levels of well-being and happiness. Without emotional support, people will not be as happy. If a person has low levels of emotional support, they will be less likely to reach their full potential as they may feel that their life has no meaning.

A happy family is one in which there is unity, security and cooperation. The family atmosphere should be comfortable and people should feel free to express their ideas openly. A family is a union of people who share similar views, such as beliefs and values, living together.

What is a happy family and how do you create one?

A happy family is a family that is happy with the way things are organised and the way they live. They feel good about themselves and their lives. A happy family is not perfect, but it tries to do things in such a way that the needs of all family members are met.

The key to creating a happy family starts by looking at yourself first. You need to take care of your own needs so you can take care of others and create a happy home environment.

Studies show that when children feel cared for, loved and relaxed they are less unhappy and suffer fewer behavioural problems. The environment in which families live has a significant effect on the well-being of both adults and children. The happiest family is one in which parents spend about twice as much time with their children as they do watching TV or reading. Moreover, what makes adults happy is that they have a positive connection with their children in an atmosphere of security, love and acceptance.

Can we really design such happy environments? There is no perfect environment, but I believe we could create less stressful, more inclusive and sustainable environments where we all feel valued and appreciated.

Here are some things you can do to have a happy family:

1. Share your feelings with each other

The ability to trust someone is an important part of building a healthy relationship. If you’ve been hurt in the past and hesitate to open up to someone, it can be difficult to let anyone get emotionally close to you, including your partner or children. But learning to trust someone isn’t as difficult as you might think.

There are a few things you can do to help build this important quality. Start by being honest with yourself about what you want out of the relationship and what your limits are. This will allow you to communicate your needs more effectively and help you find common ground.

It’s also important that both people in the relationship can express their feelings freely, without fear of judgment or rejection. This will help create a sense of comfort and security, which is necessary for any kind of deep emotional connection.

2. Make time for each other

The quality of a relationship is largely determined by the time couples spend together.

The benefits of spending enough time with your partner are numerous:

• It strengthens the bond between you and your partner,
• it helps you see things from their perspective,
• makes you more empathetic
• improves your overall mood

If you spend enough time with your partner, you’ll be happier and more satisfied with your relationship.

3. Give each other space to be yourself

It’s important to give each other space to be themselves. This will help you avoid fighting and feel happier in your relationship.

The first step is to identify what makes you, for example, feel happy in the morning. It could be a cup of coffee, a walk or reading a book. The next step is to find out what makes your partner feel happy in the morning. You can do this by asking them or observing their habits. Once you know what makes him feel happy, try giving him that space and see if the mood improves.

Even if you’re in a relationship, you still need time to yourself, where you can take care of the things that interest perhaps only you. In a relationship you obviously give up some things or a number of ‘freedoms’, but it’s not healthy for you or the relationship to give up yourself altogether.

4. Be open to new ideas

It’s really nice to have things in common with your partner. But you are unlikely to be identical in terms of interests and what you like.

Instead of that being a problem, you can turn it into an opportunity to learn new things. So what if it seems like you wouldn’t be interested in Formula 1 racing? Have you ever been? Even if you have, have you ever been with your current partner? If not, what would it hurt to try it and see how it goes?

And all of this applies to children, not just your partner. How do you know you don’t like the circus if you’ve never been, or the last time you went was when you were 5 and you don’t remember anything anyway?

Meaningful relationships in our lives often force us to step out of our comfort zone and do things we don’t necessarily passionately dream of doing. And stepping out of your comfort zone is a good thing.

5. Build intimacy and happiness in relationships with family and loved ones

Intimacy and happiness are based on mutual trust and require hard and continuous work. That’s also a good thing.

You’ll be a better person even for yourself when you have a good relationship with your loved ones.

Sure it takes effort on your part to do that, you should for example:

• not shying away from responsibility
• keep your word
• be honest
• admit when you are wrong
• make sacrifices

But these are all elements of an integrated person who is comfortable with and in their life.

6. The ability to be happy from within: why material possessions won’t make you happy

There’s an old saying that it’s better to laugh in a hovel than cry in a castle.

Of course, while you’re crying, the castle is more comfortable.

But the point is that things won’t make you happy. The relationships you have with others will make you happy.

And that goes for your wife or husband, and for your children.

Your child may be crying because he doesn’t have the latest iPhone, as “all” his peers do. But what really matters to him is that he feels loved, understood and protected.

Even if he doesn’t understand that, even if he’s a teenager and braves that he doesn’t need anyone, even if you think that just because you didn’t have everything you wanted as a child, you should now make sure you do everything your kids want.

7. Do sports together (use sports as family time)

It’s often overlooked that active engagements, such as playing sports together and participating in competitions, bring immense psychological balance to families and children. Not only does it help build better family values, it also helps build healthy relationships between family members.

The positive effect that physical activity has on the health and well-being of children and people in general is well documented. Benefits include improved concentration, focus, physical fitness, coordination, confidence and self-esteem. When parents can take their children outside to enjoy outdoor activities, they create a unique opportunity for healthy family bonding and staying connected.

Parents and children should do activities together to build physical skills as well as memories that will stay with them for a lifetime.

8. Space for privacy

It is extremely important that each member of the family has a private space of their own so that they can feel comfortable at home.

I understand that living space is limited for many people and, under certain circumstances, not every family member can have their own room.

For example, just because you have 3 kids, doesn’t mean you can afford a 5 room house. In fact, if you have 3 children, the chances of you being able to afford such a home really decrease.

But the private space doesn’t have to be a whole room, it can be a corner of a room, it can be an adjoining area or something else.

A small child’s private space can be a play tent set up in a corner of the living room, an adult’s private space can be the office where they work from when they are at home and so on.

The important thing is that the space belongs only to that member of the family. Don’t go into your child’s tent unless he invites you, don’t go through the drawers in your wife’s desk unless she asks you to look for something there. Privacy cannot exist without boundaries, and if you really want to ensure privacy, you have to make sure those boundaries are respected, by all family members, including yourself.

You should not demotivate yourself just because you are not in a position to provide optimal or even ideal conditions for your family at this time. But neither is it a reason to stop trying. There are solutions, and any improvement is better than doing nothing and letting discontent build up.

9. Clean up together. Throw away anything no longer useful

Cleaning often makes you realize you have too much stuff in your house, and throwing away everything you don’t need will make you more organized and spend more time doing the activities you enjoy.

And all the cleaning and sorting can be a very enjoyable family activity and learning opportunity for the kids.

What to do with clothes you don’t like: You should sell the clothes you don’t want, or donate them to charity if they are in good condition (it’s insulting, in my opinion, to donate torn clothes and pretend that by doing so you are doing a good deed). Otherwise, they will just end up in a landfill, where they will take up a lot of space and won’t help anyone.

10. Talk about your day when you come home from work or school

It’s a great feeling to come home to see the person you love and to share your day’s joys and disappointments with them.

Some people don’t like to do this because it feels like it would “give the report away”, but that’s not the point. It’s about keeping your partner up to date with the important or at least somewhat meaningful things in your life, and it’s also a great opportunity to connect.

11. Establish regular routines and habits together

A happy family is a family that has routines and habits. You could even say that routines and habits are the backbone of a happy family, even though it may sound like an exaggeration. But they do help keep the family organised and focused on what matters.

The key to establishing routines and habits is to make them as simple as possible. The simpler they are, the more likely they are to be followed by all family members.

There are lots of opportunities to establish family routines, from having a meal together at least once a day, to special events celebrated together: birthdays, religious holidays and so on.

Children can also take an active part in establishing these family routines and it is even advisable to involve them as much as possible in the process, including making suggestions and being able to express their opinion on each other’s ideas.

Conclusion: What are the next steps you can take to have a happy or at least happier family?

If you panicked a bit reading all 11 points, don’t. With all my vast experience as a psychotherapist (and it really is vast, I’ve recently passed 10,000 hours of therapy, which puts me in the expert category, according to Malcolm Gladwell), I’ve never met a family, happy or unhappy, that ticked all 11. In the happiest cases, they ticked 3-4.

So there’s no reason to worry or jump to any conclusions if you don’t score well. The aim is not to get a 10 (or 11, in this case) but to give you ideas about what you can do to improve the atmosphere in your family.

Start with one of the points, put it into practice and see how it goes. And then, if you’re happy with the results, come up with another and so on.

Any improvement will encourage you to keep going, and that’s what matters in the end: to keep trying.