When was the last time your family sat down and enjoyed a meal together?

"Come and get it!" It may be dinnertime, but when was the last time your family sat down and enjoyed a meal together? With music lessons, cricket practice, play rehearsal, and work schedules, it can be tough. Rounding up the troops for an evening meal can be almost impossible! However, research is beginning to show that eating as a family has great benefits for your children and teenagers. Here are 8 more reasons why you should try to sit down together 5-6 times a week, whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Reason #1: Communication and Well-Being
Conversations during the meal provide opportunities for the family to bond, plan, connect, and learn from one another. It’s a chance to share information and news of the day, as well as give extra attention to your children and teens. Family meals foster warmth, security and love, as well as feelings of belonging. It can be a unifying experience for all.

Reason #2: Model Manners (and more)
Family mealtime is the perfect opportunity to display appropriate table manners, meal etiquette, and social skills. Keep the mood light, relaxed, and loving. Try not to instruct or criticize—lead by example.

Reason # 3: Expand Their World…One Food at a Time
Encourage your children to try new foods, without forcing, coercing, or bribing. Introduce a new food along with some of the stand-by favorites. Remember that it can take 8-10 exposures to a new food before it is accepted, so be patient. Trying a new food is like starting a new hobby. It expands your child’s knowledge, experience, and skill.
Include foods from other cultures and countries.
Select a new vegetable from a local farmer’s market.
Have your child select a new recipe from a cookbook, web site, newspaper, magazine.

Reason #4: Nourish
Meals prepared and eaten at home are usually more nutritious and healthy. They contain more fruits, vegetables, and dairy products along with additional nutrients such as fiber, calcium, vitamins A and C, and folate. Home cooked meals are usually not fried or highly salted, plus soda and sweetened beverage consumption is usually lower at the dinner table.

Reason #5: Become Self-Sufficient
Children today are missing out on the importance of knowing how to plan and prepare meals. Basic cooking, baking, and food preparation are necessities for being self-sufficient. Involve your family in menu planning, grocery shopping, and food preparation. Preschoolers can tear lettuce, cut bananas, and set the table. Older children can pour milk, peel vegetables, and mix batter. Teenagers can dice, chop, bake, and grill. Working as a team puts the meal on the table faster, as well as makes everyone more responsible and accepting of the outcome. Improved eating habits come with "ownership" of a meal.

Reason #6: Prevent Destructive Behaviors
Research shows that frequent family dinners (five or more a week), are associated with lower rates of smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use in pre-teens and teenagers when compared to families that eat together two or fewer times per week. Even as older children’s schedules get more complicated, it is important to make an effort to eat meals together. Scheduling is a must.

Reason #7: Improve Grades
Children do better in school when they eat more meals with their parents and family. Teenagers who eat dinner four or more times per week with their families have higher academic performance compared with teenagers who eat with their families two or fewer times per week.

Reason # 8: Save Money
Meals purchased away from home cost two to four times more than meals prepared at home. At present time the restaurant industry’s share of the total food dollar is more than 46%. Due to scheduling, commitments, and activities, families eat out several times each week.

It is time to bring the "family" back to the dinner table. Sharing dinner together gives everyone a sense of identity. It can help ease day-to-day conflicts, as well as establish traditions and memories that can last a lifetime.

WHAT I WANTED TO BE WHEN I GREW UP?

When I was 5 years old,
My Dad always told me that
happiness was the key to life.
When I went to school,
they asked me what I wanted to be
when I grew up.
I wrote down “HAPPY.”
They told me I didn’t
understand the assignment.

Now I know for sure they didn’t
understand life....

THE MOUSE TRAP

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.”

The mouse turned to the cow and said “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The cow said “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.”

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house – like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well; she died. So many! people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness. So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember: when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another. Each of us is a vital thread in another person’s tapestry.

BRING LOVE IN YOUR PRAYER

I will like to share a small story written by Leo Tolstoy: In a certain part of old Russia there was a lake, and it became famous because of three saints. The whole country became interested. Thousands of people were journeying to the lake to see those three saints.

The high priest of the country became afraid: what is happening? He had never heard of these “saints” and they had not been certified by the church; Who has made them saints?

But the people were going wild, and much news was coming that miracles were happening, so the priest had to go and evaluate the situation. He went in a boat to the island where those three poor people lived; they were simply poor, but very happy and rich in their own ways- because their is only one poverty, ‘A heart that cannot love.’

They were happy sitting under a tree, laughing, enjoying, de-lighting. Seeing the priest they bowed down, and the priest asked “What are you doing here? There are rumors that you are great saints. Do you know how to pray?”- Because seeing the three person the priest could immediately sense that they were completely uneducated, a little idiotic- happy but foolish.

So looking at each other they said,” sorry sir we don’t know right prayers authorized by the church because we are ignorant. But we have created one prayer of our own- it is home made. If you won’t feel offended we can show it to you.”

So the priest said, “Ok, show it to me. The three saints said, “We tried and thought and thought- but we are not great thinkers, we are foolish people, ignorant villagers. Then we decided upon a single prayer. In Christianity god is thought of as a trinity, three: God the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. And we are also three. So we decided on a prayer: ‘you are three, we are three, have mercy on us.’ This is our prayer.”

The priest was extremely angry. He said,” What nonsense! We have never heard any prayer like this. Stop it! This way you cannot be saints. You are simply stupid. The three saints fell at his feet and said. “you teach us the real, the authentic prayer.”

So the priest told them the authorized version of the prayer of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was long, complicated, big words, bombastic. Those three saints looked at each other- it seemed impossible, the door of heaven was closed for them. They said, “you please tell us once more, because it is long, and we are uneducated.” The priest said it again. They said, “once more sir, because we will forget” so the priest told it again. They thanked him heartily, and the priest felt very good that he had done a good deed by bringing three foolish people back to church.

The priest sailed off in his boat. Just in the middle of the lake he could not believe his eyes-those 3 saints, those foolish people, were coming running on the water! They said, Wait… once more … we have forgotten!.”

Now this was impossible to believe! The priest fell at their feet and said, “Forgive me. You continue your prayer.”

Religions, organized churches, temples have destroyed it. They have given us ready made prayers. Prayer is a spontaneous feeling. Remember this story when you pray. Let our prayers be a spontaneous phenomenon. If with god we have to be ready made, then how will we be authentic and true and natural?

Let’s say things that we want to say. Talk to god as we would talk to a wise friend. But let’s not bring formalities in. A formal relationship is not a relationship at all. How can we be formal to god? We will miss all spontaneousness.

LETS BRING LOVE IN OUR PRAYER. Then we can talk! Then our prayer will be a beautiful thing, a dialogue with the universe.

Prayer is to be in love- to be in love with the whole. And some times we get angry with the whole and we don’t pray. Some times we drop praying completely, because we go on praying and god is not listening. It is a relationship with deep involvement in it, we get angry. Some times we feel good, feel thankful; some times we feel put off. But let it be a living relationship. Then prayer is true. If we just go on like a gramophone and repeat the same thing every day, it is not prayer.

Prayer should be a lived experience, a heart to heart dialogue. And soon if the prayer comes from our heart we will find the response. Our prayers will be answered. The whole existence is ready to respond once our heart is open.

Insights for a new way of living-OSHO

PAIN

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.


Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

--- KAHLIL GIBRAN

THE PATH FOR YOU

There are many paths in life,
but of all these paths
There is one that you must travel.
That path and that one alone is for you.
And whether you want to or not,
you must travel that path.
So the choice is not the path, because it chose you.
The choice is how you travel that path.
With unwillingness for the pitfalls and the stones,
With resistance because the sun is barely able to reach
a path that cuts through ravines.
Or with the will to be gentler and
wiser at the end of that path
than you were at the beginning.
The path chose you: will you chose it too?

CRAB MENTALITY

“Crab Mentality” is actually an official phrase that roughly means “if I can’t have it, neither can you.”

And it is talked about a lot.

So now I’m thinking about the Escaping Mediocrity journey with this lens.

There will always be people who will subtly or not so subtly try to keep us from escaping. Why?
Because our escape threatens their mediocre existence.

Pulling us down, sabotaging our efforts, picking apart our brilliant ideas – all of that keeps them feeling safe. And living undisturbed mediocre lives.

So what if we added a new piece to the crab mentality picture?

Imagine a crab, or a group of crabs on the other side of the bucket building a ladder to aid your escape. They managed to crawl out of the bucket in spite of all the energetic attempts to pull them backwards.

Because they’ve tasted freedom and they know your struggle, they are putting energy into aiding and abetting your escape.

I believe that for those of us determined to get out of the bucket, such a group exists. It may take some time to find them, but they are there, ready throw a safety rope over the edge and pull us out.

Start listening for them. Start looking for them. They are there. Reach just a little further and they’ll meet you at the edge of the bucket.