Sometimes things are worth repeating. Here is repeat of a really great article my then 11 year old kid wrote 2 years ago. We all get better with age.
Believe it or not our budding babes really do listen to us! Yes, it’s true! OMG! Amazing! Shocking! Kids these days (oh do I ever sound like my mother, yikes) have their own language and it’s similar to morse code. Can you RBTL when our kids are talking to us? I sure as heck can’t but FWIW, it doesn’t matter because THEY are taking in every word WE say. How do I know? Read on.
Here is an article my daughter, Briana, wrote for her Grade 7 speech contest.
What does living a balanced lifestyle mean? Why should we live a balanced life?
Hi my name is Briana Laurie and I am going to talk about how living a balanced lifestyle is not only a wonderful thing for ourselves but also for our friends, family and our community and how we can have a great life.
I choose these five areas of our life that, when in sync, create a wonderful life for us. They are Mind, body, family, community and finances. It is important that we stay positive and work hard to creating all these areas of life, so that we can be the best that we can be.
The first area is our Mind. If you have a positive mindset about things that we need to do, we will feel much better about ourselves. How we think about something is going to affect the way we feel and the way we act. If we think that we are not smart enough, then we will feel badly about ourselves and will not try our best. But if we think we are smart, without comparing ourselves to our friends, than we will try our best. There is a saying; ‘if you think you can do something, you are right. If you think you can’t do something you are right’.
The second area is our body. We need to eat good food, exercise and get a good night’s sleep every day so that we can feel really good. We will develop good habits that we will have when we become adults and we will be good role models for our friends and family.
The third area is our family. Our family is the most important people to us, even our brothers and sisters, who we probably fight with a lot with. But that’s ok because we are learning to cooperate, do our chores and play fair. Our home and family is where we can make all kinds of mistakes so that when we grow up we will know how to behave and be with other people.
The fourth area is our community. We are all members of our community and we need to watch out for each other. My mom calls it ‘giving back’. We need to act with kindness and respect and to help out our neighbors. Our community has little kids and elderly people and it makes us feel really good inside when we do something nice for them.
The last area is our finance. Our parents work really hard for us so that we can have nice things. Do your parents every say to you; ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’? I get allowance for doing chores and I divide my money into 3 categories: I save some money, I give some to charity and I get to keep some for the things that I like to have.
My mom teaches people how to have a balanced life and she has told me that if I wake up I should say to myself that this is going to be a great day so I can start my day being happy. A bad mode is contagious if we wake up grumpy it could make other people grumpy and that will just wreck everyone’s day.
We are lucky to be living in Canada with lots of possibilities and choices to be whatever it is that we want in life. Thinking positively, being kind and generous to others, saving our money and feeding our body the right food will give us a balanced lifestyle.
So remember if you think positively you will feel great and you will act with love and kindness. Being the best that we can be is the best way to live.
Thank you very much for your time and I hope you learned something from my speech. I know I did.
Odette here again. So what did ya think? Inspiration or what? TUVM. XOX Odette and Briana.
Recently published on BalanceMyLife.ca.