Now is the perfect time to reclaim joy in your homeschooling. While every day can be considered a fresh start, the New Year offers a perfect opportunity to recapture happiness. Or perhaps claim it for the first time.
As you start the second part of your school year, perhaps you’re adjusting your schedule, curriculum, or extracurricular activities. Those all deserve your time and attention. But your own mindset deserves some care as well.
I’ve been reading The Book of Joy: Finding Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. It’s based around a week-long meeting between two friends who author Douglas Abrams describes as two of the most joyful people on the planet – Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. The book captures their conversations about joy and interweaves current research as well.
Using that book as inspiration, I’d like to offer up these six ways to reclaim joy in your homeschooling.
- Remember Your Purpose Revisit the reason that you started homeschooling. It may have evolved or it may be the same. Regardless, always be aware of your purpose. We often lose sight of why we’re homeschooling. Remembering can help us as we move forward. The Dalai Lama frames purpose through his morning meditation practice of setting an intention for each day while the Archbishop uses biblical study and reflection.
- Practice Gratitude Look at all the things you love about homeschooling. It’s easy to get caught up in all the things you wish you and your children were doing better. Instead, list all the things you’re doing well. All the ways homeschooling is working for your family. Countless studies have recorded the benefits of gratitude journaling. Consider using this tool.
- Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar says, “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.”
- Gain Perspective and Compassion Look at things through a wider lens. For any given difficulty, look at how much it will matter in the long run. Work to help your child when they struggle, practicing compassion over empathy.
- The Dalai Lama describes the difference between the two in this way – If someone being crushed by a rock, you don’t need to crawl under the rock with them. Instead, you help remove the rock. You help them move through the difficulty.
- Practice Acceptance Once you’ve gained perspective and compassion, practice acceptance. There may be some aspects of homeschooling that will always be hard for you and your children. Acceptance is not resignation. It’s looking at the things you can’t change and learning to grow in spite of them.
- The Archbishop – “It means that we can turn our faces to the wind and accept that this is the storm we must pass through.”
- Nurture Your Sense of Humor I don’t know how I could have homeschooled for all these years if I hadn’t been able to laugh. At myself and with my children. It’s what keeps me sane. When I’m going through a bad spot, a little part of my brain often notes that ‘this will seem funny later’.
- The Archbishop – “If you start looking for the humor in life, you will find it. You will stop asking, Why me? and start recognizing that life happens to all of us. It makes everything easier, including your ability to accept others and accept all that life has to offer.”
No matter what other changes you’re contemplating as you start the New Year, work to incorporate joy in your homeschooling. Realize that, in spite of your best efforts, you probably won’t ever get homeschooling completely ‘right’. However, you’ll often do it pretty darn wonderfully. Celebrate that and reclaim your joy.
That’s the goal of human life – to live with joy and purpose.
The Dalai Lama
Best wishes for a joyous year,
The Archbishop Desmond Tutu died from cancer a week ago (Dec 26, 2021) at the age of 90. On his passing, the Dalai Lama said, “I remember the many occasions we spent time together, including the week here at Dharamshala in 2015 when we were able to share our thoughts on how to increase peace and joy in the world. The friendship and the spiritual bond between us was something we cherished.” For more, click here.
Resources and related posts:
The Book of Joy: Finding Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by His Holiness the Dalia Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams