Winter: an opportunity to boost your Family Feeling!

For most of us winter is a lovely time, full of seasonal thrills (such as skating, skying, sledding and snow days), as well as chills. But for millions of others each year, the brightness and twinkle of a snowy morning is not enough to keep them from drifting into inactivity, lethargy, even dark thoughts. This is where the family feelings may play a major role.

It's no wonder. Winter is the darkest time of year and doctors know a lack of light can affect your mood. Every year, millions of family develop symptoms of the ''winter blues''. Symptoms include losing interest in activities, loss of energy, withdrawal from friends or work, and eating high-carb, high-fat ''comfort food'' with resulting weight gain. This helps o perpetuate a vicious cycle, with the weight gin adding to passivity, watching TV to excess, and lethargy.

Generally, the darker the day, the more important it is for you to get outside. Make sure you and your children are dressed comfortably and appropriately! It is the best period for cultivating the family feelings among members of your family. As example, everyone in the family can play a role in cleanup after a winter storm. Make it a group project and be sure the kids are coming in periodically to warm up and drink something warm.

During storms and times when it is too windy, icy or cold to go out, this is time for playing cards, electronic games or others similar social activities with members of your family. This will contribute to increase the family feelings.

As one can see, winter represent, for family, a nice opportunity to boost the family feelings.

Family Feelings feel the pinch.

With the current economic situation worldwide, it is an important test for the family feeling.

Every one of us knows at least someone in our family having problems due to this tough time. More than ever, the family feeling will be put in action for supporting each others in our family. If no financial support can be provided, trough the family feeling someone can find the psychological support that he or she need.

Here again, the family feeling represent a valuable process for living in our modern society.

Enjoying the Family Feeling

I want to share some thoughts on family feeling.

I have a large family. The parents of my father have several sisters and brothers. My father had four brothers and 5 sisters, my mother has 5 sisters and 4 brothers. The family feeling was important for all those people.

Myself, I consider a lot of people to belong to my direct family: my mother, my father, my grand-parents, my sisters, my brothers, my relatives, even to some extent close friends and the families of close friends. Those are all part of the family feeling that I am enjoying.

When I think about them, they make me think of a family feeling which is hard to describe. What is that family feeling? Is it knowing each other for a long-time? Is it the feeling that these relationships have moved to another level of close-ness? I don’t know really.

Family feeling is something that you can not escape. Maybe ignore, but never really escape. When I look in the mirror, I see my parents. When I look in the mirror, I also see my sisters, I see my brothers. And with some friends I see their parents in a similiar way - I know where they come from and what has influenced them - knowing who they are also constitutes this family feeling.

Pride and sometimes anxiety - that also constitutes family feeling. My mother has turned in her eighties now, which make me really worried but I feel immensely proud that she has managed to become an expert in handling internet's stuff.

Preserve The Family Feeling

Failure to listen brings unfortunate results and certainly contribute to deteriorate the family feeling. Listening is very different from hearing. Much is being said about the importance of communication, but most of the emphasis is on the effectiveness of the speaker's reaching the listener. Not sufficient recognition is devoted to a person's ability to listen to others, to comprehend as much as possible, not just facts, but intent and emotional overtones as well. If you want to improve the family feeling, this is an important factor to remember.

When family feeling fall apart, children and parents are alienated and friendships fail, simply because people do not understand others, although they think they do.

This unfortunate situation results from a number of factors, and the first of these is the pervasive belief that if there is a failure to understand it is the fault of the speaker. In non family feeling’ situation, the listener is so passive and so easily distracted that he or she just fails to get the message.

Good listening has important value and can be learned, and improved, to yield enormous benefits on the family feeling. The process is called "active listening."

What Interferes With Family Feeling

A good beginning for improving the family feeling is a recognition of those factors which interfere with effective listening:

-Sheer laziness.

-Turning a speaker off.

-Letting an early remark develop a prejudice which clouds the family feeling.

-Allowing personal characteristics of the speaker to prevent understanding.

In spirit of good family feeling, it would be most helpful if speakers, in a family, would analyze their audiences, determine clearly the message, not get distracted by digressions and present their material clearly. If you want to improve the family feeling, it is up to the listener to get the most out of it and to learn something from it no matter how many negative factors there are. If he or she want to improve the family feeling, it is important to put in action those factors for good listening.