International Peace Day – How to get better harmony at home

Collaborative Post : The stresses of everyday life can soon take their toll on your relationships; whether it is with your partner, kids, family or friends. This is why finding time away from your laptop and keeping your working life separate from your family and social life is a must.

We all feel the pressure of wanting or needing to earn more, work more and provide more which can sometimes make us lose sight of what is really important – the reason we are doing it all in the first place. Work/money related stress can soon find even the most loved up couples beginning to bicker at the stupidest things. Children begin to believe that their parents don’t love them anymore when a parent just snaps or refuses to play hide and seek for the billionth time. Friends drifting apart because there just isn’t enough hours in the day.

So how do we go about ensuring that our family doesn’t become like this? How do we go about maintaining the peace so ultimately we don’t end up despising the reasons we get up on a morning?

Well, the simplest advice is to leave work at work. Once you enter the home everything from that moment on is related to keeping your relationships flowing peacefully; spend time with the kids, have a glass of wine with the other half or invite friends over for a movie and meal. Allow a night or two where you can do something that you enjoy such as reading a book, playing a video game or watching a film which will help to relax you and keeps the stress levels at bay.

This is all well and good if you work outside the house but what if you work primarily from home where it is much harder to just leave the work at the door; that includes being a stay at home parent. I personally know what it is like to feel an argument brewing because your partner wants you to spend couple time together but you feel the need to just do “10 minutes more” on your laptop. This is where setting yourself boundaries and a routine helps; things like “laptop off at 8” or making every Thursday a non­working couples night can really help keep those arguments from bubbling over. Getting out of the house helps too, being away from your place of work is a great way to stop thinking about it and ensuring that you don’t “just check your emails” for the next hour.

But what happens if the argument has started or if about to? Well, In order to resolve an argument then both parties need to take a step back to allow the initial rage to simmer out and then following this up with a good honest chat, allowing each other to say what needs to be said (without interruption) will address the issues and then take it from there. It is only natural that people argue, disagree and fall out but the key is to create as little damage to the relationship as possible so those bridges can be mended.