23 Feb Importance of time with family!
“Family” can look and mean something different to each and every one of us. Whether you consider your family to be blood relatives, friends, colleagues or just loved ones, the importance of family throughout your life remains the same. Spending time with those whom you consider family has shown to have a positive impact on your health and the overall quality of your life. Below we take a look into these benefits and why we should all make time to prioritize our family.
Children Benefit
If you have children of your own or if you spend time with children in your family, quality time becomes of the upmost importance. Children who have the ability to spend quality time with their loved ones gain a laundry list of benefits such as better self-esteem, confidence (3), improved academic performance (6), instilled values and good behavior (1) and communication skills (6). Ultimately, the overall wellbeing of a child is improved through spending quality time with their family.
Stress Reduction
Spending time with your family can help reduce stress levels. Quality time with loved ones helps create effective communication habits leading to better conflict resolution as well as a safe and trusted space to share thoughts and feelings. Therefore, by spending time with your family you are also creating a safe place to discuss your worries or fears which leads to reduced stress levels (2) while helping you avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Improved Mental Health & Life Expectancy
Spending time with your family has been linked to improved mental health and increased life expectancy. “Social interaction and mental health have long been linked together for having a cause-and-effect relationship. According to Psychology Today, face-to-face contact can reduce the risk of mental illness, such as depression and anxiety. If you’re going through troubled times, surrounding yourself with a strong network of people can help prevent improve your mental health.” – Aroadtoheavengame.com. In addition to improving mental health spending time with your family has been linked to increased life expectancy. “During a nine year study, researchers found that people who lack social ties were about three times more likely to die during those nine years than those who have strong relationships with their friends and family (2).”
I think we can all agree that these benefits are amazing but not everyone has the luxury of endless time. This lack of time can often make it hard or stressful to fit in ample quality time with family. However, it doesn’t have to be. Zenhabits.net does a great job of outlining easy ways to fit this quality time in:
- Have five minutes? Send an email. It doesn’t take long to send an email to someone you care about, asking them how they are, wishing them a good day. And that little gesture could go a long way, especially if you follow it up over time with regular emails.
- Have 10 minutes? Call them up. A phone call is an easy way to connect with someone. It’s conversation, without the need for travel. What an invention! 🙂
- Have 30 minutes? You might not get the chance to do this every day, but at least once a week, take 30 minutes to drop in on someone you love (call first, so you don’t catch them in their underwear) and just visit. It’ll be some of the best 30 minutes you’ll spend this week.
- Have a couple hours? Have a good lunch or go somewhere with a loved one. Who among us doesn’t have a couple of free hours each month? Weekends, or evenings, there’s got to be a time that you spend in front of the TV or mindlessly surfing the internet. Take a chunk of that time and devote it to a friend or family. (If you truly don’t have that time, see Edit Your Life, Part 1: Commitments.)
- Really focus on them. Don’t just spend time with someone but think about your work, or your blog, or the errands you have to run. Pay attention to that person. Listen. Really be there, in that moment, with that person. Because that’s a moment you’ll never get back, so spend it wisely.
We encourage you to take some time today and dedicate it to the ones you love! If you are looking for a way to fit more family time into your schedule and not compromise your income check out the opportunity FITTEAM can provide. At FITTEAM we always prioritize family and balance.
References:
- https://www.aha-now.com/why-family-time-is-important/
- https://roadtoheavengame.com/health-benefits-spending-time-friends-and-family/
- https://thevahub.org/reasons-spending-time-with-your-family-is-important/
- https://www.parentingni.org/blog/time-together-importance/
- https://zenhabits.net/spend-time-with-family-and-loved-ones/
- https://highlandspringsclinic.org/blog/the-top-ten-benefits-of-spending-time-with-family/