We know from wellbeing research that a good life is a meaningful life.  And a meaningful life is made up of meaningful moments.

Getting a promotion, having a baby, or getting married are all incredibly life affirming, life changing, meaningful experiences.

We know they are meaningful because we celebrate them with family, friends and colleagues.

But meaningful moments do not have to be momentous to be beneficial.

Meaningful moments can be much smaller, subtler experiences that add texture, interest and value to your life.

Unlike significant life events, these small moments can often go unnoticed.  No one sends a gift, takes lots of happy snaps or makes a fuss.  Life goes on.

But you can acknowledge these moments.  You can stop and reflect and recognise these experiences for what they are.

One way to do this is to create your very own Connection Tree.

A Connection Tree recognises that often our most meaningful moments are when we connect to others - the people we love, and ourselves.

Creating a Connection Tree

1. Write down a list of the most important people or areas of your life you would like to regularly connect with.  The categories can change.  Just come up with a list that feels right for you right now.  My list at the moment looks something like this:

Connect with my husband

Connect with my daughter

Connect with my son

Connect with others

Connect with my career

Connect with my health

Connect with me

2. At the end of the day when lying in bed, go through your list and think of moments where you connected with all the important areas of my life.  You can either write them down or just think about them.  For example, the other day, my Connection Tree looked like this:

Connect with my husband
We are finally going to landscape our background and we chatted about the kind of garden we wanted and the things we will be able to do in our backyard when it’s complete.

Connect with my daughter
My daughter was tired and wanted to have some quiet time so we lay on her bed and read a book together.

Connect with my son
My son had made a cafe in the kitchen.  Instead of telling him to tidy it all up, I sat down at one of his tables while he served me a coffee concoction.

Connect with others
I rang my mum to see how she is going and we arranged to meet up on Tuesday.

Connect with my career
I devised a better system for managing my emails and to do list.

Connect with my health
I went for a run this morning.

Connect with me
Once the kids were in bed, I sat down with a cup of tea and read for half an hour.

3. You can also use the time to think about the next day and how you plan to connect with the important areas of your life.

It is a simple exercise.  But it can bring wonderful rewards for several reasons:

1. You are acknowledging meaningful moments.

2. You are thinking about how you can create more meaningful moments.

3.  And you are being the person you want to be.

This exercise keeps me honest.  Am I getting carried away by my career?  Am I sharing special moments with my family?  Am I doing something for myself every day.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Connection Tree.  Will it work for you?

by Jodie Benveniste, Director of Parent Wellbeing

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 1:20 am and is filed under Wellbeing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.