In this video, we're going to talk about the ingredient which is your family. Family we like to define as anyone you consider to be a close relation. Not necessarily always is family related to the bloodline. But oftentimes that's how we traditionally think of our family. But maybe you've ever had, for example, in my family, my mom's best friends that she lived with in college. To this day, they're still really good friends, I always called them my aunts.

So if you've got someone like that in your family, maybe you've adopted them into the family, or maybe you have been adopted into someone else's family, family is how you define it to be. So in this video area in this slide that you can see family is our refuge from the storm meaning generally if you are very fortunate enough to have a family that you feel comfortable around, that you feel included and you have a sense of belonging. It's a great place to often ask for support advice, be able to share your feelings, emotions, what's going on in your life and be able to change Catch up or to support others and be that for someone else, family is something that again, as you define it is something that can give you a lot of strength, and can also help you when you're not necessarily feeling your best.

Now, in the circumstances where potentially family is a difficult situation, so you maybe don't get along with people in your family or you've had a very difficult childhood growing up in your family, that's okay, as well. But recognizing that you have the ability to create a community of family around you can also lift you up. So maybe your family doesn't look like the traditional, you know, nuclear family that you see in magazines or books. Maybe yours is more a collective of your favorite people and the people who support you and give you that love and give you that sense of belonging. A sense of belonging is something that Adrian Clarkson, a very famous person in Canada speaks very deeply about because as human beings, even though you might be an introverted person You still need to have that sense of belonging do I feel like I belong in this place?

Do I feel like I belong and have a purpose in this community, and family is often the number one source for helping us feel that way. So feeling how you can dislike or really enjoy your family. It is something that's different for everyone. And it can change in and out of your life, family may play a really important role for you when you're younger. But maybe then you grow up and you move to a different country where then you need to form other forms of family, or you have those communications that are through mobile a connection. One way that you can strengthen family connections is by sometimes making a list of those people that you want to stay in touch with.

For example, when I was living abroad in New Zealand for just under two years, I took the time to write my family because many of them weren't connected in the internet. They didn't have things like Facebook and they didn't want to use email. So I took the time to write a monthly live Let everybody know how I was doing what was going on in my day what I was doing in the country. And then I would email it to my mom, who would then print it and put it in envelopes that I had already put stamps in. So I could keep those connections, strengthen with my grandparents and with my aunts and uncles who didn't have that email connection with me, when I was talking about making a list, the reason why I do explain that situation is that it's a really great exercise for not forgetting who it is that you want to keep in touch with.

Because life is busy. And because time moves so quickly. It's very easy to come home at the end of the day and say, You know what, I'm just going to put my feet up and watch Netflix or read this book. And you tend to not reach out to the people who you care about, even though you want to make those connections with them. So by making a list, for example of potentially some cousins, you want to hang out with family members, you want to share dinners with you then have this ease for your mind and being able to think about who Isn't that I want to contact. So instead, when you come home, you can look at that list on the fridge and say, Hey, I'm going to call this aunt and uncle and see if they're available to have dinner with me tomorrow night.

Or I'm going to call this cousin and see what weekends they have available this summer, because I want to make sure I spend some time with that with them. And the reason being this, this exercise can actually help you make use of your time, as opposed to something that you're constantly thinking, oh, maybe last minute, you can make that invitation. Sometimes it's really nice to be able to plan ahead and contact those people because everybody's life tends to get a little bit busy. No matter how you define your family. We recognize that as a huge part again, of that sense of belonging, that sense of worth and that sense of support. So I encourage you to think about how you're feeling about your family reflect on that.

And and don't worry if it doesn't fit the nuclear model of what family is, your family is how you define it. So keep watching and we'll see you in the next video.