Research confirms that surrounding yourself with supportive family members and friends can have a positive effect on your emotional well being, reports MayoClinic.com. This is reason enough to nurture a strong network of support on your own home front. Some positive benefits of building strong family bonds include giving individuals an increased sense of self-worth, in addition to a feeling of security and sense of belonging. Nonetheless, there are certain traits families need to develop for everyone to be healthy, happy and secure.
Step 1
Make your family your top priority in your life. Put them first beyond all else. Commit to helping each individual family member reach his fullest potential. Keep a positive attitude, no matter what happens in your lives. Focus on each of your strengths, rather than making an issue of weaknesses and faults. Appreciate your loved ones, and let them know that how important they are to you.
Step 2
Share your feelings. Make time each day to talk and listen to each other. Quality communication may involve just a few minutes out of every day. Yet making the most of the opportunity to share your thoughts, emotions and experiences with one another can strengthen your bond as a family.
Step 3
Benefit from spending time together as a family. No matter how busy individual family members are with work, school or interests of their own, set aside some leisure time each week to play and laugh together. Laughter can help to calm some of the most stressful moments a family faces.
Step 4
Identify activities, interests and goals that your family shares in common. The more things you have in common with each other, the more likely you are to do things together. Volunteer as a family to give your children opportunities to do something kind for others. Dr. Christine Carter, happiness expert and executive director of Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley, says that even small acts of generosity and kindness help to build strong bonds with others. By allowing children to give their time and energy to help others, you teach them empathy and how to give emotional support to other people, including family members.
Step 5
Find ways to meet each other's need, even if it means reversing traditional family or gender roles. It doesn't matter who in the family is the primary breadwinner or who mows the lawn, as long as each job gets done, everybody is happy, and the kids are well cared for. Sharing responsibilities is a crucial part of being a family.
Step 6
Admit it when your family has problems. Seek the help necessary to make things right. By tackling problems early on, a family can save itself a lot of unhappiness and stress. Ignoring a problem won't make it go away. It's likely to get worse and grow into a bigger problem instead. Try to complain less when things go wrong, and be more forgiving of the mistakes that others make.
