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Every kid has been told to stop crying. When they are bored and restless, they are told to hold still. When they are loud and exuberant, they are told to be quiet.

We are raised with our emotions never quite in sync with how others think we should behave.

Some people learn to hide their emotions, and this can be a very useful skill, and one that I am not very good at. But it can also be really damaging. Because those emotions do exist. And trying to run away from them and ignore them can lead to problems such as anxiety, depression, and a very negative view of ourselves.

Sometimes I scream or throw things or say things I regret because I don’t know what to do with how I feel.

The other day, one of my kids was really tired and bored and on a hike and didn’t want to walk anymore. Their solution was that I should carry them. One of the solutions I had was to get upset and try to use my own anger and frustration to motivate them.

But I thought: that’s not a goo way to deal with it. They are feeling something that isn’t bad at all. I can work with them to change how they feel in a positive manner instead of just wishing that they were different.

So we played games. It changed tiredness and boredom into something fun and exciting. Instead of wanting me to carry them, they ran.

Face what you feel. Embrace what you feel. And then work in positive ways to change it, instead of telling yourself you shouldn’t feel that way. You feel that way. It’s okay to feel that way. But you don’t have to feel that way forever.

I was going to blog every day, but I quickly fell behind. For quite a while, I was not very consistent. But then I got better, and I feel like it’s a habit to just update my blog every day. So how did I create this habit?

Whenever I post a blog post, WordPress automatically emails me my post (since I follow my own blog). I was deleting these emails, but I realized I could leave them in my inbox until I wrote the next post. I keep my inbox clean, so I would be reminded of blogging whenever I checked my email.

I also follow myself on Feedly, and I would leave my own blog post unread until I wrote and finished the next one.

I don’t check my to-do list very often, but I do check my email and I check Feedly. So I was being reminded much more often of my blog posts.

And then, eventually, it became habitual and easy.

I think one of the important things is that the habit was in multiple places: it was on my to-do list, and my email, and another website, and my list of goals. I need that repetition for it to become habitual.

Turkey. Mashed potatoes. Stuffing. Rolls. Sweet potatoes. Cranberries. Pumpkin pie. Rainbow Jell-O.

But nothing every goes as expected. This year, a glass plan exploded, I got a new niece, and there were lots of other small things that made the day a little different than I thought it would be.

I looked up my Mayflower ancestors today. And I listed what I was grateful for. My kids made turkeys with feathers, and I wrote on the feathers things like family and brothers and sisters and toys they liked to play with.

Thanksgiving is mostly about the food, and then remembering to be grateful for the food, and trying to enjoy it with the people we love.

Every day for over 275 days now, I have been writing down what I’m grateful for in the app Presently. Usually it’s just a things things: my family, my home, something exciting happening that day.

On April 6, I was grateful for weather, sports, hiking, and my family.

On May 1, I was grateful for light, peace, sleep, animals, and plants.

On July 14, I was grateful for the temple.

On August 8, I was grateful for church, kids, family, and school.

On October 22, I was grateful for my children and who they are becoming, being able to help others, and family history.

Listing what I have been thankful for has been easy, actually. Even in difficult times, I am still extraordinarily blessed and fortunate.

Today, I am grateful for my kids, vulnerable conversations, improvement, and Thanksgiving.

1. Having the wrong goals
2. Not having support from other people
3. Not sharing my goals with other people
4. Not being patient enough
5. Laziness, because it’s easier to do nothing
6. Knowing that even if I do everything I can, I can still fail
7. Distractions, because it’s easier to consume than create
8. Trying to impress people instead of trying to connect with people
9. Emotional baggage and overthinking things
10. Holding back and not going all in

It is tempting to be grateful for all the good things in your life. When life is going well, the projects are being completed, you are ahead of schedule, your kids are happy, and you’re living the life that you want, there is an easy list of so many things that are good.

But what if all that was taken away? What if there were deep and dark times? What is there to be grateful for?

Gratitude is not just a list of things that you like in your life. Gratitude can be a way of appreciating your very existence.

Are you grateful to breathe?

Are you grateful that you can think?

Are you grateful for your Savior, Jesus Christ?

Are you grateful for your experience of life?

If you are only grateful for the good things in life, you might find yourself unprepared, not resilient, easily fractured when those good things go away.

But if you can foster gratitude for your existence, for those things that will never leave you, then gratitude can become part of who you are, a strength when everything else goes dark.

Deep work sounds nice: being able to sit and focus and do difficult work over a longer period of time.

But that isn’t my life right now. And while deep work can be useful, humans really don’t work that way very often. Parenting, for example, is never deep work, and is one of the most important things we do.

We usually have lots of things going on in our life. Even in careers and jobs, people juggle multiple projects. I get bored if I just do one thing. I prefer switching focus.

I can sit and get really good and important work done in just a few minutes. If I’m worried about figuring out how to set aside hours at a time to work on something, then sometimes I keep procrastinating over and over again and I don’t do any work at all.

If I get too narrow-minded, I might miss opportunities that are in front of me. If I am always trying to focus, I might miss interruptions that are more important than my projects.

So I don’t think deep work is really necessary for life. There are good moments when you can focus and get into a good flow, but more often than not, my life feels like a constant distraction, and that’s okay.

(Thanks to my sister, Liz, because this was her idea.)

I am most often focused on what is hard for me. I have a lot of stress and worry and things feel hard.

But until this evening, I’ve never asked myself what is easy for me right now.

And the list was encouraging, since some things I had struggled with are no longer a problem. And I remembered that I am actually good at some things.

What is easy for me?

• Reading my scriptures every day.
• Knowing that my kids are more important.
• I have a good plan for the future.
• I feel pretty settled about who I am.
• I feel good with my faith right now.
• Blogging every day is easy.
• I’ve been doing well working on my house consistently with my husband.
• Designing and planning my house.
• I can type 100 WPM and do algebra really easily.

We take what is easy for us and immediately dismiss it, as if it’s insignificant. But a lot of people struggle with those things. A lot of times we have struggled with those things in the past.

So don’t discount what is easy for you. Recognize everything you’ve learned and the good choices you make. Stop thinking that everything in life is hard, because it isn’t.

And the easy parts can make the hard parts more possible.

I’ve been reading some books and fell into some conversations about elder care. Getting old (and caring for the elderly) can be really hard, and very often, people don’t think about it and prepare for it.

But you will someday die, and probably get old, and people around you will die and get old and you have may to take care of them. And it’s so much easier to figure it out before it’s absolutely necessary to have it figured out–or it becomes too late.

I’m not any sort of authority on the subject, so I welcome any conversation, but these are the things I’ve noticed.

Prepare Financially

About everyone needs some sort of estate plan and planning about where the assets go when you die.

And getting old can be really expensive. So having a good amount of savings, pensions, retirement funds, insurance, and more can lead to better options when you get older. Save more than you think you need.

(Alternatively, there may be problems with leaving behind a large inheritance. Just take the time to really think about different situations, how you want to pay for it, and what you want to leave behind.)

This sort of preparing needs to happen at a very young age. You can start planning for retirement in your 20s.

Prepare Your Stuff

You should sort through your stuff and dispose of most of it once you are no longer using it. You should also have things digitized and organized so that other people don’t have to go through your stuff for you.

And leave behind a good record of yourself for your family: even just a basic life overview is really helpful.

Prepare Your Body and Mind

Take care of yourself. Exercise and eat right and go to annual doctor visits and floss your teeth. Keep up hobbies and improve your mind.

And also figure out what a good death might look like for you. Do your living will/healthcare directive. Do you want your life prolonged endlessly? What would you like your funeral to look like?

Prepare for Self-Reliance

Where do you want to live when you get older? How will that affect those who will care for you (which will probably be your children)? How can you make their lives better?

Chances are, when you get older, you won’t want to live in a single family home with a large yard because you won’t be able to take care of it by yourself anymore. Where do you want to be when you can no longer drive or take care of yourself or think clearly?

You might look into retirement homes or assisted living centers, and if you prepare financially, then you will be able to find homes that you really like that help keep you independent, prevent loneliness, and help your children take better care of you.

Prepare Now

Some of these things might be unpleasant for some people, but it’s good to try to figure out aging and death decades before, so you can adequately be prepared to have a good life and a good death.

Anyway. I feel a little silly writing about this because I’m in my 30s, but this subjects needs to be part of our conversations much more often. It can be a really hard part of life, but avoiding talking and thinking about it just makes it harder.