You are 100% replaceable at work. You are not replaceable at home. A good work ethic is crucial but don’t drain yourself to the point that you don’t have anything left for your family and friends.
Meditation isn’t about a quiet mind, it’s about training a distracted mind to remain in the present. Focus on your breathing for one minute (set a timer.) Every time your thoughts wonder, gently bring your focus back to your breath. You may have to do this 10, 20, 30 or more times during those 60 seconds…but eventually you’ll get better. When you do, increase to two minutes, then five, all the way up to 30 minutes or even an hour.
The secret to getting sinks and surfaces to shine is to dry-buff them after you clean them. Keep a soft clean rag or washcloth around so you can dry fixtures and sinks and counter tops.
(They should be cleaning their own bathrooms by this age.)
Talk about how to be a good houseguest: Always bring something (food, wine, gift, etc) Make your bed, keep area clean. Enthusiastically accept your host’s hospitality but don’t make extra work for them. Contribute and pitch in where u can. Send a thank you note - or at very least, an email!
Stay fit. Try to increase fitness every year in some way: Strength, flexibility, endurance, or a specific sport or practice. Never take your body for granted.
Change always brings feelings of unease. It’s easy to confuse that feeling of unease with the feeling that something must be wrong. Give yourself time to adjust before deciding if a new thing is bad..
Show them a picture of a riptide and explain about swimming parallel to the shore instead of fighting it.
Google Outer Banks NC green fluorescent dye in riptide.
Like me, you turn to food for comfort. That’s okay to a point, but it won’t help. That hole you’re trying to fill will just get deeper. So if you can’t or won’t stop eating for comfort please consider this suggestion: Do something creative first. Sing, write, paint, run, lift, act, improv, whatever. The hole will be so much more shallow when you go to try and fill it with food. Hopefully, eventually you’ll get to the point of staying in “creative mode” to feel better.
Just fill ‘em with love. Every other parenting mistake or deficit can be fixed, but if a child grows up thinking it’s not loved and doesn’t have a place in this world, that is a recipe for permanent and painful damage. Not necessarily “spoil” them, but cut them slack as often as possible. Just love ‘em up.
Talk about how choices become habits. Habits can become addictions. Describe how pathways are literally dug into the brain and it's very hard to change them once those paths are made.