Your 30s are a season of self-discovery where personal growth finally meets intention. If you’ve been craving new energy or want a hobby that feels like both therapy and adventure, here are 10 ways to reconnect—with yourself.
🧘♀️ 1. Yoga & Mindful Movement
Build strength and flexibility while cultivating mental clarity. Whether it’s Vinyasa flow or restorative yoga, this hobby is a sanctuary in motion.
📖 2. Book Reviewing & Literary Journaling
Turn your reading habit into powerful reflections. Track themes, characters, or life lessons—and maybe launch that blog you’ve been thinking about.
🍳 3. Culinary Adventures
Explore cultural recipes or master the art of mindful eating. Cooking becomes a canvas, not a chore, especially when paired with storytelling or heritage.
🪴 4. Gardening & Indoor Plant Care
A hobby that literally grows with you. It’s grounding, therapeutic, and filled with metaphorical beauty about nurturing life and patience.
🎨 5. Watercolor or Acrylic Painting
No need to be a pro—abstracts, florals, or mood-based art offer a creative outlet that soothes the soul and ignites joy.
🧵 6. DIY Crafts & Upcycling
Give old objects new life. From fabric crafts to furniture makeovers, it’s a hobby that combines sustainability with satisfaction.
Elevate your online presence. Blend personal insights, aesthetics, and audience engagement to craft your digital brand—one post at a time.
🎼 8. Learning a Musical Instrument
It’s never too late for melodies. Guitar, keyboard, or even digital music production—this hobby balances discipline and emotional release.
💼 9. Financial Literacy & Personal Investing
A hobby with long-term benefits. Dive into books, workshops, or apps that decode financial freedom and empower you to take control.
✍️ 10. Blogging or Vlogging
Whether it’s wellness, skincare, food, or personal growth—your voice matters. Share your journey, educate others, and build a community around your truth.
Your hobbies don’t need to be productivity-driven. Choose what sparks curiosity or calms your mind. In a world that constantly demands output, make space for wonder.
As much as we stress physical wellness in kids, it is time that their emotional wellness is considered equally important. The ability of the child to recognize, understand, and manage feelings effectively is termed emotional wellness. This process of cultivating emotional wellness in kids is dynamic and developed over time through experiences and interactions.
It is an ongoing process that the child goes through while being nurtured and developed, it cannot be compared to facts and knowledge that gets engrained. Living in a fast-paced world, it is of utmost importance that emotional wellness is taught to kids to manage their emotions or feelings with tools in a healthy way.
To thrive well in all aspects, build strong relationships, and be better equipped to face challenges children must be taught to be emotionally resilient. We as parents must use strategies to bring up kids who are good with emotional wellness and assist in creating a strong foundation for their journey into emotional wellness.
These strategies will help instill emotional wellness in kids in the long run.
Being a role model
We as parents or caregivers are their first role models. We play a major role in shaping their emotional well-being. Demonstrating emotional intelligence by acknowledging and expressing feelings healthily is the first step. Discussing what we feel and how we express, models how we emotionally express ourselves and makes them understand the safe space where they can express themselves freely. The heart of family life is love, acceptance, and security which the child must understand does not depend on their accomplishments. Mistakes or defeats must be accepted and expected. A home that is full of unconditional love and affection is where confidence finds its way.
Nurture their self-esteem and confidence
Setting realistic goals: children when young need realistic goals that help match abilities with ambitions. Old children can increase their self-confidence by choosing goals with your help which also tests their abilities.
Praise them: Encouraging the child in the initial steps will make them want to learn more and explore. Giving them a safe space to explore, assuring them often through interaction and smiles will let them know they have your attention which in turn builds their self-confidence.
Being honest: We should never hide our feelings and let them know about failures. This will help them understand that mistakes do happen and adults make them too.
Avoid sarcasm: When the child faces defeat, talk to them to understand how they feel. They need a pep talk when they are upset. Assure them later when they are ready to talk.
Skills that can be taught: Empathy, communication, and self-regulation are emotional skills that can be taught and practiced. We parents or caregivers can provide children with opportunities to practice the same.
Resilience: It is the ability to bounce back from adversity which can be taught by helping kids understand how to cope with defeats, setbacks, disappointment, and stress healthily.
Individual differences: Every child is unique, wherein their level of emotional development may vary. Some children who are naturally more resilient may cope well whereas some might need more guidance and help. We must recognize these differences and handle them accordingly.
Fostering open communication: Open and honest communication is the foundation. This will enable the child to share their feeling both positive and negative. We as parents should not jump to conclusion rather listen to them attentively and ensure them that their emotion is valid. If this is done the kid will understand that you are their safe space to open up.
Emotional literacy: Teaching them different emotions by labeling them appropriately will help them understand what they are going through and how it can be processed. Books or charts can be beginner tools that the child can use to point out what they feel.
Mindfulness and relaxation
To manage stress and anxiety children can be taught simple mindfulness and relaxation techniques. Breathing, yoga, and meditation techniques will help them be more aware of emotions and handle them effectively. These techniques can be introduced in a child-friendly way.
Limit screens and emphasize outdoors
Excessive screen time can harm their emotional well-being. Encouraging them to spend more time outdoors in physical activities and nature connect can help in fostering healthy emotional well-being.
Empathy and compassion
A vital component of emotional wellness is empathy. Understanding and caring about the feelings of others can be taught to kids by letting them know about perspectives and helping them to look at the world from other viewpoints. Making them engage in volunteering and helping people in need will make them practice empathy.
Problem-solving by resolving conflicts
Kids must be encouraged to solve problems and resolve conflicts from an early age. This will help them understand what they need, how to make people understand, listen to others, and work towards their goals.
When we talk about nurturing emotional wellness in kids, it is a lifelong process that happens dynamically. It cannot be taught overnight. It needs lots of patience, understanding, and consistent efforts from parents. It is a complex world out there, so we as parents can give them tools to handle their emotions healthily.
Encouraging open communication, and empathy, raising self-confidence, making them practice mindfulness, and providing them a supportive space are some of the ways we can help them. But being unique every child takes their time in the journey of emotional wellness. We should be there to guide them and provide them with our empathetic presence, develop resilience, and help them lead a life that is fulfilling and emotionally healthy.
Do we know that telling a child“to make positive or good choices”has an important part to play in molding the behavior.
Such challenging behaviors like the one above make parents struggle on a day-to-day basis.
Making good choices could be compared to learning how to tie shoes for your kids; this skill would develop progressively over time as they mature. Children need a lot of molding and support when it comes to learning how to make good choices. They don’t mean to make bad choices; they just need more practice and support in making good ones.
Part of raising kids is preparing them for the world and life on their own by preparing them with the skills necessary to both succeed and cope with failures.
The real world we live in is full of disappointment, consequences, hearing a no, and doing things I would rather not. That’s how life is. Therefore, preparing my child with the means to handle all that is important. Therefore, to inspire my daughter’s independence and to nurture her emotional intelligence, I want to parent her in a way that she knows she is loved and I believe in her, but that she also knows what it’s like to fail or to make the wrong decision.
“Failure is not fatal”.People know me as a perfectionist, to me it felt like mistakes were killing me from the inside. Honestly, I have never emotionally conquered the concept of failure; even small mess ups sometimes feel like the end of the world to me. I waver in my own decision making very often because I do not like living with even the small consequences.
Teaching your child to make choices is one of the most important elements of raising a well-behaved child.
From big choices (“Should I opt for high profile PR job and move to abroad or stay home to take care of the kids?”) to little choices (“Dessert or salad?”), every decision we make has complications.
Being self-disciplined is understanding and taking responsibility for making life’s choices. A major part of parenting well is to help your child learn the challenging skill of making positive, suitable choices. A gain of sense control over own life is gained by a child, when he/she is skilled at consciously making choices will understand their own needs. Choice-making also helps teach internal discipline, organization, and prioritizing. Children learn how to make big choices by watching you do it, and by gaining experience through making little choices.
Teaching choice to your child: TIPS
Never give a choice you aren’t willing to follow through on. That means when you say, “Either you tidy your room or we are not going out to eat,” you should be prepared to start cooking. It also means if you say, “Tidy your room and I’ll take you to a posh restaurant in town,” you need to be prepared make reservations.
It’s your responsibility to keep your child safe and healthy. Keep food choices healthy, and allow your child to choose what to eat. If your kid chooses to eat only cookies and dessert, stop having them as a choice.
Unless your child is very skilled at choice-making and your budget is unlimited, never offer choices without restrictions. Give them an “either/or” if they are young.
When a child is making choices about her behavior, you can point out the choice and the consequences of it.
Older children can use choices to learn how to prioritize
Once a child makes a choice, lay off on the options, don’t continue to offer choices.
Once a choice has been made, be clear as to when it becomes final.
What if the child does not like the choice made?
This is hard for a strong, reasonable parent to watch. Nobody enjoys watching a child be disappointed. But making a choice necessitates learning to live with the choice that’s been made. Disappointment is a good teaching tool, and discipline is teaching.
Teaching consequences of choice that was made
When she experiences failure or disappointment, she has to handle it with stability and not feel like it’s the end of the world.
When her friends are doing something that she feels is not right, she will not blindly follow, but she will have the anticipation to see what consequence may be ahead of her.
When she has a decision that did not turned out as planned, she would have emotional stamina to pull herself up and not feel defeated.
When she is faced with defending what she believes and her faith she will not hesitate or be embarrassed in any circumstance.
When she experiences rejection, she knows that was not her choice and it will just stimulate her to be even better and more assertive.
The bookTeaching with love and logic by Jim Fay and David Funk is beautifully written about how to empower children and help them learn how to make good choices. Creating stronger relationships with students can lead to more cooperation is one major take away from this book.
Basically, Love and Logic shows you how to avoid power struggles and offer choices to children. Instead of controlling children’s behavior and making all their choices for them, it empowers children to make their own choices. When children feel empowered they learn more. They learn more because less time is spent trying to control their behavior.
Enforceable statements are invites instead of demands. When you demand that a child does something they may refuse because they feel controlled, but when you invite them to do something they are much more likely to do it.
When kids don’t make good choices:
Avoid making demands
Avoid making threats
Avoid power struggles
Offer them choices
Use logical consequences
So mommies let us raise a child who is independent to make good choices and live happily because of it.
That Madras Mom 