Austin Scholar #89: The 50 Green Things
& how to create a 50 Green Things list with your kid
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: The 50 Green Things
How to create a 50 Green Things list with your kid
Scholar’s Sources: Some ideas for your own 50 Green Things list
I’m stressed about college. This last week, I’ve literally had nightmares about getting rejected from schools and have been super worried about finishing my applications for the rest of my US schools.
I know I’m in the home stretch, though, so I’m going to keep pushing through.
But, all of this anxiety about college reminded me of a super helpful concept (and the topic of this newsletter): the 50 green things.
Austin’s Anecdote: The 50 Green Things
My family hasn’t always been as close as we are now – and I haven’t always been this… well-adjusted.
To be super real with you: I struggled a lot in middle school, thanks to my anxiety and the pressure I put on myself to be “the best.”
I wasn’t really that happy for a while.
Years passed and I couldn’t get out of this dark cloud. It all came to a head in 2020 (because of course it did) and my family and I realized that I needed to figure something out.
In the end, we came up with the 50 Green Things.
Basically, every day, I would rate how I’m feeling as red, yellow, or green. Red means that I’m really not in a good place and need help, yellow means that I’m just feeling pretty numb, and green means that I’m feeling happy and fulfilled.
We quickly realized that most of my days were yellow.
But that isn’t a good way to live. I was just in middle school. I should have been acting silly and laughing with my friends as we procrastinated on our homework, not feeling numb.
So, in order to move out of this yellow zone, my family and I created a list of fifty things I could do to bring me out of the yellow zone and into the green.
My list included things like getting Einstein’s Bagels, going to Target, and watching the first Avengers movie. Things that aren’t hard to do, but that I wasn’t prioritizing in my life.
Every day, if I checked in and was feeling yellow, I would stop everything else and do one of the things on the list. And it actually started to work.
Not only was I feeling more fulfilled in my life, but I was actually getting closer to my parents and my friends, since a lot of the 50 Green Things included the people I loved.
And slowly but surely, my “average,” my baseline, stopped being yellow.
My baseline became happiness.
And that’s the power of the 50 Green Things.
How to create a 50 Green Things list with your kid
I would like to make something clear: your kid doesn’t need to be struggling in their life for a 50 Green Things list to be useful. Because let’s be real: school is stressful, kids are mean, and growing up is hard.
There will always be a time when your kid could use a little cheering up.
The 50 Green Things is also a great way to improve your relationship with your kid. Create a list of things that you like to do with your kid (for example, I like watching a baseball game with my dad or getting my nails done with my mom) and do those things when you feel like your relationship is hurting.
Having this list to go back to when you’re mad at each other or frustrated with life really helps to let your kid feel secure in the connection between the two of you. It reminds them that no matter how loudly they slam their door, you two will always have fun, loving things to do together.
Why fifty things? you might be wondering. Well, it’s for two reasons: