Family Harmony in Five

Our sages hit bullseye when they said that family strife turns a home into a battlefield of Gog and Magog. Nothing is more aggravating to parents than fighting and bickering among their children. Strife and tension between parents and children is just as unsettling.

Here's the good news. You can return (or bring, in case you never had it) harmony to your home in less than five minutes. This is probably the easiest and most effective "feel fine in five" hack that we've spoken about. Any family who has ever done this has reported phenomenal success, and I'm talking about families with 5+ rambunctious kids who go to war for every block of Lego.

Here's what you do:

1. Take an empty shoe box like the one in the adjacent image and cut a slit in the box top. On the side of the box, in clear letters, write the words "Thank-You!" You now have a family "thank-you" box, what we call in Yiddish slang a thank-you pushka.

2. Put the box in a prominent place, like on a living room table, somewhere that the whole family has access to.

3. Next to the box, put a ballpoint pen and a wad of notes.

4. Anytime anyone in the family does a favor for anyone else, they should write a note and put it the box, writing the name of the recipient, the message, and the name of the grateful author of the note. Here are a few examples:

* To Yossi, thanks for taking out the trash without an argument. Love, Mom

* To Daddy, thank you helping me with my homework. That meant a lot to me. Love, Moishie

* To Saral'e, the cake you baked for Shabbat was the best I ever ate.

* To Judy, thanks for letting me use your jump-rope. What a great sister you are – from Rachel

* To Mom, beloved wife – that was the best lasagna I ever ate on Tuesday night. Much love and appreciation, Dad

You get the picture.

5. During Friday night dinner, bring the thank-you pushka to the Shabbat table during one of the between-course intermissions. Mom or Dad should open the box and read each of the notes, declaring who wrote it and whom it's intended for.

That's it!

Wait and see the incentive that each member of the family will have to do favors for every other member of the family, especially when he or she sees how much their good deeds are appreciated. Every member of the family will get an insatiable appetite for more and more notes. They'll realize how important it is to give everyone else reasons to say thank-you.

Soon, very soon, the pattern of each member of the family doing favors and expressing gratitude to every other member of the family will become ingrained. You will have achieved family harmony by investing a few pennies in blank 3×3" notes and a ballpoint pen. In less than five minutes, you can convert an empty shoe box into a thank-you pushka. Amateur carpenters can build elaborate wooden thank-you boxes and varnish them in the same color as the living room furniture. One family loved this idea so much that it had a box custom-made out of mahogany.

At any rate, try this right away and see how lovely family harmony can be. That's the power of gratitude.