Home for the Holidays

The holidays are filled with family, friends, laughter, parties, decorating, shopping, cooking --- and stress. How do you take pleasure in celebrating without stressing? Allow the following thoughts to put you more at ease and increase your enjoyment.

Focus on the real issue. Holidays are about remembering a meaningful event – the founding of a free nation, the virgin birth of Christ, the miracle oil that burned eight days, celebrating family, customs and culture. Do not allow the focus to be packed calendars to prove your status in the community, or elaborate decorations to showcase your talents, or lavish spending as a display of your generosity (and pending debt).

Surrender to family time and just enjoy being together. Sure, Uncle Joe might be a bore and your in-laws a little overbearing, but they are family. Approach the visits with the right attitude and a forgiving spirit. Let your guard down and do not be so sensitive or too critical. Allow the mistakes of yesterday to pass with yesterday and enjoy the holidays without incident. Your mate was by choice, the rest are by chance, so breath deeply, laugh spontaneously and embrace the loving energy that family brings. Live one day at a time, and appreciate that one day for what it is and for who you are.

Keep it simple sweetie. A gourmet sandwich with a relaxed host is more enjoyable than a seven-course meal with an uptight party-giver. Stay within your budget when gift giving and par down the list of recipients. I suggest that buying less and paying cash for holiday expenses upfront will help you get back the true spirit of the season. After the holidays, buying less and paying cash for the needs of life will help get back the true meaning of living.

Be creative. In decorating, greenery, ribbons and lights are quite elegant. Make a centerpiece of a beautiful bowl filled with pinecones and springs of holly gathered from the woods. Add ribbons to cookie cutters and hang on the tree. Replace wire ornament hangers with sparkly ribbon. For a festive look, intertwine garland of gold or silver around pictures or non-holiday nick-knacks. Find excitement in seeing how you can take existing items and give new life with small changes. Use the Sunday comics as wrapping paper.

Attach new meaning. Change your mindset toward the things you have. When our daughter was young I wanted to buy new exciting tree decorations and discard the old. It was not in our budget. Instead of seeing it as the same old stuff, I began to look at it as tradition. We used these traditional ornaments for the next twenty-five years and they grew more special each season. They have been gently retired to the attic.

If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. The invitations were sent before the monsoon rains came and disabled our rural septic system. What to do? Without mention of the problem we welcomed our guests and continued the festivities as planned. When a guest had to go to the bathroom, he was greeted by a decorated port-a-potty and a smiley-faced sign: “Please do not flush the commode. If you prefer, Wal-Mart is five miles down the road.” The party was enhanced as others shared humorous stories of similar predicaments.

Memorize and live the Prayer of Serenity. Most people know the first four lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prayer of Serenity, as they are used in all the twelve-step recovery programs. I encourage you to meditate upon the entire poem. (see below)

DON’T COPE, OVERCOME: Holiday is the shortened form of the term holy day. Holidays are times of renewal. Allow your creativity to be rekindled, spirit to be renewed, relationships to be rebuilt and the holidays will indeed by happy.

PRAYER OF SERENITY

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time,

enjoying one moment at a time;

accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;

taking as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to your will;

so that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Miscommunication

“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure
you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Bonnie Libhart

What?

Communication is sharing information with another person in such a way that they understand not only what you say but also what you mean.

We speak in words but think in pictures. When what we say does not match the picture of the one with whom we are speaking, we have a miscommunication.

Example, my grandchildren and I returned from swimming and I asked them to hang their wet suits on the swing. The picture in my mind was the porch swing that we had just passed while entering the house.

Later as I was gathering laundry, there were no swimsuits on the swing.I inquired about the swimsuits; they insisted they were on the swing.

And they were.

They were on the swing they pictured in their minds - the swing set in the yard.

I chuckled as I thought of my friend Bonnie’s amusing transfix of words about how what we say is not always what is heard. If we do not give and or get corresponding pictures, then we have not understood one another.

Sometimes those miss-matched-pictures of miscommunications are humorous, sometimes they are irritating and sometimes they are dangerous.

Perhaps the three most common communications errors are 1) talking too much, 2) listening too little and 3) failure to understand. The failure-to-understand-coin is two-sided; incorrectly assuming we have spoken accurately and thus, equally incorrectly assuming the one to whom we have spoken has heard what we meant to say.

When instructions are given, there is always a speaker and a receiver. Know that things are not always as they seem. Consider the context. Consider your audience (i.e. age, life experiences). Be gracious. Rather than insisting your communication was 100% right on, be willing to see it from the other person’s point of view.

What I say, plus what you hear. What does it equal? What I have said? What you have heard? Neither? Where is the break down? Was it with the receiver? Was it with the sender? Both?

If your message is not getting across, spend time thinking and learning how better to express yourself. If you are not receiving information well, spend time thinking and learning how to seek understanding.

In both instances be patient, gracious and develop empathy. It’s worth the effort.

A good place to start is with St. Francis of Assissi’s prayer:

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love… ”

Be Your Best Self

Can you believe it is March already, and spring?  So, how are you doing on your New Year’s resolutions?  Not to worry, any month, any day is a good time for fresh starts - to begin something new or to make changes.  

In a past issue of Waco Today, Kat Nelson asked prominent community leaders to give hope for the coming year.  Rosemary Mayes of Scott & White Health Plans shared a poignant insight: “Every New Year people make resolutions to change aspects of themselves they believe are negative. A majority of people reverts back to how they were before and feels like failures. This year I challenge you to a new resolution: I challenge you to just be yourself!”

 

Which begs the question: Do you know how to be yourself?

 

I suggest that most of us only know who we are by hearsay. What they want for us, who they want us to be, where they want us to go, how they want us to behave. Having heard other’s dreams for our lives (that does not match our passion) or pronouncement of our character flaws (that seems so innate) or being prodded to action (that is not in keeping with our temperament), we peg ourselves a loser.

 

You were not born that way.  Family, friends and peers did not see you that way either. You were bragged about as being the smartest and cutest kid ever. Siblings were jealous of your awesomeness. Everyone saw so much potential in you – and maybe hung their star on your ascending stairway.

 

Needing to be loved and to belong, we went along with the charade. Allowing others to define you causes one to lose his/her true identity. It also thwarts growth and discovery. So accept Rosemary’s challenge and “be yourself”. 

Or, go back a few centuries and accept Shakespeare’s challenge: 

 

“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man.” Shakespeare – Hamlet

 

Do not misunderstand; there is much room for improvement. Accepting truth about oneself can be quite difficult. But truth really does set one free. Truth gives you the humility to come to terms with weaknesses (those pesky negatives). Speak the truth in love – to yourself (without condemnation) and – when need be - to others (without accusation).

 

Truth recognizes strengths - and you do have strengths or you would have never resolved to bring them into reality in the first place. Truth gives boldness to set boundaries and courage to be empowered to manifest those strengths. 

 

“This above all…” Being you is an imperative. Unless we can be true to ourselves first, we cannot be true to others.  It is impossible to be honest when hiding secrets.

 

How surely does night follow day?  Seems as though daylight and darkness have faithfully occurred every twenty-four hours since the beginning of time.

When we are true to ourselves first, we cannot be false with others. We become real. Genuine. Authentic. Lovely. The best you ever. 

 

Need a trainer or speaker?  Call me 254-749-6594; you’ll be glad you did.