Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘Personal Development’

Every New Year’s Day gives people hope. I think it is in the air – vibes of a new start, vibes of new goals and many new desires for a new us, a new life and even a new world. We all want the good to increase and the not-so-good to shrink until it fully disappears and we wish that the new year will be full of health, wealth, love, friendship and happiness (what else is there?).

To increase your self esteem, it is good if you know what you can appreciate in yourself. People with low self esteem simply do not realize how much or how well they do things. For many of the big questions in life, they answer “I’ve never thought about it” or “I don’t know”.

As I described in How to Survive Holiday Blues (part 1), the Christmas holidays can be stressful times. Family matters and conflicts in relationships are just one factor of making the holidays a depressing experience.

The bad news: every person has some of the blues feelings during the holidays to some extent.

The good news: it is possible to change some things and enjoy the holidays.

Many people find the holidays stressful and overwhelming. For some reason, holidays are a magnifier of problems. If people are doing well throughout the year, they will enjoy their Christmas holidays, but if they have problems, those will only get bigger. A very common challenge of the Christmas season is the holiday blues.

In the past few months, I have been delivering a program about diversity and acceptance at various schools. In one of my classes, the kids asked about being angry at people and carrying this anger. So we had a serious talk about forgiving and letting go.

Only when you see someone else washing the dishes in a strange way do you notice that there is more than one way of doing things. When my mom came over to our place and watched a friend of mine washing the dishes, she almost fainted.

Before you start it, parenting seems daunting. You could be in for years of giving up your personal freedoms to one or more creatures who become more and more demanding as they grow older, while you run around trying to satisfy their insatiable appetite for your time and your money. Indeed, without using The Tao of Parenting, this could be the case, but it does not have to be.

From the first year of my Special Education studies, I had this debate with Gal. Gal, who has a degree in Biology and Computer Science, thought that people’s behavior was all genetic and I, as an educator, believed it was all taught and could be changed. For years, we had those discussions. Over time, I learned there are many things that are mostly hereditary and Gal learned that even they can be changed with education.

Today, as we are very close to the end of the year and wrapping up our achievements of the last year, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to send you blessings of happiness from the Be Happy in LIFE team. We have had the most wonderful year, with many workshops, many new clients, many new children and parents, traveling and new excitement and with plenty of successes added to our record. We would love to share our own happiness with you in a slide show that we have put together.

Years ago, someone showed me this book called “I’m OK, You’re OK”. In the book, the author describes 4 psychological positions and their effect on communication and relationships. What I read in that book has helped me a lot over the years and is a handy way of explaining relationships to clients, especially parents.