This is a Reminder: Christmas is Coming!

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Another year, another Christmas and another year where you wait last minute to buy Christmas presents. If you have the intention of giving gifts this year, and you haven't started, you're somewhat late- you should of started 2 months ago!

The biggest secrets for good gifts giving is to plan ahead of time. You need to start thinking about it months before you actually need it. When your mind is seeking for good gifts, long before you actually need them, you're more likely to pick up things from those around you that would make good gifts. If you're buying gifts for your spouse, for example, and you learn that she's thinking about starting a new hobby... that could be a good gift for the next holiday.

Gift giving is supposed to be a fun activity but it's often a cause of stress and the main reason for that is that most people don't plan ahead enough for them. If you're only a few days, before the holiday, you're rushing to get gifts that may not even be available anymore.

Plan ahead and your chances of finding something your entourage will enjoy is increased. For more tips, look at my previous post here, 

Keep the Relationship Problems Private

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In the age of Social Media, it's fairly easy to share whatever may be going on with the rest of your entourage but not everything needs to be shared - relationship problems being one of them. Issues between you and your partner should remain private as exposing them may have a negative impact on the dynamics of the relationship.

Spending a lot of time with a person is bound to expose the failing of their characters. If your partner truly is one of the most important person in your life then what use is there for you to be speaking ill of them? The only thing this would do is bring them down through the eyes of others and reinforcing the negatives within your own mind.

According to the Bible, the sixth Commandment is "Thou shalt not kill". If you're speaking ill of your partner, you are "killing" his reputation to the eyes of others. The Golden Rule is ""Do unto others as you would have them do unto you..." I doubt you would like it if your partner spoke ill of you.

When sharing things about your partner, share only the good - keep the negative private as these problems are only for the both of you to work on.

How Addictions Kills Relationships...

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The biggest problem with addictions is that we don't see them as addictions. After all, if we feel love, or happiness, towards something then how can that thing be bad?

Since we all have 24 hours in a day, it means that we have a limited amount of time that we can dedicate to everything that matters to us with some of that time already allocated to other things such as:

• 8 hours of sleep.
• 8 hours of work.
• 1-3 hours food.
• ...

Which leaves about 5-6 hours of "personal" time left. If there's an addiction then that's additional time that will be taken away from you. 

The 24 hour period is important to note here as it means that we're limited in what we can do, or think, in a given day. Since most of that time is guaranteed to be allocated to other things then there really isn't much "personal" time left. 

If the time remaining is dedicated to an addiction, rather than relationships, then how can a relationship be nurtured if there's no time/effort dedicated to it?

Addictions kills relationships by taking over the mind. It's a poison that takes over the limited amount of thoughts, available in a given day, that would of otherwise went towards the relationships. 

If there's something in your life that takes precedents, daily, over your relationships then you may need to work on forcing it out in order to prioritize the relationships... otherwise you're going to end up alone.

Constant Overtime isn't Worth the Sacrifice

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It's not uncommon to see a person spending a lot of time at work in order to provide for his family. Sometime, however, it can be to such extreme that they eventually loose the family they were working so hard for.

Why is that?

What you focus on will grow whether it be work or the family. If you focus too much on the family, you may loose your job and if you focus too much on your job then you may loose your family. In the grand scheme of things, loosing a family is a lot more painful than loosing a job as you can always work for someone else but starting a new family is not always possible.

Remember that it takes about 2 weeks for an employer to replace an employee and the only people that will remember you doing overtime are your loved ones.

Find the proper balance that will insure the long term stability of your family. Don't be afraid to deny a promotion at work if it means you would require to spend more time at work at the expanse of your family.

Family comes first.