"2 more sleeps and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas-with a blanket of white covering Scotland! This might be the first time ever that my kids will see snow on Christmas morning when they awake-yahoo!
For those of you who have to travel in this-I'm sorry for my delight. I know that lots of people will be having their plans for Christmas thrown up in the air but isn't this where we have to listen to and absorb the words of X-factor winner, Joe McEldrey's (number 2 song) "It's the climb".
It's all about the attitude that we face the mountain with and not the mountain itself, that counts. I think that I've talked many times about this and I know that it's easy for me sitting in my cosy house typing away about remaining positive despite setbacks. Not so easy for those of you who are struggling to decide what your alternative will be to spending the holidays with family you can't get to!"
I got distracted by the goings-on of last week and didn't get back to even posting that last wee bit of text, never mind finishing it! It all still applies to this week, though and lots of people may indeed find that their plans for spending New Year with loved ones is hampered by the snowy weather.
My kids did indeed have a white Christmas and we had more snow in our neck of the woods than we've had in many a year! We've often had enough snow to just about build a decent snowman in our back garden but this Christmas we had enough to build a family of five with snow left over-wow!! We shoveled the snow from our street-front for the first time ever and we went sledging up on Arthurs seat for a fun-filled afternoon! Seriously "small potatoes" to the snow being had further North but for us Dunedins, it was wonderful family time.
Talking about the words of the current hit "the climb", I'm not surprised that lots of people have identified with them-myself included. All too easily we can give up, throw up our hands in despair and cry "why me?" We want people to know that we're finding it too difficult but don't know how to verbalize it so we "huff" or "explode" or withdraw into ourselves rather than risking rejection from those around us who may judge us as a failure for not coping! We worry too much about hurting another person's feelings to do something that we really want rather than what they want.What we have to realise is that we are not responsible for how another person feels.
We choose to feel the way that we feel and so do they! If you feel hurt-you've chosen to feel that way. Another person can create a situation but it is you who chooses how to respond to it. Choosing to respond with love and understanding will prevent you from feeling hurt, angry, neglected or resentful. Usually people are too wrapped up in their own emotions to be thinking about how they can upset you! If you feel upset, it's because you had expectations of that other person/situation being different from how it actually played-out.
We all have our own standards of behaviour and we often expect other people to respond in the same way that we would, in any given scenario. This is a sure-fire way of being let-down because we all do things or own way, not meaning to insult or offend or hurt someone who may have been expecting us to do things their way.
I see this most often in a couple scenario where the wife thinks that the husband is deliberately doing something in a way that he knows she doesn't like/want. When asked whether or not she's actually told her husband that she doesn't like it, the wife will ponder and then say that he should just know!!
How on earth is he going to know if she doesn't tell him?
By the stomping around or the silent treatment???? And when he asks what's wrong, she will bark "Nothing"!
Men don't magically know what we want or how we want it done but what I've learned in the 20 years that I've known the wonderfully patient man I'm married to is this.......
If you can ask for what it is you want, you'll find that it probably is not a problem! The asking is the hard part because it is for you and perhaps you don't feel that you are allowed to ask for something for you?
Give that some thought. It took me much counseling and soul-searching and Reiki and Bach Flower remedies to be able to ask for things calmly and without fear of rejection.
If the answer is "No" to something you want, it's the "something" that's being rejected and not you personally.
So, if you want to go for a brisk walk on New Years day and you ask your husband if he'd like to go with you and he says "NO"! Remember that it's the walk he's rejecting (probably in favour of some football) and not you as a person and it's okay for you to go by yourself for yourself. You want to go for the walk-he doesn't and that's okay! If you become hurt and angry, remember that you are choosing to be that way-he didn't make you!
And on that note, I'll wish you all a wonderful time leading into the beginning of 2010. I'll be making some New Year resolutions, which I totally believe are worth doing as it gives you a bit of a focus on where you'd like your life to be going this coming year.
In the words of another song (sung by my darling Donny Osmond, many years ago)....................... "Life is Just what you make it!"
LXXX
Posted on Wed, December 30, 2009
by Linsey Denham