Tips to Help You Survive the Fesitve Season

Many of us find the festive season stressful and this can push us from being effective and productive to feeling dreadful.
We may have to spend time with people we don't like, fit in with someone else's idea of a good time, be out of our daily routine and familiar environments, and have increased financial burdens - all of which can add to the chaos.

If visiting your family drives you crazy - think of these things:

• They are remembering who you used to be. Your parents, older siblings and other relatives remember when you were a dependent, helpless baby. They may not see your current maturity and capabilities.
• We choose our friends, and sometimes just tolerate our relatives. To cope with this, think of some fun times in the past, something funny or find something helpful to do to get away from them - for example, cleaning the kitchen or tidying the garden.
• You have a choice about what you talk about and how you respond to others. Old patterns are just that - OLD.
• Your attitudes and beliefs may have evolved away from those of your family. Family traditions shape our personalities and memories. Stepping back into them can show us how far we have come, and we might miss them if they were no longer here.

Wishing you all a wonderful festive season and a fantastic 2009.

What is Integrity?

The word integrity is used a lot these days. It is almost bandied about. But what is it? What happens when a major corporation collapses, when governments make decisions that we don't like, or even when friends and partners act in a way that hurts us, that we could consider to be of low moral value or integrity?

Integrity obviously differs from one person to the next. We talk about someone being "of integrity", meaning that they hold similar (or the same) values as we do. But each of us has our own individual understanding of this. We are working from our perceptions and experience of our world and everyone and everything around us, as well as our own sense of self. And so are they.

Yes, everyone is in their own integrity, all the time.

When someone makes a decision that is not what we like - that does not match our beliefs and values, or when they act in some way that is counter to what we would do, we get hurt, disappointed or annoyed and angry depending on our relationship with them. It becomes easy to fall into the blame game.

What is really happening is that they are still behaving according to their views at the time - they are within their integrity in the moment, and it might just be that their integrity is different to our own.

So perhaps we could check whether their integrity is aligned to ours when we consider going into an important relationship or agreement with someone else.

Happy New Year

Hope you had a safe and wonderful festive season.

Are you back in the swing of things yet?

It seems hard to get back into the full routine of the year with sales in the stores, children on holidays and summer in the southern hemisphere. It is easier to go slow - ease back into the year and decide on some arbitrary date to gets things to happen.

One of the things I have noticed over the last ten years or so is that the Christmas-New Year break has got shorter in Australia. Factories and many services used to close for most of December and January. In fact, when I was working in industries and making on-site appointments there was very little to do until the end of January. Not any more.

The world is busy. All nations are competing for the same markets and customers. We have a global economy so our individual trends and behaviours are merging with the dominant (or most profitable) work styles.

So, how do you maintain your individuality? Remember what is important to you, and what it is that you truly enjoy doing. Find out where your skills lie and develop them further. And then, just for the mental stimulation, learn something new. This keeps the mind young and maintains interest in life.

How to Bring Order into Your Life

There are any number of systems that people suggest we use to bring order into our lives and move from chaos to calm.

The difficulty is choosing the right system for each of us

When you can't find your way clearly around completing any task, think back to when you did something well. How did you do it?

We really do know what to do
We all have our own natural way of doing things. It might not be the same as the way that other people do the same or similar thing, but it obviously works for you. When you know what your natural way of doing things is, you can start to apply that same method to all things that you do.

For example, some people like to have everything in order BEFORE they start to work on a task. Others are happy to get stuck into the task and organise as they go. Another approach is to have a clear plan but remain flexible so that they can respond to any changes as they arise.

Think about how you do the things that you do efficiently. It should be something that you know you do easily and efficiently, that your friends and colleagues tell you that you do well. Take it apart - think about how you do it.

• Do you use a checklist (written down or in your head)?
• Do you talk about it with others to help you sort out your ideas and actions?
• Do you plan each part of the task or do you just respond to what is happening as you complete the task?

The more detail that you can identify about how you do anything, the more likely it is that you can see the patterns that you use whenever you complete any task. Once you have noticed your patterns, think about where else you can use this same approach to complete any task.

For more tips, visit http://www.sharonnephillips.com