Remembering What's Behind the Holiday Season
Dear friends,
We have just entered the Holiday Season. Thanksgiving—Christmas—New Year's. It’s a really packed time of year. Given that, it is easy to get lost in the details, but we each ought to do our best to remember what it is we are celebrating.
Thanksgiving: Gratitude has actually been shown to boost your immune system! The Mayo Clinic has an article about the benefits of gratitude here. We each have things in the world around us (and in ourselves, BTW!) that would be best to correct or change. It thus becomes all too easy to focus on what needs attention. That focus can crowd out our ability to notice and appreciate all the things that are going well that we can be grateful for. In my life-long work of turning around failing businesses and projects, it is tempting to see nothing but problems to be overcome. I have had to work hard not to get caught in that mindset. Not a bad policy for life in general, not just business or other things that need to be fixed. When someone comes to you, if your first thought is, "Here comes so-and-so. He’s overly talkative" or "Here comes so-and-so. Why is she always unkind?" take a moment and focus on that person's positive qualities. Yes, everyone has some! :-)
Christmas: The birth of Christ is not about an external event but what needs to be reborn in our own hearts. The gifts brought by the Magi were to honor the emergence of a perfected being who came to show us the way. Jesus said, “Everything I have done ye too shall do and greater.” What can that possibly mean? It’s a high bar, but that is our goal. It is good to remember that progress in human affairs is virtually always directional, not absolute. Let us use this time of year to do what we can to honor that hoped-for birth within ourselves and not get too caught up in the material and holiday stresses.
New Year: A good time to reflect on the past year. Avoid the temptation to make all sorts of grandiose resolutions that fall by the wayside by mid-January. Our goal for now ought to be directional improvement, not absolute mastery over some years-long pattern.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the staff at East West