Success Connections

Resources For Surviving Dysfunctional Holiday Gatherings

I’m Lora Adrianse and I survived oodles of dysfunctional holiday gatherings.  I don’t mean to imply that my way is the right way, but eventually I found the solution that works for me.  And with a little soul searching and planning, you can too.

Kristine Cane is writing a great series called “The Functionally-Challenged Holiday Guide”.  So far, the series includes:
The Self Care Guide
The Preparation Guide
The Presence Guide
Some of my favorite tips she covers are:  Decide How You Want To Feel; Go Complaint Free; Take The Conversation Deeper; Being Kind vs. Being Right.  They’re all great tips.  Go take a read.

If you’re in the mood for adding a little dark humor to your gathering, you may want to try Dysfunctional Family Bingo, brought to us by Meredith O’Brien at BostonHerald.com.

Mark Goulston also offers some excellent advice in his post titled, "Papertrain Your Problem Relatives For Xmas".

And finally, if worse comes to worse, you may decide to do what I did many years ago.  Save yourself and just say, “No”.  I decided I no longer wanted the emotional hangover that followed the dysfunctional celebrations, so I set a boundary and stopped going.  To this day, my holidays are peaceful, even though I spend them alone.

What about you?  How do you cope with dysfunctional holiday gatherings?

Promise Yourself

As we approach the close of another year, many of us make time to take stock of our accomplishments and set goals for the new year.  You can find some great resources to help you with that in my blog post 3 Tools For Goal Setting.

Clarifying your goals is great for defining the “what” of your intentions for the upcoming year.  But this year why not add a new dimension to the process?  How about defining “who” you want to be?  By that I mean, how you want to show up in this world.

Here’s an example penned by the wise Christian Larson.  It’s called, “I Promise Myself”.

I promise myself…

• I promise myself to be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind   
• I promise myself to talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person I meet   
• I promise myself to make all my friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them   
• I promise myself to look at the sunny side of everything and make my optimism come true   
• I promise myself to think only the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best   
• I promise myself to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own   
• I promise myself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future   
• I promise myself to wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature I meet   
• I promise myself to give so much time to improving myself that I have no time to criticize others   
• I promise myself to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble   
• I promise myself to think well of myself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, bun in great deeds   
• I promise myself to live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to the best that is in me

Promise yourself that you’ll spend some time reflecting on who you want to be in the upcoming year.  Then, make it so.

What will you promise yourself next year?