Gifts of the Season

This time of year tends to be a time when many of us are caught up in the intoxicating consumerism that comes with the holidays.  The popular song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ would force you to spend $27,393 on your true love this year if you used the song as a shopping list (Reuters 2013).  Rest assured that I won’t be doing any finger pointing here, because in the past I have been an active participant during the holiday season partaking in traditional spendthrift tendencies. 

With the plethora of buying and gift giving that occurs, sometimes we can get lost in the hustle and bustle to get the latest and greatest gifts to bring the biggest smiles.  There’s a cliché we are all familiar with that says ‘It’s the thought that counts’.  Now this cliché is usually used in instances where people don’t like their gift, or it’s not what they expected, so they use the saying as a scapegoat.  But what would happen if we lead with that as our premise for gifts for family, friends, coworkers, and our employees?  In reflecting about this I began to think about what types of gifts we might see more of, tangible and intangible, and how gift giving could change.  There were two things that came to mind that I’d like to focus on here, and that I hope to give more of during Christmas this year, as well as in the near future.

Having been a supervisor of employees there is always the dilemma of what to give them as gifts, whether it’s for birthdays, milestone achievements but especially around the holidays.  After a conversation with a former colleague about gifting to employees, I saw how time could be a very important gift in the workplace.  This type of gift makes a lot of sense because time is such a precious entity.  Time is so precious that we have placed value on it by the hour when creating wages.  Therefore why not give time as a gift?  Once those minutes in life have gone by they cannot be replaced, which makes them so precious.  The gift of time can manifest in multiple different ways, but I would suggest that time in the form of a day off would be the most beneficial.  As the conversation progressed, it became very clear that vacation time is seen as a free-time where employees were free to do with it as they choose.  The converse of this, would be time with coworkers or with their supervisor in a non-work environment such as a retreat.  This is beneficial for team building, but when it comes to a gift for an employee whose day is typically structured by the organization they work for, a vacation day is that much more of a precious commodity.   

Gifting time is not only something that is important in the workplace, but also in one’s personal life.  Spending time with those that we love and care about is something that is very important to many of us.  However when you spend time with those that are close to you, it is very much appreciated by those you are spending that time with making it special.  Another form of gifting time in one’s personal life can come via volunteering it to a cause that you are interested in.  Following the idea that time is valuable and precious, using your personal time to share a talent, or help a cause, can be a great gift to that cause.

The second gift I thought of, could have tangible elements to it.  The gift of thanks can be given by a handwritten personal note, which in our age of technology can mean so much more.  If technology is necessary, making it personal instead of a standard thank you goes a very long way.  It may also come in the form of a token of appreciation where something is given that has a lot of thought put into it, but may not necessarily be the most expensive item.  This is a place where the cliché mentioned above ‘it’s the thought that counts’ really plays a significant role, because the cliché is used as the motivation to give rather than an excuse to give just anything.

             During this holiday season I hope to share more gifts like those mentioned here.  It may be too late for Christmas Day or other holiday’s that you might have done some shopping for but maybe you will consider some of the thoughts here when doing your own gift giving in the future. 

In Works Cited Section:

Jenkins, Colleen. (December 2013). Cost of “Twelve Days of Christmas” gifts leaps in 2013. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/us-usa-christmas-gifts-idUSBRE9B10O320131202.

 

 

Thankful for Good...and Bad?

As the Thanksgiving Holiday draws closer by the hour, we see on many social media networks people asking friends to post what they are thankful for.  This is certainly the perfect season to be pensive of what we appreciate and to share that gratitude with our friends and family as we all get together and reconnect this upcoming weekend.  There is plenty in my life that I am grateful for, and the ease of creating such a list is something in and of itself I am thankful for.  I won’t bore you with my full inventory here, but as I watched others post their thankful lists on Facebook, some by the day, others by the week, I started to notice a pattern.  I noticed that so many things were related to family, pets, jobs, and all around very positive feel-good type things.  This got me to start thinking (not in a scrooge bah-humbug way) but what about the not-so-good things; can we be thankful for those too?  In that moment, I found this week’s blog.

I started to think about the potential for being thankful for the unconventional not-so-good things that people usually aren’t thankful for.  I wondered if I could still be thankful for some of those things even though in the moment it was painful and difficult and the answer was, “Yes”.  You’re probably thinking I went off the deep end and how could that be so, but it’s possible.  I’ve written about finding a silver lining in a previous post titled ‘When Life Happens…’ but this is something a little bit different.  I’m referring to being thankful for something after the event or occurrence has happened in a reflection for how it has contributed to making us a better and stronger person, not just finding something positive in the moment to get through it.  I’m also not saying you should be thankful for every bad thing that has happened to you, but there are some that might not be as bad when we look back on it.

A prime personal example of that was the end of my dream of becoming a doctor.  As a child, adults always ask, “What you want to be when you grow up?”.  For as long as I can remember my answer was consistently ‘A doctor’.  In college my experiences coaching youth basketball, volunteering as a mentor for kids, and substitute teaching narrowed my answer down to ‘A Pediatrician’.  The next thing I knew I was walking across the stage with a Pre-Med Physiology degree, but I had received rejection letters from the medical schools that I applied to.  Instead of becoming a Pediatrician, I pursued a Master’s Degree in Health Communications.  While in that program I was an Assistant Hall Director and discovered and built a career in Student Affairs.  I couldn’t have been more thankful for those med. school rejection letters because student affairs (Residence Life to be specific) was where I had some of the most amazing experiences, and met an abundance of wonderful people, staff and students.  At the time yes, the rejection letters were devastating, but I could never have predicted such a bright light at the end of the tunnel and looking back on it, I am thankful for what it lead to.

When asked what we are thankful for we tend to focus on the easy things that make us happy and that are positive. There’s nothing wrong with that because that’s great, I always encourage positivity.  But it’s also important to reflect on the tough times that have made us who we are today.  The things many people focus on as regrets, are instead the events and occurrences that have given us an opportunity to be stronger, smarter, and better people.  I’m not saying you should ruin your Thanksgiving by flooding your thoughts with bad stuff that has happened to you.  However it is important to think about the things that have made you who you are today, that may not have been ideal at the time but now could be something you would be thankful for happening because without it, you would never be who you are today.  We should learn to live our lives with no regrets.  Stop looking back and saying “I could’ve, would’ve, should’ve”.  The bottom line is that it happened, and you can move forward carrying with you the knowledge and experience gained to make your own life and the lives of others better.  We can be thankful for those times as well as everything else that is feel-good and positive.

Thanks and Giving

With November arriving, many of us turn our thoughts to the cherished fall holiday, Thanksgiving.  Just the word itself can conjure up fond memories of a kitchen filled with mouth-watering aromas of turkey, stuffing, gravy, apple pie and a plethora of other wonderful food.  We typically enjoy our meal with family and/or friends gathered around, laughing and joking and watching football games or movies after we’ve finished eating. 

While you might be able to relate to everything I’ve already said here, it should come as no surprise that there are many who have never had, or can’t imagine a scene such as that during this Thanksgiving.  As I was driving around Austin this past week doing various errands, I was very pensive about this because of those I drove by and see every day on various street corners with signs asking for money, food or work.  My train of thought continued as I watched the news every night thinking about those that have been affected by recent heavy rains causing them to lose everything to flood waters, and how their Thanksgiving would be completely altered this year.

All too often we tend to remember the homeless, and the less fortunate around this time of year.  Our consideration lasts through approximately Christmas while we are intoxicated by a philanthropic mood that somehow permeates the air for two months.  We feel great about ourselves and how helpful we have been because we fill a few plates for the homeless Thanksgiving Day, and we gave a $10 bill to the Salvation Army bell ringer as we walked out of the store on Black Friday.  Then we hit January and turn our attention to whatever resolutions we’ve made to get in shape, or eat healthy, etc.  I’ve been guilty about this as well so I’m not chastising anyone by any means.  Instead I’d like to encourage a new perspective because the homeless and less fortunate are still a part of our society and their need does not go away just because the Thanksgiving and Christmas season is over.  More importantly we need to remember that they are our brothers and sisters in life.

So I’m suggesting a new spin on Thanksgiving to make it “Thanks and Giving”.  I would love to see Thanksgiving morph into something where we are not only reminded to give thanks for what we have in our lives, but we also make a commitment to give our time (not just money) year round to those who are in need.  The smallest things like going through your closet each season and giving to the Salvation Army what you don’t use, or choosing a day to meet with some friends and volunteer your time at the local food bank are some inexpensive and easy ways to start giving back.

We have a responsibility to the communities we live in, and it’s up to the person in the mirror to make a difference.  As this season is upon us, I encourage you to join me by figuring out ways to make a difference and help the less fortunate more consistently throughout the year and not just when Thanksgiving and Christmas comes around.