We have talked lots of times about giving the gifts you want to receive, but it occurred to me that it applies to more than just material things.    The same principle applies to how you treat other people.

Everyone likes to receive compliments, but how often to we pay compliments to the people around us?  The next time you’re feeling down on yourself, try complimenting someone else.  Tell a friend why they are a good friend.  Tell a co-worker why they’re good at their job.  Compliment someone you barely know, or don’t know at all, on their clothing.  You’ll find that when you compliment other people, you feel better about yourself.

Unfortunately, society often tries to teach us that we’re not supposed to talk about our feelings, or share our emotions with others.  It’s too bad that other people’s insecurity leads to this type of thinking.  If we were all more honest with each other about what we feel, the world would be a better place.  We could solve our conflicts instead of pretending they don’t exist.  And we would say positive things to the people that we care about.

For the next week, try saying at least one complimentary thing to a different person every day.  See how much better you feel when you do it.

Forgiveness isn’t an action.  It’s a process, and it can take forever.

Emotional hurt is different from physical hurt.  You can’t see it.  There is no physical scar; no bruise; no dent that you can take to the body shop and get fixed.  Emotional pain will sneak up on you for a long time; maybe forever.

People are going to hurt you in your life.  There is no avoiding that.  Every time someone does something that is hurtful to you, you have to make a choice.  You can choose to hold onto the hurt and be angry, or you can make a choice to forgive them.  It’s perfectly fine to be mad at first.  It’s natural to have an angry response to someone hurting you.  But the only way to get over the pain is to choose forgiveness.

The problem comes in later, after you’ve forgiven the person.  You can think that you’ve gotten over it, then something happens that triggers the pain, and all of a sudden you’re having an emotional reaction and you don’t know why.  Then you have to make the same choice again; to be mad or to renew the forgiveness.  It kind of doesn’t seem fair.  Someone does something to hurt you, and you’re the one who has to spend time and energy, maybe for years, continuing to forgive them.

But think about the alternative of staying angry.  If you’re mad at someone, what do they feel?  They don’t feel anything.  They can’t feel your anger.  It has no effect on them at all.  All it does is hurt you.  It doesn’t feel good to be mad.  It’s stressful to yourself, and to the people you care about.

Either way you choose, you have to live with some amount of discomfort.  You either deal with the triggers of the past hurt, and repeatedly choose forgiveness, or you choose to stay angry, and you deal with the stress that that choice will add to your life.

I choose to live my life on my own terms.  I choose to live my life on purpose.  I choose forgiveness.  What will you choose?

What is power?  My International Relations professor in college told us that it is the ability to get someone else to do what you want.  I think that this is partially complete  It is also your ability to resist someone else who is trying to get you to do what they want.

We all have power.  Some of us are more aware of it than others, and some of us are much better at using it.  Just because you don’t feel your own power doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.  You just need some practice using it.

We are all under pressure from others to do what they want us to do.  From the time we are small children deciding what game to play, to professionals in the workplace dividing up the responsibilities, people use their power to get what they want.  Do you find it hard to say ‘no?’  Do you find it hard to ask someone to do something, or to do more than what they were doing?  It may be time to find your power.

It’s important to be fair, and to be able to work, and play, collaboratively with others.  But what about when the others aren’t being fair or co-operative?  You have to power in you to stand up for what’s right.  You have the power to tell a friend or teammate to pull more weight.  Are you afraid they will be mad at you?  That is a reasonable concern, because they might get mad.  But does that really matter?  Who are you trying to please, and why?  If you know what is right, then you are allowed to stand up for it, even if that means that someone else may get mad at you.

You need to stay true to yourself, and in order to do this, you need to find your power.  When you cave in, you give up your power to another person, and you lose a little of yourself.  When you stand up for what is right, and you exercise your power, you get even stronger.  You can do this in a way that is still kind and considerate.  You don’t need to turn it into a confrontation.  And if the other person insists on making into something bigger than it is, that is their choice.  Is this hard?  Absolutely.  Is it worth it?  Without a doubt.

Find your power.  Picture yourself standing up for what is right.  Exercise that power, and see how good you feel when you do.