Sometimes I get to the end of all the Christmas busyness and think “I’ve missed it!” I can find myself spending so much time fussing over details that I can’t see the overview and enjoy it: of spending all my time slaving away in the kitchen and never sitting and laughing with my family: of getting unreasonably upset if something is burnt, late, or not pretty enough!

Transactional Analysis suggests that we are all pushed and pulled by internal beliefs, and they call these beliefs Drivers. They have labelled 5 of them

Please Others

Be Strong

Try Harder

Be Perfect

Hurry Up

You may have spotted from the paragraph above, one of my key Drivers is Be Perfect!

The Drivers are good in their own way. They help us to achieve and to aspire and to feel valued for what we do in a world where getting valued for just being us can be hard. But each of them is insatiable: we will never be perfect enough or please everyone. What I’ve learnt is that knowing that and giving myself a choice as to whether I manage the Driver or it manages me is really useful.

The first step to managing them well is to know which impact on us and choose what we want to do about it. With years of coaching, self reflection and a growing awareness that life is short I’ve learnt to (mostly) manage my Drivers better and so have given myself more choice. I can now choose to believe that I am still OK, even when the roast turkey isn’t perfect and the dinner table doesn’t look as good as the one in the magazine!

I still want things to be lovely and to make the effort, but no longer at any price. Rather than being unconsciously driven through events, I can recognise my Drivers and decide what I want to do with them. I can now choose my Christmas

Whichever of the Drivers push or pull you, I hope that you too can recognise them, appreciate them and manage them well so that you get to choose the Christmas that is just right for you.

Wishing you a very Happy Christmas (Happy Holidays for all my readers in the US) and a wonderful start to 2017.

Thank you for reading this blog. More Choose You thoughts to share in the New Year.

Jenny