Relax, you're doing fine this Christmas!

"Deer Santa,

I ben a gud boy - well, most times.

I have done a gud job writing the news - almost all the time ..."

We have just printed our 2018 Letters to Santa from Clay County children and they will be in Friday's edition of The Brazil Times and online at http://www.thebraziltimes.com.

I love the letters to Santa because they are so much fun and silly and capture Christmas - or chrimus - through a child's eyes.

A few really grabbed me this year. I am summarizing what they wrote. You can read the letters for yourself.

• Dear Santa, I know we won't have much for Christmas this year because we had a house fire that destroyed everything ...

• Dear Santa, I want one toy, but please don't forget my family. Dad wants ..., Mom wants ..., My sister wants... and don't forget the baby....

• Dear Santa, please let us go to Disney World ...

• Dear Santa, mom wants a bigger house ...

• Dear Santa, dad wants a new truck ....

• Dear Santa, please help our family to be happy ...

See, some of these letters are amazing as they reflect the values children are being taught.

I am not judging. As a friend told me this week, you really don't know why people are hateful because you don't know what they are facing at home.

I love a practice we were taught at a management seminar many years ago.

The leader passed around a sack of cotton swabs and told us to take one for each telephone (I said this was many years ago), our computer monitor, our desk, as many as we wanted.

Then he held one up when we had all grabbed a few of the swabs.

"These are not just cotton swabs," he said. "These are Q-Tips. I want you to tape one to any place you deal with people — where you get email, where you get telephone calls, where people come to see you in your office. Then, when someone is angry, when someone complains, look at the Q-Tip and remember it's an acronym for "Quit Taking It Personally" because those people are not angry at you. They are frustrated with the situation, even if you were the cause, it is not an attack of you. They are upset with what happened."

This little practice revolutionized the way I deal with people, especially angry people. It has helped others with whom I shared this Q-Tip.

• • •

Busy this holiday? Who isn't, right?

I really believe we are doing better handling our tasks than we may think. We are so afraid of dropping the ball that we would rather drown than let someone down.

When I went to the hospital for an emergency last summer, I was overwhelmed. I had no pain; drugs and an emergency procedure relieved that. But I was overwhelmed with the idea that my emergency had trickled down to affect so many other people.

I was about halfway through a 40-page special publication for the Brazil Rotary Club. Our advertisers had purchased ads in it that were sold by our advertising representatives. Hundreds of dollars in revenue for our company was at stake. That money was not just profit for the company owners, but it would go into salaries for employees and so on and so on.

But, our staff jumped in and finished the tab on time. The 4th of July happened and the Brazil Rotary Club had a successful celebration, which is what the tab was all about.

But I felt terrible, even though the physical breakdown was not my fault. I had been watching my diet and working out regularly.

My boss and my boss's called to reassure me it was all good and they looked forward to having me back at work and doing the "good job you have been doing."

So, when you feel overwhelmed, take a moment to breathe, pray, meditate, and remember, you are probably doing better than you think you are. And if you drop the ball once, so what? No one expects you to be perfect. And, "they" are so caught up in their own activities, the usually don't think about what you are doing!

So, to directly quote one of our little buddies who wrote to Santa, "Peace out, dude!"