Starting new conversations in the workplace!
Aloha,
This article has been updated, and now appears within my current blog. You can read it here:
On Christmas, You’ll be at Work
The articles and essays I currently publish can be found on www.ManagingWithAloha.com (RSS)
Thank you for your visit,
Rosa Say
Workplace culture coach, and author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business: Learn more here.
Despite all the commercialism which surrounds it, I do think that our practice of exchanging gifts at Christmas has a great deal of merit to it. At its’ core, exchanging gifts serves to help us learn to be givers.
I would love to say that giving is one of my innate talents, but I recognize that it’s a lesser one at best; in my case it’s more of a skill I have to work on improving and refining constantly. The act of giving itself is easy for me; the skill I need to cultivate is in giving the right thing, the thing that will be loved and cherished.
Every year I resolve that I will be better as a gift-giver, and I am afraid that I continue to disappoint myself and fall short of my own expectations, but I will keep trying. I don’t think it is that difficult, the challenge is that time eludes me; I’ve never started soon enough to devote the thought and care I should. Christmas Day approaches, and I start scrambling.
Flickr photo credit.