Hello My Friends, I hope you enjoyed the holidays with family and friends and were grateful of the past year.
Now that you have assessed your last year and put down all of your New Year’s Resolutions, if you have kids or know of someone with kids, I want you to pay close attention to them and the gifts they have received during this holiday season. Have you ever notice how during kids birthday, holidays or whenever toys and presents may be given out, how excited our kids are. They tear through the giftwrap and boxes to get to the prize they want so bad. Even with a house full of other kids, you may notice how they may even grab their toys away from others and not share. Fast forward one month later and what happens; those same toys are stacked up in a corner somewhere no longer the object of our child’s desires. Six months before the holidays every time a commercial with a certain toy come on TV, all you would hear is how bad the kids would want that toy. Try taking a stroll through the malls without stopping at the toy store and see how far that will get you. However for some strange reason, as soon as they receive it and get through the holiday season, it is no longer wanted. Is it merely child’s play or something deeper than that.
We can learn a thing or two from our kids when it comes to our grown up toys and many possessions we have at our disposal. Oddly enough, we as adults display similar behavior in many aspects of our lives when it comes to our Grown-up toys or gifts. Think about you or someone you may know when it comes to relationships, careers, new cars or houses, etc… and ask yourself is it the thrill of the hunt to think about the item over and over until we finally get it? Or do we actually use the item to its full use and get the maximum thrill out of it once we attain it. Some of my friends is always giving me a hard time about having over 200k+ miles on my last 3 cars. What can I say,  I love driving and I want to make sure that I am getting the full use of my vehicle.
A BIG Question to ask yourself is how do you keep the excitement and enthusiasm going after you get what you want? To keep toys and gifts in perspective, I noticed a quote by Dale Carnegie that reads, “Success is getting what you want but happiness is wanting it after you get it.” This may not be the complete answer to being happy however it is a good statement to recall and a way to at least maintain some sense of valuing the things we want, get and maintain after the “newness” wears off.
Before you go out and get that new shiny toy that you just have to have, remember to keep it in perspective of why you want it. Go ahead and take inventory of all of the toys you have earned, bought or were given to you and see if there is still some happiness left over with it, before you buy the new “toys”. Remember to get the full use of it so that youwill not leave any stacked up in the corner somewhere.
Enjoy your toys,
P. Jackson
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