The hol­i­days are almost upon us.  Many of us will be spend­ing time with fam­ily.  Some of us look for­ward to that and oth­ers of us dread it.

Think about your fam­ily life for a moment. If you are like most peo­ple, there are a vari­ety of dynam­ics that sur­round your fam­ily.   You get along, you don’t get along.  You laugh and have fun and you storm and yell.  You talk to each other and you don’t talk to each other.  You love your sib­lings, but you can’t wait to go home and get away from them.  You love your par­ents, but they drive you nuts.  You love your own kids, but you can’t stand them at times and you can’t wait for them to grow up and leave home. (OK,  I can hear some of you chuck­ling and nod­ding your heads, espe­cially if you have teenagers.)

So what can you draw upon when con­flicts arise and you need to save your san­ity?  You can draw upon your core val­ues.  Your core val­ues are your foun­da­tion.  They are your guid­ing prin­ci­ples.  And if they are truly your core val­ues, they are very slow to change.  They pro­vide you with con­stancy and clear direc­tion.  So when con­flict arises in your fam­ily, get clear on your own core val­ues and then assess whether your fam­ily — includ­ing your chil­dren — know and under­stand your core values.

Hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with your chil­dren about your core val­ues will help them to under­stand the rea­sons for rules, guide­lines and your con­cern about accept­able and unac­cept­able behavior.

And as you get clar­ity of your core val­ues, check them to deter­mine if there is one that allows for respect and tol­er­ance.  A num­ber of fam­ily issues are caused by people’s inabil­ity to respect dif­fer­ences and allow a fam­ily mem­ber to be dif­fer­ent than the fam­ily norm.

Reg­is­ter for a Strengthen the Har­mony work­shop to bring more har­mony into your life and family.