New Year Plans: How Can You Exhibit Your Best Personality Traits?

For many people, celebrating Christmas will be extended for several days simply because family and friends continue to make contact to express their love and appreciation. Exchanging gifts is just one way to demonstrate appreciation and happiness. Making an effort to be physically present validates the strength of our love for others.

Coming together tests the positive and negative strength of attachments. Whether you are the invited guest or serving as host for others, there are always underlying expectations that must be acknowledged and adhered to if stress and potential conflict are to be kept to a minimum.

To make the best of a holiday visit, always exhibit your best personality traits the Lord God endowed you with at conception. Believe you can action yourself into a new way of feeling as you demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit, like love, joy and patience. God bestows these on you so you can be a blessing to others.   

      

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So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. …And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

~Colossians 3:12,14 The Message

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To Avoid Heated Conflict, Keep Words Cool

Even in the closest relationships, disagreements are impossible to avoid – and even when people are of similar temperament and personality. Some individuals keep their opinions to themselves to avoid conflict and keep peace. Yet most people feel compelled to refute what they do not agree with by arguing or by presenting evidence to the contrary.

Because disagreements are normal, healthy families and couples usually agree upon some basic rules for communicating under difficult conditions. One helpful rule is to maintain personal integrity by refusing to digress into inappropriate language and shouting matches.

Patience is a fruit of the Spirit and necessary for preserving personal integrity in the search for solutions to conflicts. Defending integrity is vital to effective communication. Listen to Proverbs 11:3: “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.” Permit the presence of the Lord God to be your guide.  

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Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.

~Proverbs 17:27 English Standard Version

 

It’s a mark of good character to avoid quarrels; but fools love to pick fights.

~Proverbs 20:3 The Message

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