It would be impossible, and wrong, to ignore the twin disasters of Hurricane Sandy and Sandy Hook School.

Nothing can mitigate or explain or ease the unspeakable sadness that has enveloped many following these horrific events, both natural and man made.

I do think it is a reminder to count our blessings, reach out to others, and remember that our days too, are numbered.

This year and season in particular, reach out to some forgotten friend, relative or neighbor. Engage in those acts of random kindness. And be good to yourself so that you can also be good to others.

Isn’t it time for you to bring a little joy into your life and the lives around you? It is, after all, about all we really have to give in this life.

Our Holiday gift to you – a repaired and recalibrated gyroscope.

When I was seven years old one gift I received was a string propelled gyroscope, a top that was endlessly fascinating. I’d wind the string, pull it, and balance the top on pencil points, table edges, and other things and wonder how it kept from falling.

During all of the years of my childhood, and yours, we were unknowingly constructing an internal gyroscope that was supposed to keep us from falling. We did this by osmosis, internalizing whatever our environment gave us.

And no matter how defective, nuts, dangerous, abusive, dysfunctional, or just plain silly, that internal “gyro” became our unconscious definition of “normal.”

Particularly in our personal lives, with our erratic gyros we find ourselves sabotaging our own lives, or finding people who will sabotage them for us.

One of the many things we help you with is recognizing your own self-defeating behaviors and relationships and learning how to manage them. CBT can help, so can some assertiveness training, as can simply realizing that we all do a lot of only semi-conscious decision making.

Read more about this in: Ending Alcohol Abuse: What Works

Maturing, as Dr. Jane Loevinger put it, is a matter of bringing more of the unconscious into awareness. That’s one of the reasons we use her Sentence Completion Test with clients. It’s a good way to demonstrate how you differ from the people around you, and why that’s important, and how you can use the information it generates to manage and correct your gyroscope.

For the Holidays this year? How about no more auto-pilot living? How about really being in control of your life?

That’s what we offer and there’s a whole new year ahead to enjoy living your life – not being a spectator, sitting by, and wondering what hit you.