With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought this Weekly ONE Thing could have a love theme. So this week’s question is, What is ONE Thing you could do this week to express love to a person or people you care about?
That leaves a pretty broad scope of options. It could be making a cup of tea or coffee for your partner and bringing it to them while they are watching TV or take it up to them in bed early in the morning. It could be giving your kids a special Valentine’s treat. It could be as simple calling or emailing a friend you haven’t connected with in awhile.
This is a good question for me, because Valentine’s Day has sometimes proved to be a challenging holiday for me. I love holidays and I love romance. In the past, I have often had high expectations for Valentine’s Day and set myself up for disappointment. Sometimes I would make great plans for Valentine’s Day and then feel let down by my loved one’s reaction or their effort in making the day special. I actually wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago called the Valentines Cure for ideas about how to avoid being disappointed on Valentine's Day. http://dreamyourdreamsdaringdreamers.blogspot.com/2017/02/
This year, my idea is similar, but with an added element. I decided to ask my husband and children what is one loving thing I could do for them this week. I won’t tell you what their responses were, (and don’t worry, my husband’s answer wasn’t X-rated), but they were a little surprising to me. They weren’t things I would have thought of. I am glad I asked them what they wanted instead of giving them something I want or what I think they want.
The Golden Rule, “treat others as you would like to be treated,” is a nice idea. But I think an even better idea is the Platinum Rule, “treat others as they would like to be treated.” So I am going to treat my loved-ones they way they said the want to be treated and give them what they asked for.
And one more addition to my plan is to put myself on the list of my loved ones and do one special thing for myself. I think that will alleviate the pressure for other people to meet my expectations. I haven’t decided what the special thing for myself will be yet, but I will let you know what it is on Friday. And I will tell you how the rest of my experiment goes too.
I’d love to hear any ideas you come up with for your ONE Thing this week! Feel free to post it in the comments below or in The Weekly ONE Thing Facebook Group.