I was invited to take part in a competition from Aussie, hair care miracle workers. The brief was:

“We have set you a challenge based on your passion for the good things in life. We want to see you get creative and come up with where some Aussie thinking would be best applied, with the best one from each category bagging the winner an awesome prize.

We’d love to see your community getting involved too, so invite them to post their own entries and the best one will receive a fantastic prize!”

The closing date is today (oops!), but if you want to join in you can just post a comment with your applied Aussie Thinking.

Here’s my shot at some Aussie Thinking:

I have to agree with Hayley from Ceriselle.org – this is a really hard task. After all, what exactly is “Aussie Thinking”? I read the Aussie Story to give me a better idea, and figured out that maybe it’s just making things happy, whether it’s dried up & frazzled hair, or people.

With Christmas around the corner, I think it is a great example of what could benefit from this type of Aussie Thinking. Christmas is becoming more & more “what I want” and less “how can I make my loved ones happy”. You see wish lists posted online, people picking out gifts for themselves instead of putting their effort into thinking what gifts would people love – whether they’re physical or not.

This Christmas I’ve worked really hard to get my husband a present that I know he will love. It’s expensive, so I did some extra work to help cover the cost. He’s been really good this year at not spending too much money and so I wanted to make him happy as a sort of reward, and give him something that he’d never buy himself. He’d never ask for it either, because of the cost, and I’d like to think that buying him that present is Aussie Thinking.

Christmas could definitely do with a bit more of this; a bit more consideration for others & some thoughtful generosity. Spend some time picking out presents or writing cards to people, and really think about them & what they would like to get from you.

Instead of just asking people what gifts they want, get to know them a bit more. If you know what kind of music they love, you could buy them a CD of an artist they haven’t tried before. Or if they love a certain author, then help them discover another they might like because of their tastes. You get the idea.

You don’t even have to buy people something to give them happiness for Christmas. If you live with someone & you have certain chores you each do, then give the gift of “a week off the washing up” or the promise to do all their tidying up for a month. You could even do some handmade ‘promise’ vouchers with different things in; a voucher for each promise; such as cooking dinner, vacuuming the house, or even taking the bins out.

Another way to give happiness this Christmas is to include them in your day. If you have a relative that lives alone nearby, then offer to pay them a visit on Christmas day to say hello & share some mince pies… or even invite them to eat Christmas dinner with you. Just being remembered and included will be enough to make some people happy during the holidays.

Spend a little time this Christmas doing some Aussie Thinking. Give some happiness, not just token presents ticked off a list.

Tags: aussie

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 8:33 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.