Perhaps I am a little behind the times, but it still sort of grabbed my attention when I found myself in WalMart the day after Halloween and noticed Christmas wreaths on every checkout register.

With another holiday season upon us, I notice there seem to be two kinds of folks in the world – the complainers and the appreciators. I tend to avoid the complainers and appreciate the appreciators.

I wish I were half as great a person as my dog thinks I am.

If you are in a relationship, here are a couple things you can do today:

• Appreciate that you have a relationship, and

• Tell the person you are with at least one thing you appreciate about them.

If you are looking for a relationship, you are not likely to find one sitting at home every night watching other people live while watching television.

Have you been to a kids movie lately? The animation is so great that I have to keep reminding myself that the creatures I am watching are not real.

If you are currently discussing your family holiday visiting plans, remember that your only true obligation is to create great memories for the family you have now.

File this under the heading of “from the frying pan into the fire” – people who leave one marriage and quickly get into another one without making any changes to their own contribution to the failure of the last one.

A scene recently described to me – A car with dad and mom in the front seat, happily smoking away on their cigarettes while the two kids bicker and scream in the back seat. A kid in the school bus next to them gives them a creatively vulgar hand gesture. The parents roll down their window and scream at the bus driver about the kid on the bus being a bad example to their children. How’s that again?

As we watch all these young celebrities noisily implode before our eyes, it might just dawn on us that money and fame are not everything.

For more tips and tools for you and your relationships, visit http://www.SecretsofGreatRelationships.com

Jeff Herring, MS, LMFT, is a marriage and family therapist. E-mail him at [email protected] or, for more tips and tools for living, you can visit www.JeffHerringOnline.com.