Are you ready for the holiday season this year?

The stores are all decked out in traditional red and green or screaming neon for the design advanced, but through all of it I’m wondering if we’re all a bit tired.

A question at last night’s dinner party starts to bring things into sharper focus… When did we become a society of consumers? When did having something “new” to show become more important that having something to share – a story, a hug, a laugh or a joke? What was interesting is how we all – all generations – felt we had a hand in creating this sense of inferiority. And how we felt that “others” – other cultures, other places, may have missed the consumerist mentality.

It’s my feeling that none of us missed it. Today’s lead story on MSN “It's a Tiffany's or dollar store Christmas for Americans” starts to tell the story. It focused on how the stats from “Black Friday” were misleading and that our culture, our society is breaking down under the burden of consumerism and debt. You know the sentiment - no matter how bad things are, something new will make it all better.

We know this isn’t true. We know that life’s greatest pleasures come from moments of true connection. Think about it. When were you the happiest? When did you just smile and laugh without a thought to how you looked or how you were being perceived? I can guarantee it was when you connected with someone or many “someones”. It was when the sheer connection meant that you didn’t need something “new” to make yourself feel worthy of drawing attention your way. It was when just being was all that was important.

So how do we move away from the need for something “new” to make ourselves feel important, to finding what is really important - to allow ourselves to feel? Maybe this should be the holiday season to take the first step. Maybe this is the year to not overspend. I know retailers will cry the blues but maybe this does need to be the year where we connect over good company, good food with a good story, a hug, a laugh and a joke.

Finding the strength to be yourself

Meeting challenges always helps define us. We either succeed or succumb; but either way they define us. When I first started to write this I had a romantic notion of creating a myth of who I am, of supporting the notion of the ‘who’ that I willingly present to the world, but this is about meeting challenges, of inner strength and awareness.

I can't really remember when I first decided that being somebody else was preferable to being myself. Some of my earliest memories revolve around telling tales to anybody who would listen, or even just to myself. But somewhere along the line I decided that being myself just wasn't "good" enough to cut it.

I’m fairly successful by most standards. I’ve traveled the world and even lived in several different countries. I’m lucky enough to have a career I enjoy that has supported a great lifestyle. But even with all the material support that one could want, there always seemed to be something missing.

It would be wonderful to simply point a finger and say, “that’s the cause”, after all children are supposed to be clean slates without hidden insecurities. But I can’t find a convenient scapegoat to point at. My father was largely a missing feature in my early years due to workloads and career building, but I have many warm memories of when he was home. Yes I grew up in a family of exacting standards, but they were tempered with the warmth of love and acceptance. In this case, I think I was just one of those children who was extremely sensitive to her environment – every small slight took on major significance. Every frown became a condemnation.

The patterns of a lifetime develop step-by-step. If I were not ‘good’ enough, then I would become someone else. As a child I would simply retreat into a world of my own imagination. In later years I would physically travel to different places where I could become someone new… someone exciting. It sounds like the perfect profile for a budding young actor and in effect I did become an actor… in my own life story. The pattern of not facing problems, of metamorphosing into a new identity every few years, developed early. By the time I finished highschool I had perfected the art of hiding from myself. University gave me an even bigger stage to work on and graduation gave me the world at large. Through all of it I fought constant self-recrimination because I knew I wasn’t being honest. I knew the image on the outside did not match the scared little girl on the inside.

After graduation I sought out a life that would allow me to perpetuate my hidden agenda. I chose to live overseas, finding new stages in a variety of different countries. Moving from place to place is not difficult if you’ve perfected the art of fitting in. Moving also gives you the chance to hide because you’re always meeting new people and experiencing exciting new challenges. Staying within one country and moving from city to city would have served the same purpose, but moving from country to country was more exotic and fit the fantasy a whole lot better. Funny, but it was coming home that proved the greatest challenge and ultimately provided the greatest benefit.

In 1992 I returned to Canada after almost ten years overseas. At the height of the 90s recession, my timing could have been better, but the reality of economic hardship helped lead me to a time of personal triumph. In all of my travels I had never been without work or friendship. In moving to Toronto I encountered a town in crisis. Work was impossible to find. I was isolated socially and financially I was vulnerable. I finally didn’t have a place to hide. And yet out of this fragile time came one of my greatest triumphs.

It had never occurred to me that I would have any difficulty adjusting to life in my own country, after all I had adjusted to life in Australia, Indonesia and Mexico. But Toronto in the early 90s was different. This was a town that had flown high in the 80s and crashed in the 90s. Thousands of people were unemployed, businesses were failing and the property market had crashed. Instead of finding a quick position in my chosen career of advertising, I had to expand my horizons. I was facing challenges daily, but perhaps the hardest was the isolation.

We all have our gifts. My whole life I had relied on my intelligence, whether it was in my imagination or my analytical ability. Because I have always found intellectual pursuits relatively easy, an intellectual challenge really didn’t seem to be much of a contest. But athletic, I am not. I was always the last one to be picked for a team in school. Gym class was something to be endured, not enjoyed and the fitness movement of the early 80s pretty much passed me by. In fact my idea of a heavy workout was a night of dancing at a local club. So it’s easy to see why any challenge that involved the physical was truly a challenge indeed.

In the summer of 1992, after four months of isolation in a new town, I grabbed at the chance to participate in a charity event that would give me contact with new friends. So what if it meant I would be cycling over 1,400 kilometers. How hard can it be to ride a bike? I found out and in finding out also found something to be really proud of.

The event drew people from all over southwestern Ontario and Quebec. We cycled from Quebec City to Toronto via Montreal, Ottawa and Kingston and along the way I dug deep to find a core of strength I never knew I had. Each day we rode over 100 kilometers. To the uninitiated, that sounds like an impossible challenge in itself. The first thing I learned was not to face the task in its entirety. Instead break it down into doable segments. For me, this meant thinking in terms of just five kilometers to the next break. I took a lot of breaks. I was the last one in every night. And everyday I vowed this was not the sport for me. But by the end of the trip I knew there was nothing I couldn’t do if I really wanted to. By getting on that bicycle every day no matter how much it hurt, or how easy it would have been to stop, I had found something admirable in myself. I was seeing for the first time, what friends around the world had seen all along.

Since that summer in 1992 I have met a lot of challenges head on. I have continued to ride my bicycle. I even participate in other sports. I still don’t like working out at a gym and probably never will, but I call myself athletic now. By facing a challenge head on and seeing it through to the end I broke the cycle of lifetime habits. By finding a core of strength in myself, I was able to face so many other insecurities, to draw them out into the light of day and see them for the foolishness they were.

We are all flawed and we all have challenges to face, but by seeing them through we find the strength to face the next one and the one after that. Finding your challenge is not difficult, seeing it through is the challenge. For me, rewards that came easily were not rewards at all. I needed to face an insurmountable challenge and beat it. It was not the athletic challenge that counted, it was seeing something through to its conclusion. It was sticking with a difficult situation and not running away. That had been what the little girl had done. She had run away, felt shame in the running and then covered up the problem with exciting stories and exotic places.

My final metamorphous did not happen over night, it’s an ongoing exercise, but I’m not hiding from myself any more. I like the role of me a whole lot more than any of the perfect characters I had tried to play. I make mistakes, but they the world does not end. Each day I grow and I like the person I’m growing into.

It’s okay to not be popular

I speak publicly. And I enjoy it. But I only became very good at it the day I realized that I didn’t have to be liked by everyone. It was an epiphany of the first order. I was leading a seminar – as I had done many times before – when I finally woke up to smell the roses. I was not going to entertain everyone. Not everyone was going to like what I had to say or how I delivered the message. And that was okay.

At that very moment, I became a great presenter. I no longer worried about how I was being received and now just had a great time delivering the message. It’s a huge game changer for the majority of us. We’ve been raised – and maybe more so for women than men – with the idea that being popular… being liked… being part of the crowd was the main objective in life.

In fact, popularity, defined as the quality of being well-liked or common, dominates the social consciousness. Whole generations have been raised with the goal of achieving ‘popular status’. Hit TV shows deify the concept of power and wealth that follows “popularity”. Yet bowing to the god of popularity is what confines us and restricts our ability to develop and grow.

Originally ‘popular’ meant to be well-liked or well-respected. But somehow, over that last few years, popularity has taken on ominous overtones of manipulation and confinement. Breaking the bonds of popularity provides freedom and fulfillment. When you are no longer concerned with “what will others think”, you now have the ability to be yourself and strive for the best in what you want and can be.

It sounds like a lecture often presented to young girls on better personal development, but it is quite something else to internalize and understand what it really means to yourself. On the day that I realized I would not be liked by everyone (and that I didn’t in fact, like everyone myself), I was able to begin making life choices that fulfilled me and not my (sometimes) warped idea of what was expected of me.

General Contracting is not for the faint of heart

Let me start this article by saying that I don’t know if being your own contractor is really a good idea. After doing it myself, I now understand the value of hiring a good, experienced general contractor. However, that’s the catch, you need to find a good, experienced general contractor. One that understands your wants and needs, but also understands your decision making style and criteria for success.

We didn’t find that and have been extremely lucky to find accomplished subcontractors. What could have been a disaster, turned into a beautiful functioning home.

We had hired a friend – that should have been the first sign that we were doing something wrong. We hired a general builder and thought he was a general contractor. There is a big difference. A general handyman/builder, does that, he builds – usually studs for walls, maybe basic plastering and drywall, maybe hanging doors – he is not a finishing carpenter and he is not a general contractor. To assume so, is a quick path to disaster.

Just this simple misunderstanding of the terms of the trade shows you why it’s difficult to recommend wholeheartedly that any homeowner act at their own contractor. But sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to understand the value of something.

We thought we had done our research. Our plan was comprehensive. The renovation was extensive, but contained. We wanted to reconfigure the interior walls on the top floor of our Victorian style townhouse to accommodate a slightly larger bathroom, walk in closets and finished study/den. We did the plans and we did them in detail. We did drawings and checked measurements. We had determined what materials we wanted, researched pricing and purchased all the main items up front. We knew we wanted high end finishes, and realized that we’d have to cut costs to accommodate this desire.

We bought our tub from Home Depot homedepot.ca. Our tiles came from The Tile Shoppe tileshoppes.com. Closet organization came from Superior Closets superiorclosets.com. Beautiful Kohler faucets and hardware were purchased at a significant discount through an online store in the US faucet.com. Hint: we had to use a US postal address and pick up the products in Niagara but we save more than $1600.00 doing this. Hardwood floors are from Aurora Flooring aurorafloorings.com. Beautiful 70 mm thick Jatoba Prefinished 3” floors for just under $5.50/square foot installed. The amazing vanity with full ceiling height tower came from Home Again Inc.homeagaininc.com as did the side panel window insert and the closet doors. The marble for the vanity top and tub surround were from Sinco Granite and Marble sincogranite.com. All of these suppliers provided both superior products and service. I would highly recommend each of them.

But we quickly learned this was only the beginning. We’d ask for an estimate of materials costs from several different sources. A rough figure of $500 was the average. In reality, that was the average for getting the drywall delivered to the job site on the 3rd floor. Once the old walls came down, then the real costs start adding up. When the demolition was finished, the real work begins.

We had contracted for the builder to begin construction of the new interior walls during a time we would be out of the house (and out of the country). We were gone for two weeks and this, everyone agreed, should be long enough to put up the new studs and get the basic drywall up for the closets.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. If you’re out of the house, that is good. If you’re out of the country, that is bad. Since we were not on site, we couldn’t answer questions as they came up. Work stops. Instead of a house with the construction at the point where subcontractors could come in to do tiling, or plumbing, or electrical, basic studs had not been put in place. And once you have a messed up timeline, then you don’t have a builder, because he has other commitments as well.

At this point, my husband and I had to take over. With no prior experience and HGTV and DIY TV (thank God they were doing a program sampling at the time) as our teachers, we began cutting and hanging drywall. We quickly figured out that taping, mudding and painting were not our forte and used the services of Pride Custom Painters 416-418-5433. We hired electrical help from JTL and Sons at 647.505.3197. The plumbing was done by Plumbing Getting You Back on Tap 647.889.7585. But we did the lifting and cutting and screwing and hammering. We figured out how to build a tub deck. But mostly we were lucky. We had amazing subcontractors that really knew their trades.

Planning and getting subs in a timely manner is an art form in itself. In the competitive Toronto market, finding good trades people that are not fully booked for the next six months is even tougher. Look for licenses. It’s important, especially for electrical and plumbing. We never did find a finishing carpenter. We wound up putting up trim and caulking edges. The end result is stunning, but would we do it again… give me a few more months to forget the pain before I answer that one.

.

Have you noticed an increase in bait and switch marketing practices or false advertising?

Before proceeding further with this discussion we need to first understand the definition of “bait and switch” or “false and misleading” in terms of retail practices. Under the Competition Act by the Government of Canada, retailers are prohibited from advertising products at bargain prices that they do not have available in reasonable quantities. You are attracted to a store by an advertisement for a bargain-priced product. Once inside, you discover that the product that was advertised, the "bait," is sold out or otherwise not available. The switch occurs when a salesperson pressures you into purchasing a higher priced item as a replacement, or if you find yourself induced to make other purchases while inside the store. In both cases, the retailer successfully captures your shopping dollars by luring you to the store with an advertised bargain that was never intended to be made available in reasonable quantities.

On the other hand false or misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices provisions of the Competition Act contain a general prohibition against all materially false or misleading representations.

So have I noticed an increase in bait and switch marketing or false advertising practices?

I think I have. Over the last few months especially I have noticed stores advertising significant discounts and sales only to find that the sale is limited and not on the items advertised. As an example I recently went into Madison Shoes (owned by Nine West part of the Jones Group Inc) at the new Shops at Don Mills. Immediately in front of the doors as you enter the store is a display of winter boots with 3 large signs saying “take an additional 25% off the already reduced price”. In small print at the bottom of the sign read “selected styles”. As it turns out none of the boots on this display qualified for “selected styles”. Instead, the salesperson pointed out that the offer referred to a display of boots to one side of the store. These boots were not the stores prime sellers while the ones on display were.

It is not wrong to advertise a sale, it is wrong to imply that the sale is for specific merchandise when it is not. Is this false and misleading, I think definitely. Will I shop at the store again, not quickly. Do we, the consumer, have the ability and power to affect change? Yes, if we strongly recommend to retailers that we will not frequent their businesses if they participate in such practices. We have the power to take our dollars elsewhere.