We often anticipate holidays with great excitement and, if you're anything like me, not a little stress! All the things I would normally be doing while I'm away still seem to need to be done - before I go. So I work myself to a frazzle, and stress everyone around me at the same time!

Is it something to do with our personality, I wondered, as I prepared to leave for my holiday one day? I studied other people as they prepared to go away, my youngest adult daughter, for example. She doesn't stress out at all - ever! What she couldn't do before she left, she reasoned, could be done when she got back. What a novel thought!

So I made her thoughts count as I prepared to leave. And it worked! What a relief! The day before I left, I even had time to sit and relax, visit some friends, go out to brunch with my two daughters for Mother's Day, look at photos of their recent holidays, talk to my daughter in London and my son in Zurich, and pack at leisure.

A huge storm blew up overnight, coming, I suspect, straight from the South Pole. The wind was in a frenzy, blowing itself into a gale of about 100 kilometres an hour, the rain was driving horizontally against the windows, the house was shaking. But I was determined to remain stress free! If the plane couldn't take off from Wellington (New Zealand) that day, then someone would make alternative arrangements, I was sure.

It's your thoughts that count. As I looked around me and saw some of the things that I'd left incomplete, I knew I'd be back to complete them and, if I was really lucky, someone else might even complete some of them while I was away! The difference that this thought made to my wellbeing was a blessing.

So, if your thoughts don't support you in your life, borrow someone else's and try them on for size!