HOLIDAY GUIDANCE: CALM & BRIGHT

HOLIDAY GUIDANCE: CALM & BRIGHT
We are free to spend our time and energy as we wish. There are fountains of love within us, we can expand into compassionate understanding, we can bend time, we can go inside and heal, and we can reserve some space for ourselves. In that space it serves us to explore what is emerging, what is lying dormant that is ready to express. Winter quiet summons us to explore our inner lands. May you find peace in the stillness and invite light to shine from within to keep you warm.

The holidays are here.
‘Tis the season of glorious sparkling lights, warm beverages, turkey dinners, songs of the season, and often intense storms of stress. Just driving to and from work, finding parking, or walking to a coffee shop in the morning over the next month may send you into a tired tizzy. For many, the holidays represent the extreme, being “on” all the time, hosting, forced smiling, and tolerating family gatherings. Many of us merely survive the experience every year. Just making it through emotionally, financially, energetically, and physically without reaching meltdown mode and intense adrenal fatigue can be a massive feat. Even if we have all of our shopping done, our meal plans complete, our holiday travel arrangements set up, the collective consciousness of holiday shoppers everywhere does not easily allow for immunity from the stressed momentum. We are bombarded with chaotic demands and media frenzies that create overstimulation and outrageously high expectations.

Much of our stress during the holidays comes from lack of preparation.
A friend recently said to me that the reason everyone is so stressed out during the holidays is that nobody spends the time to prepare. I would say this echoes most of life. We don’t take the time to prepare, because we don’t think we have the time, which leaves us unprepared and feeling anxious and stressed. There are a few things we can do however to help up prepare for this important time, that contrary to retail chain and mass media teachings, is not about finding the best deals on cozy sweaters, a turkey, or beautifully wrapped gifts. The holidays are a dazzling spiritual time, if we allow them to be. This season offers opportunities for healing, communing with the divine, spiritual re-connection, family, reflection, awakening, reverence, devotion, rebirth and rest.

Set your intentions for the season
Yes, it can be as simple as “Calm and bright,” as long as you are willing to do a little visualization and grounding to support your intention, and you are willing to find your own inner calm and inner radiance during the season, you will be divinely supported in what you intend. Set the tone, and if you’re visual like me, keep the intention somewhere you can see it each day. Have your kids do the same to add an extra sprinkle of magic to this spectacular season!

Remember we are all kindred spirits
Be kind while driving, while shopping, and yield while operating from your personal agenda. Lend a hand, give thanks, and take a moment to actually breathe. Close your eyes, inhale, exhale…do it three more times, deeper each time. Whether you shop online from your pajamas or venture into the mall scene that makes shopping look like a competitive spectator sport during the holidays, give yourself enough time to actually enjoy the experience. Make it less about the list, and more about the joyful elements of the season that warm your heart and delight your spirit.

Stay grounded
If you haven’t become addicted to a spiritual morning routine, now is a good time to start, for sanity’s sake. Want to have the stamina to smile at Aunt Mildred’s spilled wine and the kids’ food fight over your holiday dinner? Then take the time to give to yourself first, and make it the first thing you do in the morning, each morning through the New Year. If you adopt it now, it just may become a brilliant new habit to celebrate by the time you ring in the New Year. Take the list from the October monthly guidance and really apply it daily.

Hibernate and rest more
The holidays can take a lot out of us, they can be emotionally charged and energetically draining. But if we prepare ourselves with lots of sleep and downtime, exercise, nutritious food, water, and gentle self-care, we are more likely to move through the season with ease. Find some time to play this holiday season too, ignite your own inner child, and your creative spirit!

Simplify and give thoughtfully
Cards are excellent gifts. If you take the time to write a thoughtful, heartfelt message, it can resonate for years on end. Gift giving can become expensive, tedious, and obligatory. Choose one “favorite thing” from the year that you want to share with your friends and family and buy it in bulk, with a greeting explaining why it means so much to you and why you’d like to share it. Buy locally, maybe even consumables. Our family has a $25 consumable gift exchange every year and it is wonderful! If you are the gift-giver that has something special planned for every single person in your family, try to shop in one area, or on one day, and use the Internet! Lots of online stores offer free shipping during the holidays. When in doubt, lean on small and thoughtful gift ideas. Also, give yourself the gift of daily spiritual connection, or centeredness, of inner calm throughout the season.

Gratitude leftovers
Walk in gratitude, there is always something to be grateful for, and as discussed in gratitude leftovers, this is another habit that we can adopt that opens the forces within the Universe that simply give us more abundance to be grateful for. Offering up gratitude literally ushers in a force delivering more of what you are already so thankful for. Small example: if you have very little money to spend this holiday season, and your first reaction is to get scared about how you will pull it off, shift the energy you send out to being grateful for the money you DO have. This will help bring more of it in, versus the alternative, which perpetuates lack. The same goes for belonging, connection, healing, and anything else you can think of that you desire more of.

Reflect and make room for the new
There is no better time than the end of the year to reflect on how far you have come. Where you started and where you are now, highlighting the lessons learned, the new experiences, the risks taken, the growth. It helps us to see how far we have come, and to feel grateful. It helps us to know we are capable of BIG movement in relatively small increments of time. Reflection can also help us identify what may be emerging that we quieted, or the beauty lying dormant on an interior shelf that we need to dust off and allow to come through us. We can see a little more of where we might be going and what we innately feel called to experience or create in the new year. Get authentic while going through your interior domain, and shift anything that needs shifting, start to make room for the new, and start to see what that might be.

May the miracles of the season bless you and yours, and may you shine your light during the holidays and throughout the glorious New Year.

Love,
Jenna