Hello SOTGC community.
I hope you found the last post in this series helpful for navigating the holiday season as a healthy, peaceful and awesome woman.
In that post, “The Holidays: how to be healthy, peaceful & awesome” I invited you to consider 1) how to remember the past, 2) choose health in the present, and 3) prepare for the future now.
Now let’s focus on the power of peace that we can experience even while we move through the multiple holiday tasks. Powerful peace comes from the unity of living out as a whole person with others in healthy relationships.
Start by 1) sharing your experience, 2) continue with practicing healthy hope inducers, 3) releasing past hurt and 4) wrap it up nicely with receiving peace in the present.
1) Share your experience
Sharing your experience requires actually being authentic with where you are in a given moment and inviting a trusted person into that moment with you. We are social creatures who long to know others and be known.
- Invite others to join you for holiday meals or local holiday events.
- Allow others to understand if you miss someone who isn’t with you this season
- Speak from your heart and share your dreams, hopes or joy.
- Respond to others with heart-statements, when they speak from the heart and head-statements when they speak from their head.
2) Practice hope inducers
Practice hope-inducers that look like some basic stress management but tie into how you uniquely experience the world.
- Rejoice over the things that are in your life and find ways to invite others to share in the gift.
- Look for ways to serve someone around you.
- Speak refreshing statements about your core identity to yourself.
- Be creative in your own way—whether that’s serving someone by reviewing their taxes, baking, cooking, painting, sketching, writing, singing, dancing, organizing a friends closet, shopping for a friend who needs wardrobe help, etc.
3) Release past hurt
Releasing past hurt is one of the quickest ways to have the capacity to enjoy powerful peace. When you release any past hurt you let yourself be human and then be free to live well now.
- On the flip side holding onto a past hurt is the surest way to hinder you from experiencing peace.
- Forgiving is important to releasing a hurt. Yes there is lots of talk on forgiveness and forgiving someone who hurt you allows you to be free from that weight.
- It doesn’t mean what they did is ok, and it doesn’t mean you forget it and allow it to happen again. It does mean you are free from the weight and you can be free to experience peace again.
4) Receiving peace in the present
Receiving peace in the present requires you to have the capacity to actually be present. Those who experience peace regularly are the ones who bring peace to others.
- Take in all your senses experience and be mindful of each.
- Sit and be still, because silence and stillness are the fertile ground for peace to grow.
- Tactically invite others to help with any current tasks so you can all actually enjoy the present.
When you walk through each of these steps you are truly gaining a great value as a whole person.
How will you share your experience?
What will you do to practice inducing hope in healthy ways and connect to our shared need for real meaning?
Is there anyone you need to forgive this holiday?
Take 1 step today to receive peace available now, maybe even pause for 1 minute of stillness after reading.
In the last post for this series we will provide 5 Steps for Visiting Family for the Holidays. If you will be returning home before this post and want the 5 steps, connect with me and I will send them over!
