Christmas your way
Karen Cannon is a holistic well-being coach and practitioner. Plus she has created the amazing blog - 365 Pearls of Wisdom. I absolutely love following Karen on instagram, as she manages to invoke a feeling of calm every-time she shares her wisdom. Just what we need at this time of year.
Never has there been SO MUCH for us to think about, act upon and be responsible for right now, pressure is coming at us from all angles - politics, Christmas, climate change, relationships, finances, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale, body image and wet, cold, miserable weather!!
My head is spinning from it all and I’m sure yours is too!
It would be so easy to just stick our heads in the sand and avoid it all right? Find our nice cosy bubble and remain there, however this can end up cause more problems in the long run.
How would it feel though to sail through the next few weeks feeling calm, in control and actually contented with everything? Well mostly everything!
I have the perfect little exercise for you that can help you to achieve just that, it’s actually a new moon ritual that I had shared with my Instagram community last week but in all honestly it’s something you can do and keep doing at any point as we head into the festive period and through to the new year.
So pour yourself a mug/glass of something delicious, light your favourite candle, grab a note book and pen and let’s get started.
Knowing what we want gets easier when we get laser clear about what we don’t want so the first thing to do is reflect back to last Christmas and ask yourself what felt good, what didn’t feel so good, what worked out well and what went wrong? Take a few minutes to jot down your thoughts and feeling about everything.
Remember think about even the smallest details and ask yourself do you want that again for this year? What is it that you truly want to experience through the festive season and be mindful about the bits that weren’t so great and ask yourself why or how did they happen. Can you tweak anything? Would setting boundaries help? Can you plan to do things differently? Or approach something with a different mindset?
By writing all this down you can really focus in on the things that are most important and have a better understanding of stuff that doesn’t matter so much or that negatively impacted you last year.
Now this next bit might seem silly or even a bit uncomfortable, but I urge you to be brave and still do it. Spend a minute looking at yourself in the mirror - what can you see?
Ask yourself what do you want this Christmas, what is the most kind, compassionate and amazingly wonderful gift you can give to the person staring back at you?
Now, go ahead and set those intentions, write them down too so you can come back to them and reflect as the Christmas period unfolds.
Please take note that there are no right or wrong answers here, my perfect Christmas may look nothing like yours, or your siblings or your best friend or the person you work with and that’s ok, we are all different and will all have unique ideas of what feels right so just go with that!