3 Clever Ways to Protect Your Happiness Over the Holidays

The holiday season is upon us. It’s usually the time of year for hosting, toasting and waiting in line. It’s typically dreamy landscape for extroverts. But this year looks different for us all. This year has added more stress and uncertainty than most of us are used to navigating.

The extra pressure from holiday stress and the unknowns around whether or not we will get to connect with our loved ones, makes it more challenging than ever to maintain a happy disposition, or sense of holiday cheer.

Here are 3 clever practices I’ve been drawing on (a lot) to protect my sense of happiness over the holidays. These practices serve as a daily reminder to tap into love and gratitude, over worry and fear.

If you find yourself wanting more comfort over the holidays, give these simple mindset tweaks a try.

#1) Choose Happy

Whether or not it’s comforting to hear – happiness is a choice. I choose it, you choose it, he chooses it and so does she. We also choose our unhappiness. The trick is to care a lot about how you feel.

When we are tuned in to how we feel, it becomes easier to detect when we need to course-correct and get back on the path of feeling good. When it comes to the added stress of the holiday season, caring about how we feel, is a powerful tool to protect our happiness.

If my deepest desire is to feel a sense of happiness and calm over the holidays, and I also understand I hold the key to my happiness, then it’s simply a matter of consistently choosing happiness.

Here are some examples of the ways we can choose our happiness over the holidays:

• Choose patterns of thought that are happy. Use your feelings as a guide. If you feel good, you are likely on the right track.
• Choose to re-direct patterns of thought that are negative and unhappy. This can be done by re-directing to what you do want, instead of focusing on everything you don’t want. Think gratitude: focus on what you love about life before you.
• Choose to engage in conversations that feel good. Refrain from engaging in negative conversations, or getting in heated discussions that don’t feel good.
• Choose your consumption wisely. Whether that’s how you consume technology, what you listen to, what you look at, what you feed your body, how much sleep you get, etc.
• Choose to see yourself as 100% accountable for your own happiness and perception of life. If it’s helpful, remind yourself daily, hourly or by the minute that you get to control your own happiness dial.
• Choose to not give your energy to anything that doesn’t feel good. Stop feeding narratives in your mind, or engaging in communications that cause heat to rise from your belly, or your heart to beat hard and fast in an anxious way. Instead, give yourself permission to completely shelf the issue (without feeding it) until after the holidays. If it still feels like an important issue after the holidays, then deal with it then. My bet is, it will be long forgotten, or you will shine different perspective that isn’t as emotionally charged.

These are all choices that belong to us. With some effort, care and tweaking, we can shape these choices, so we become the beneficiaries of our life and circumstance, instead of being the victims.

#2) See Happy

The concept that happiness comes from within is old news. We know this and we even practice it. What holds so many of us back from experiencing lasting joy and love of life, is our habits and our focus.

A lot of the time, our focus has been well-trained and practiced at seeing everything that is wrong and unfair in life. We bathe in all the unpleasant details, when we rinse and repeat day after day. It’s challenging to find the path to happiness, when we start the day off with the same mindset and habits that led us to feeling defeated the day before.

Our perception of life is our experience of life. Our experience of life is everything, it’s the whole show and journey – this is it! So, if you don’t care for the view day after day – it’s time to shape the lens you see through, so the view becomes more pleasant.

Here are some examples of the ways we can train our focus to see happiness over the holidays:

• Start your day with gratitude. This seriously goes a long way. Keep your phone or potential distractions out of reach, and instead open your eyes to the gift of a new day. It can be as simple as being grateful for one thing you can see, one thing you can touch, one thing you can hear, and one thing you can smell. Keep your gratitude practice basic, or make it elaborate if that’s your preference. Whatever your preference, make this be a practice that feels good. Isn’t is awesome we can start our day off with a practice of our choosing that feels good?!
• End your day with gratitude. Instead of filling your mind with more worries and dread, give yourself 10-15 minutes of quiet and peace before you doze off. Use this space to bring to mind the blessings in your day (this does take practice and focus, so be gentle). If this practice feels too uncomfortable or is out of reach, start by mentally giving yourself permission to shelf your worries and woes from the day. Then make the conscious choice before you drift off to sleep, that tomorrow is a new day that you can start with a fresh mindset.
• Instead of dreading having to communicate with someone who irks you to no end, think of 3 positive qualities about this person, before you connect. What we focus on grows. If we want to feel better around others, we need to practice aligning with our inner world more often. Our inner spirit innately desires to see light over darkness.

Compassion and kindness are lenses we can use to view the world around us. Generally, it feels good to see the good. This doesn’t mean we ignore the injustices in the world. What it means, is we first change what needs changing within ourselves and our mindset. When we train our focus and habits of thinking to be brighter, we are contributing to the world in a way that is helpful, kind and accountable. Let change stem from a place of wholeness, rather than disjointedness, blame and fear.

#3) Be Happy

All we ever have is the moments we are in. Yet, it is easy to fall into the habit of wanting to rush to the next moment, or dissect a moment that has already passed. We all do this to different degrees – it’s okay.

If we want to make room in our daily lives for a deeper sense of happiness, working with the present moment is the ideal place to start. That’s good news, because it means we can start right now – we don’t have to delay this fun practice.

Do you remember the last time you learned something new? Do you remember the last time you had a fun and laughed a lot while you learned something new? Perhaps it was in childhood, maybe (hopefully) it was more recent than that. Maybe practicing being in your happy place over the holidays will be what brings you much laughter and joy.

The practice of adopting a happier mindset, is always going to be best approached with a good sense of humour, a heaping dose of grace, and the willingness to not take it all too seriously.

Here are some examples of the ways we can be happy over the holidays:

• Be happy wherever you are. Instead of delaying your happiness for future events, be happy now. Find the simple pleasures in the moments you’re in. Instead of being irritated in a busy line up, notice your surroundings. Send a silent wish of happiness to a stranger around you. As you wait, create a new narrative in your mind that actually feels good.
• Be happy to have people who actually want to connect with you over the holidays. Instead of focusing on not getting to connect in our usual ways this year, be grateful you have people in your life. Be thankful you have resources to actually come together in celebration – even if that looks like connecting on Zoom this year. If your mind starts to go to a place of worry, or fear– come back to this basic truth to ground you in gratitude.
• Be happy you’re here alive in this moment. If that doesn’t work, you may be trying too hard. Might be best, if you give yourself a break and instead allow yourself to be playful. Give it a try. Dance while you bake, whistle while you wait, laugh and marvel at the many things on your plate. Love the ones you’re with – every last one of them. Life is a gift.

Have fun with this practice. Feel your way through. If it feels good, keep going in that direction. If it doesn’t, make your own tweaks and trust you’ll find your way. All you really need to start with is the desire to want to feel good, and to have the very best holiday season you possibly can this year.

Happiest holidays to you and yours!

❤ Emily

I’ve put together a free resource and short E-Course to support you to Fall in Love with Your Holidays.

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