It’s frantic…
- Plans to be made, re-scheduled, cancelled, re-made
- Working out what presents to buy, how much to spend, wanting it to be something different
- 50 million Christmas functions/parties to attend
- Decorating your home so that it looks like something out of a magazine spread
- Dealing with everything at work, that always seems to be left to the last minute
- Juggling the schedules of every single person
- All the end of school functions
- Planning, buying and preparing all of the food so that it is a perfect as what you saw on that lifestyle TV show Christmas Special
- School holidays and the kids being ‘bored’ within 2 days
- And the list goes on and on and on and on…
It feels kind of insane. Each year, you promise yourself “next year will be different”. And then next year comes and before you realise it you’re caught up in the same kind of craziness as last year, and the year before, and the year before…
And just to add an extra dimension this year, someone precious in your world is dying. How on Earth do you cope with everything?
You do so by stopping and breathing. Yes, I know, you don’t have time for that and I am out of my mind for daring to even suggest such a thing!!
Humour me.
I promise you that almost nothing that is happening in your world will be made worse by you taking even just 5 mins to shut out the world and stopping and breathing. And it will be probably be made easier.
Find a space where you can get 5 mins of peace and quiet – even if that means walking or driving away from your current location.
Tell the people in your world that you are giving yourself a time out and that you cannot be engaged in anything for at least 5 mins. This might take some enforcing the first few times.
If need be, turn off the TV, the radio, the music, walk away from the computer – you don’t want to be interrupted by anything that could distract you.
And now, just focus your attention on your breath. See that breath come in through your nose, expand into your lungs, your chest, your diaphragm and then see it exhale through your mouth. If need be, count to 3, 4 and 5 you inhale and count to 3, 4 and 5 as you exhale.
Right now, this is THE absolute greatest gift that you can give to yourself and everyone else. We have gotten exceptionally skilled at multi-tasking and not being in the present moment that we become overwhelmed and not able to think clearly about any one thing.
By taking these few moments for yourself, you are resetting your programming into something more manageable. You may find that solutions pop into your head. You may find that pain in your shoulders and back releases…just a little. You may find that you don’t feel so overwhelmed. You may even find that you could leap a tall building in a single bound…well, almost.
And you may find that you have clarity around what is truly important for you…and it might not be what you previously thought was the top priority.
Yes, the holidays are a really special time for a lot of people, but I truly believe that a lot of the time we make life harder for ourselves than it needs to be. And that’s without having someone precious in your world dying.
You don’t want to end up regretting things that you did/didn’t do or things you did/didn’t say. Make this a special time, a time for creating precious memories – more on this in the next blog.
No matter what is happening in your world, make the time on a regular basis to stop and focus on your breath…even if it’s just for 30secs at first. Start small and build up…and let me know what happens in your world.
Wishing you peace & blessings, Sharon