The holidays are supposed to be a time of celebration when friends and families get together to share food, fun, gifts, and love.
They are supposed to be a time of giving, caring and connection when we celebrate important and meaningful events.
Why, then, are they often so stressful and what can we do to make them more fun and peaceful?
Changing the holiday season from stressful to peaceful depends upon one thing: INTENT. Your intent is whatever is most important to you in any particular moment or situation.
At any given moment, we are always in one of two intents. Put in simple terms, it is either more important to you in any given moment to:
1) Be loving to yourself and others, or
2) Get love and approval
Your intent determines your behavior and your feelings.
We all have a choice each moment to decide who we want to be – a person who is trying to have control over getting love and approval, or a person who is giving love to ourselves and others. Who we decide to be determines how we feel. If our intent is to get love and approval, then we may think that others determine our feelings, but it is really our own intent that is responsible for how we end up feeling.
Why not start now, before the holidays, noticing your intent? Why not open now to giving yourself – the child within you – the approval he or she needs to feel worthy? If you start to practice today being in the intent to love yourself and others, perhaps by the time the holidays come around you can really have a good time!