I’m about to head home from San Francisco, to Sydney, and I leave behind a city of fun, excitement and brimming with Christmas cheer. The Christmas decorations are everywhere, and hugh, impressive ones at that. Which, for many people, means just one thing…. Christmas stress. Christmas shopping, what to buy for him or her, that will be meaningful and appreciated, visiting the inlaws, arranging Christmas dinner, or the holidays if this is your time for travelling out of town.
I read an interesting piece in a San Fran newspaper this morning, written by Tom Moon, and I want to share some of this with you.
While the holiday season is a time of fun and celebration for many people, for those who are suffering grief or other forms of emotional pain, it can be a time of deepening sadness. But I believe that this can be a peaceful, even a joyful, time for most of us, so long as we respond to the season with authenticity and integrity.
Many of us unthinkingly comply with the old conditioning by mechanically going through the rituals every year, buying presents we can’t afford for people we hardly know; getting too little sleep and exercise while we eat and party too hard, getting too frantic, drinking too much, etc.
For some people, for instance, the best treatment for holiday depression is just to slow down. As the winter solstice approaches (this is written in the northern hemisphere), the darkest and coldest time of the year, a lot of us feel a natural tendency for the body to hibernate, for the mind to become reflective, for the heart to turn inward and for moods to become melancholy. But in our compulsively extroverted society, most of us run the other way and become even busier and even more socially active.
So, if you you find the celebration treadmill more exhausting than enjoyable, why not make a deliberate effort as December begins, to spend time alone with yourself to reflect on your life, be in nature, have some quiet walks, meditate – whatever soothes and quietens you.
He finishes by suggesting a few specific actions:
Write a gratitude letter to someone who is important to you, expressing all the ways in which you appreciate him or her, especially including the things you’ve never said.
Initiate one act of peacemaking within the circle of people you love.
Give a “gift” to at least one person that doesn’t involve spending any money.
If you can afford it, you can give a gift to someone you love of something that they really need – but make sure that they never know it comes from you.
All we really need to make these holidays a rewarding time in our lives, and less stressful, is the imagination and courage to define for ourselves what they are and what they mean.
6 Dec
You can’t control acts of others, but you can control how you react to them
Posted by stufish7 in Daily Comments. Tagged: Control your emotions, negative behaviours, positive reaction. Leave a Comment
No one can make you feel any negative emotion – fear, anger or inferiority - without your express permission. There will always be people who find perverse enjoyment in upsetting others or who simply play upon your emotions so that they can use you for their own selfish purposes. Whether or not they are successful depends entirely upon you and how you react to their negative behaviours. When you are forced to deal with such people, recognise from the outset that they are trying to upset you, not because of something you may have done to them, but because of some problem they have with themselves. Tell yourself: “This isn’t about me. I will not allow this person to upset me. I am in control of my emotions and my life.”