Let go of Christmas pressure and expectation
What you focus on intensifies, grows, becomes larger, takes up more room and space and influence in your mind, body, heart and life.
Christmas is a big season. For much of the western world, it is perhaps the biggest, the most universal event that stops the hustle for a day or two so they can be with the people they love and who love them.
Sometimes the idea of Christmas - the coulds and shoulds and woulds; the expectations and pressure, the worries and the fears, the extreme opposite of emotions from dread to delight - looms larger than what it actually is.
It can easily be wrought from its original power - as a conduit of love, possibility, connection, and hope - and become an agent of division, fear, shame, grief, and plain old crippling exhaustion.
Breathe.
Settle. Soften. Open.
Relax your forehead. Drop your jaw. Let your shoulders sink down your midback.
Allow your belly to go loose. You do not need to clench your way through this.
Breathe.
Take whatever affirmation you need and make it your own. Create a feeling and a foundation that you can anchor yourself to, whenever you feel the idea is becoming greater than the practice:
- Christmas is only a window of time. It is not all there is. It is not final. I will move through and onto the next season.
- I choose discomfort over resentment, grace over pressure. I do not have to give in to all expectations and hold others to all of mine.
- I do not control the actions of others. I will not take on board someone else's pressure if it comes at the expense of my peace and presence. I am responsible for myself first.
- I am not alone. I am surrounded by love. Family can be who I choose them to be.
- I do not need closure to find joy this Christmas. I let this season be what it needs to, and find joy in unexpected places.
- I give myself permission to take the time and space to regulate and find my centre when holiday expectations become overwhelming.
- I am proud of what I have to give no matter how big or small it is in comparison to others. I give from the heart of love.
- I do not need to hide my grief and pretend that everything is OK and that I’m not anxious about all that has changed since Christmas last year. It is welcome here.
- I allow myself to believe in miracles, the kind that show up in the middle of my life underneath the surface of things. I open my heart to possibilities big and small. I welcome wonder and all its holy glory.
Cynthia Beaugealt said:
“Jesus never asked anyone to form a church, ordain priests, develop elaborate rituals and institutional cultures, and splinter into denominations. His two great requests were that we “love one another as I have loved you” and that we share bread and wine together as an open channel of that interabiding love.”
Let all the pressures and expectations and shoulds and coulds and woulds and fears and anticipation and doubt and grief and joy, everything that Christmas stirs up within you melt into this one practice: the sharing of love through food and presence.
Affirmation: Here I am. Nothing held back, nothing held onto. Flow and grace. Presence and being. Love and more love.
From my upcoming series, "What You Affirm Grows" this week with a subscription in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
