Handling holiday stress gracefully isn’t always easy, but the keys to doing so are within you. Your Inner Wisdom is your vital, valuable resource for doing just that. Handling holiday stress gracefully is up to you….
Your body, the physical means for fulfilling your Soul’s intentions, is continually guiding you to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. This guidance becomes especially potent when you navigate the holidays, a time of year for going within and connecting with possibilities for “new”. This time of deep meaning also often results in high expectations.
Handling Holiday Stress Gracefully – You Manifested It
You naturally manifest experiences that show you what you’re giving priority, and value, as well as what you’d REALLY like to prioritize. If your core values (those in your heart vs. those things you’ve been conditioned to value), enliven your choices, what will your life be like? Would you be more likely to find yourself handling holiday stress gracefully then?
The story below, adapted from my original article “Follow Your Heart, Your Purpose: Your Vital, Valuable Resource” (Luminous Wisdom: Sophia, December 2017) highlights one of the more poignant experiences of my 2017. I use it to exemplify our most vital, valuable resource, which can help us in handling holiday stress gracefully.
Follow Your Heart, Your Purpose: Your Vital, Valuable Resource
What an amazing experience! As I spoke to the tiny, incessantly crying kitten a couple yards in front of me, it began to make its wobbly way to me. We were strangers. It had appeared out of nowhere, with no mother in sight. Though unable to see, it made its way steadfastly up onto my feet. It quieted gratefully as I picked it up and held it close. It seemed to know instinctively I could help. Most likely its mom instinctively abandoned this 2-3-week-old because of health issues. It needed way more attention than a human alone could give at this life stage. I tried. It strived to survive. Sadly, it passed during the night a couple days later.
I watched in awe as it searched with every ounce of its being for its mom, for comfort, for nourishment. It was a heartbreaking reminder of the amazing, vital gut sense within us to find what’s needed to survive, and be safe. We actually have multiple wisdom centers that help us not only survive, but also live our TRUTH, our innate design potential to the fullest. These centers are a valuable resource for us to partner with, vital to our health and well being.
I’m amazed how unaware of our innate wisdom humans can become, despite our evolution, intelligence, emotional depth, etc. But why? It isn’t gone, is it? Nope. But our awareness of those wisdom centers typically is compromised because we avoid or doubt them, are trained not to listen to them, and/or are separated from them because of trauma. When they’re all open, fully functioning together, and we’re tuned in to them, we’re able to partner with them beneficially. We’re able to reconnect with what’s TRUE and right for us through our intuition, guiding us to heal and dissolve our blocks to living our full potential. We find renewed confidence, clarity, peace, and well being, following our Soul’s path to Purpose.
Have you noticed how, at this very sacred time of year, you’re naturally inclined to examine your life, and consider changes? You’re drawn to go within and examine your priorities, values, dreams and intentions. Your examination, commitment, and resolve may even be tested with holiday stressors. You may feel torn between your “shoulds/musts” and what’s truly in your heart as you contemplate the coming year.
So, how do you distinguish your TRUTH from someone else’s ideas and find what’s best for YOU? Connect to the valuable, vital resource of your inner wisdom. Attend to your body, opening and aligning its wisdom centers. Listen to the beating of your heart and the voice of clarity in the quiet, pregnant stillness of potential and possibility in the Solstice. Partner with your innate guidance on your Soul’s path for health, wellbeing, joy, peace, and Purpose. It’s time for new Divine birth from your Highest Self, shining your inner light brightly as you live more intentionally On-Purpose.
What’s your Inner Wisdom showing you today? Meow.
Handling Holiday Stress Gracefully, Practically
You know there are circumstances that you can’t readily change. All you can change is your response, which includes managing your thoughts and choices.
Your body cannot lie. It responds to your thoughts in given ways (the basis for lie detector tests). It will always show you where your thoughts are incongruent with your TRUTH.
Your expectations and “shoulds” are typically a proximal cause of holiday stress. What do you expect of yourself? Of others? What do you feel you “should” do? How are these expectations and beliefs affecting your time management? Your finances? Your choices? Are you living congruently with your TRUTH? Your core values?
How’s your body feeling? What’s it showing you? What can you change to be more congruent with your TRUTH, your core values, your heart’s desires, feeling healthy and vital?
Resources for Handling Holiday Stress
There are many resources available for managing stress in the moment. And, those are valuable short term, to feel better, when doing the deep dive is neither possible, nor practical.
However, if you never do the deep dive, you will never live better, BE BETTER than you are now. Your non-conscious mind will continue to affect your Wisdom Centers whether you attend to them or not.
Do breathe deeply, play some relaxing music, light a candle, get a massage, eat some chocolate and soak in a warm bubble bath. And, remember you still haven’t actually resolved your stress. You just pushed it further into the background.
But, for the New Year, commit to doing the deep dive. Open and realign your wisdom centers, and LISTEN to them to live and BE your best YOU. Request a Discovery Session today and discover how Transformational Coaching and Craniosacral Therapy can help you do that.
