Holiday Thoughts:
Getting Together With Family And Friends
Written by Neil Hansen, Owner, MAT Specialist, RTS, CTA Life Coach
Many of our Holiday plans will involve meeting with family and/or friends. Often meeting with friends and family can stir up old negative feelings or these interactions can create an environment of anxiety with the amount of pressure we put on ourselves (or others put on us) to make everyone happy. Having these types of interactions can ruin your holidays but it doesn't have to. Here are a few thoughts that you can carry with you through the holidays to help you to work with these situations with a bit more ease.
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Expectations of others - Chances are most of your life people expected you to behave in a way that made them happy - your parents, siblings, friends, etc. You were most likely taught that their happiness should come before yours. The problem with this is that it is not anyone's job but our own to make our self happy. Happiness is an inside job and trying to control outside circumstances to make one happy is a never-ending task - there's just too much to control. But if you were to first acknowledge it is not your job to please everyone and you pleased yourself first, you will bring forth the energy that can shift the energy in a room in a heart beat. One connected, happy person can affect hundreds of disconnected, unhappy people - the highest vibration always wins. Do yourself a favor and make yourself happy first then lead by example. And remember, it is not your job to create someone else's happiness but your happiness can alter someone else's. For if you are not happy you have nothing to offer anyway.
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Understanding someone else's emotional set point - To understand someone else it helps to understand yours first. When we experience something in life that causes us negative emotion we usually, and naturally, move into a better feeling place - another emotion - that is within close proximity of the original emotion for relief. For example, if you were experiencing something that created the perspective/feeling of powerlessness or fear you may reach for anger to empower yourself. Anger is a step up from the fear you felt a moment ago and it will feel like relief. The problem with this is that when we go into another emotional state for relief (like anger) we, for one, usually don't know we did this deliberately, two, most people observing our emotional relief won't see it as relief as they don't know where we were before we went into anger, and three, we usually act out (take physical action) before moving on to an even better emotion. Because we (rarely) do not know we go there to feel better, we don't continue to reach for other better feeling places or thoughts and so this is our new emotional standpoint. This new emotional standpoint is the place we are now taking action from. When you take action from this place, whether it be anger or disappointment or frustration (etc.), most people won't understand as they are most likely not in the same place you are so you will come off negative (even if you feel better) and they will show you the same or similar emotion back. Then from there you are disempowered once again. Armed with the awareness that you went into anger (or any other perceived negative emotion) from a lesser emotion for relief, you might now be able to keep yourself from taking action at that time and continue to reach for an even better feeling place. Reach for feelings and/or thoughts that feel better from where you are. Just try to sooth yourself a bit - you will know if a thought feels better. Don't try to go all the way to joy, love and appreciation in one single jump (you will also know if your thought it too far ahead of where you are as the perspective there will feel too far-fetched). I suggest trying to reach for relief one small emotion/thought at a time until you get to at least a place of peace - and then from there joy, love and appreciation is not far. Once you're at a place of peace or higher taking action to express your self will be much, much more empowering and maybe even moving to others.
Knowing this about yourself will help you to understand when someone else is in a seemingly bad mood and hopefully you can let them off the hook as you do not know where they were before they got to their current emotion. You can also rest knowing that if they feel bad it is not about you but rather, it is their own limited interpretation about something they have going on in their own mind and they most likely don't know how to make themselves feel any better even if at one time the place they are in now felt good - it may not any longer because they didn't know to reach for an even better feeling place.
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Expectation perpetuates the experience - Often when we get together with friends and family we already have a story about who these people are and how they are going to behave. In that story we already have played out in our mind how things are going to go down. When we do this we are already setting them up to fail as before we even see them we are already upset, annoyed, or aggravated. Once you take this stance you will be emitting a vibration (from the emotional set point) that they will most likely match without even knowing it - you will play off each other perfectly and unconsciously. It will also be the only thing you will be looking for so when they do this or something to the effect, you react like you always have and perpetuate the same environment. If you can first catch yourself when you start this internal dialogue and notice when you have thoughts that feel bad, you can slowly work to let those ruminations go. Challenge those thoughts and beliefs you have about whomever by trying to see the broader perspective. Just note that when you feel bad about someone (or anything) it is not them (or the thing) that makes you feel bad. You feel bad because you are holding a thought that is not being true to who you really are. Negative emotion is the demonstration of your limited perspective. It might also help to know that we all come into this world perfect, whole, and complete but through life's experience we are programmed and taught outside of our own guidance and we do things solely to survive in what we would think is a world working against us. So with that thought, it is a bit easier to see how most people are a product of an unconscious, unaware environment and are living by default - clueless to their own guidance. Seeing these people for who they are at their core will help you to be who you are at your core. |
Being Happy
Whether you are working to keep both your body shape and health in line or you are working on keeping the peace with family and friends over the holidays it all really comes down to one thing: paying attention to how you feel. Your emotions are the greatest guidance you have as a human being. Since your emotions are always in direct relation to your thoughts (and your thoughts are where you create and take action from) they serve you well to guide you as to whether you are focusing (thinking) in a way that is congruent with what you desire. Every time you have something in your life that causes you to feel some contrast, meaning you observe something you do not like/want, you launch a new preference - for every negative there has to be a positive to balance it out. Your inner being is only aware of the positive end of the equation and sets forth the intention to help guide you to that newly desired outcome using emotional indicators. Anytime you feel negative emotion you are simply being shown that your current attention to something is being done in a way that is not congruent with the direction you have intended on heading nor is it congruent with the way your inner being sees things. It's like having your own personal navigational system set up in your body in that when you get off track you have a little indicator to help you get turned in the right direction. And the right direction is just the next best possible thought and emotion from where you are. Your happiness is in your hands (head) and nothing happens in your environment without you being a part of it. The question is: From where are you creating? With negative thoughts or positive thoughts? Are you thinking mostly about what you want/like or don't want/like?
Helpful exercise #1:
For the next week (or month if you are so committed) pay attention to the tone of your conversations - in person and on the phone. Are you involved in conversation that is highlighting things in a good feeling way or in a negative way? Are you focused on all the drama? Are you complaining about something? Is the person talking complaining? When you notice something negative within a conversation - either on your end or the other - tune into how you are feeling when giving this type of focus. It is so easy to get into complaining about things and we do it so often that we don't even notice that we feel bad doing it. Remember, it's not the thing you are talking about that has you feeling bad it's the way you are thinking about that thing that has you feeling bad. Note: It is really helpful to record your end of a conversation when on the phone to hear how you talk and what you talk about.
Helpful exercise #2:
For up to one month before you sleep, while lying in bed, run through a list of things you appreciate for about 2-3 minutes. It could be the weather, your animals, nature, your children, your health, your home, anything that lets you focus on being appreciative - not to be confused with gratitude (gratitude always includes the thing you've overcome, appreciation only looks at the positive end). Intend on waking from your slumber refreshed and in the same state of appreciation. Also intend on allowing your dreams to tell you something (it's not what happens in your dreams but the emotion you felt that has something to do with your life). Upon waking, while in bed, take a moment to reflect on your dreams then flow right back into a state of appreciation for a few minutes. Then get up and take care of your personal morning things - go to bathroom, brush teeth, etc. Then find a quiet place to sit quietly for about 15 minutes and try to just allow yourself to focus on your "now" moment - with little or no thought. If you find yourself thinking, just let it go. Focus on your body, your breath, your surroundings, etc. Once you come out of this state go start your day while thinking appreciative thoughts about all you do for the next 5 -10 minutes or so.
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