What are your expectations for this Holiday Season? Are they to be happy?

Lately, I’ve been discussing a lot about our expectations and how they can influence our patterns and how we interpret what is happening in our world. As we move into the Holiday Season, some of us become depressed and forget the magic that exists all around us. I thought I would like to take this newsletter to thank you all for listening to me babble! Let’s see if we all can shift this Holiday Season to a Celebration of Joy, like our Holidays used to be when we were kids.

For most people the last thing they think about when planning the Holiday Season with family, friends and co-workers is to be Happy. Partially this is because we tend to believe our Happiness is outside ourselves, that it is conditional on things outside of us happening perfectly. Yet happiness isn’t something that can occur outside of us. It is an emotion (one difficult to even define) that comes from the inside of us, from our heart, our soul and our ability to give (which is the spirit of Christmas). Unfortunately, we equate giving with money and bills and headache due to the “busyness” of the season. Sometimes the best times have nothing to do with money or gifts (as we all have experienced).

There are also quite a few things that tend to keep us “unhappy” and definitely not focused inside ourselves. Keeping our focus within ourselves is the only place we can be in charge of how we feel and be able to maintain the feeling of “happiness” within us no matter what is happening around us. The idea of “perfect” can be another goal over the holidays that lures us to focus outside of ourselves; the perfect Holiday Feast, the perfect family gathering, the perfect gift, the perfect relationship and the list can go on forever. However, I think you get my idea; we are so caught up in our ego about what is perfect that we forget why we are even here. We lose ourselves in our ego’s desire to be perfect this Holiday Season. There is no such thing as perfect, except within the Divine where everything, including our imperfections, are perfect. We tend to let the ego get involved because it wants to fix, heal, change, manipulate or control us as a way to be Happy. It can interfere, but its interference takes us out of our bodies and into the past experiences or future worries that keep us unhappy.

Our expectations of what we desire the Holiday Season to be often interferes with our happiness. We seek the approval of others; we hold negative emotions and judgements about our past experiences of the Holidays and we have all these excuses we give as to why this can’t be the perfect Holiday. Do you kind of see where this is all going? These are all things outside of us. We cannot change or impact how someone feels about us or the gifts we give them. Our only goal is to grow and be the best we can be. When we worry about others approval we are giving our power away and nothing has to do with the “other” person, only our growth in our awareness within ourselves. We’ve already wasted precious time trying to make other people proud of us, happy and feeling better than we do; when do you think it is time we focused on our own happiness? Our incessant focusing on the past and worrying about the future will never make us happy.It is only in the Now moment where we can be in charge of how we feel. Holding judgements won’t make us happy, because then our ego is in charge and we know how that unfolds. And our excuses, well they tend to just keep us stuck and not moving forward in our lives. We can all come up with many excuses why this Holiday Season won’t make us happy.

So, let me ask you again: Are you ready and willing to commit to focusing on your happiness this holiday season? Let go of all the excuses, the pain and the ego enough to allow you to feel your own essence and natural inner Happiness? Maybe something here can assist you to take this Holiday and balance your inner world to express your Soul Essence of who you are! That is Happiness!! BEing who you are!