Navigating the Holidays

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. I wanted to create a video, acknowledging the holidays, you know, for many of us around the world, this is considered the holiday season. And while I don't know which holidays you celebrate or how you celebrate them, this is a time of year and holidays in general, that tend to bring up different emotions for different people. For some, this is a time that feels joyous, exciting. It's an opportunity to connect with loved ones or take some time off of work.

For others, the experience might be different. It can feel more painful. There might be some loneliness or even memories of how things used to be and a longing for that. Whatever your experiences. I hope you can make some space for it.

You know, this is at the heart of our mindfulness practice, which is to move fluidly with the changing landscape of our life. And when it comes to the holidays, we have so many romantic ideas instilled into us about what this time should look like. Usually this is conditioned in childhood, through movies or even experiences we might've had in childhood that conditions our relationship to the holidays in a positive way or a negative way. But a lot of times what we see through the media portrays this experience in a very one dimensional way. And then we subconsciously find ourselves measuring the current experience against whatever ideas we have in our mind.

And I think especially this year, since we're all going through this global pandemic together, there may be some dissonance between what we really want this time to be like and what it's actually like. And so if you're going through that, I hear you. I see you. I feel you. And I hope you know here at Mindfulness.com, we're, we're always here to support you and be here for you like, like a good friend.

And if nothing else, I hope you can feel that from us. But also, you know, if we think about it and just the context of, of gratitude and what gratitude could look like during a time like this, maybe gratitude is, is less about having something, you know, what's going on outside of us and it matching something that we want. And more about the wonder that we develop when we show up to this life with humility and curiosity and relax into this moment as it is right now in, in all of its goodness and all of its pain, open our heart to it. Perhaps there's some sort of appreciation that is separate from what we have and is more related to just this willingness to show up for the, the journey, the human journey, that's big, that's meandering, that's uncertain, that's changing. And one thing I do know is that when we do show up with that kind of humility, with that curiosity, that openness, that open heart, we're touched in some way.

It expands us. There's a soft vulnerability that opens aspects of us from empathy, compassion, uh, to even joy in the midst of pain and loneliness and uncertainty. So whatever it is you're going through again, we're here for you. We want to show our support. We're holding you and trying to be here like a good friend, and whatever, whatever you're going through in your personal journey, I hope you can make some space to, to experience it fully, to relax into this moment of your life.

And to remember, it's a big thing to wake up each day to show up, to try to be present and to do your best. Now we're rooting you on in that path. Thank you so much for your practice and let's settle in for our meditation today.