HO! HO! HO!  I actually love the holidays.  But, getting beyond the layers and layers of stress can be something of an excavation project.  Once done, I can feel my heart swell with love and excitement and celebration!  I want quicker access to that.  Why do I feel stressed?    All of the ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ and expectations set by Hallmark and the like!  Families hugging in front of the blazing fire, with soft white snow falling beyond the window, Christmas carols playing the background and the sweet smell of home baked cookies wafting through the air.  Christmas morning, Mom gets out of bed looking great, make-up in place, perfect nightwear on her perfect body.  The house looks like Martha Stewart stopped by for a quick consult!  Please!!!  It’s enough to make anyone feel inadequate!  So here’s how I get great joy during the holidays:

1. Enjoy the present moment.  Love what you you are doing RIGHT NOW, without regard to what else you have to do.  What you are doing at this very moment is the perfect thing!  My husband and I went on our annual Christmas shopping date.  He hates ot shop and I hate shopping with him.  But, we had a ball because we were together, without a timetable, looking for special gifts for the special people in our lives. 
2. Appreciate what you have.  There are so many others who have less.  Just 50 miles west of here, right now, folks are spending their 12th consecutive day without power due to storms.  And even they are fortunate compared to others who don’t even have homes to light and heat.
3. Listen to your favorite Christmas music as you wrap presents.  Sing along.  Who will know and if they do, who cares?  Do what you want! 
4. Create memorable moments and traditions.  When my kids were really little, I  created a treasure hunt for them to follow to find one of their presents on Christmas morning.  It’s become a tradition.  Now, at 12 and 15, they still ask if we’re going to have a treasure hunt.  It’s a joy to create and the whole family loves watching them run around to find the prize.
5. Pamper yourself.  Take a nap when you’re tired. Ask for help.  Do things together.  Cut out unnecessary, burdensome tasks.  They can wait. 
6. DO AT LEAST ONE THING EVERY DAY THAT CREATES JOY FOR YOU!

Congratulations to Ellen K. the winner of the first free bracelet drawing!  Ellen will receive the New Leaf Touchstone bracelet of her choice!  Hopefully, she will share stories of how she is using the bracelet and how things are going for her as she works toward her chosen change!   If you haven’t already entered, please do so to the right of this blog entry!  

And, speaking of winners, we all can be.  We just need to set up the game so we can win.  So often, we have a wish or a dream and we inadvertently set up road blocks and land mines to sabotage our success.   Then we’re surprised and disappointed that we didn’t get what we said we wanted.  The first step to setting yourself up for success is to clearly articulate what it is you want.  Words like ‘more’, ‘better’, ‘good’ aren’t specific and measurable enough.  Let’s say you want to have a better relationship with your spouse.  Sit for a moment and envision yourself in that better relationship.   What does it look like?  What specific aspects are better?  What are YOU doing?  How are YOU feeling?  Now, write down the the answers to those questions as if they are already happening.   For example, I discuss our finances openly and honestly,”  I initiate a date alone with my partner twice a month”,  etc.  Ok, here comes the hard part.  Can you hear all that chatter in the background?  All the stories that are coming up about why it isn’t possible, it won’t work out, he/she would never, but…but…but….  Ok, let ‘er rip.  Give that voice an audience.  Write down every one of those stories.  Go ahead.  Don’t hold back!  Include great detail.  Go to town.   When you are done, go back and read what you’ve written.  Read it over and over until you feel hopeless.  Why not,  that ‘s what you do to yourself all the time.  You give audience to all that chatter and it sabotages your efforts and makes you angrier and more stuck.  And, now, you are a bona fide victim!  But who are you angry with?  Is it your partner for how your relationship is going or youself for being helpless to make changes? 

Ok, ready??  If there is really value for you in making some changes, strap yourself in… you’re going to need to take some risks.  You want to be a winner you’ve got to play like one!  You can’t win if you aren’t even in the game.  So, create an argument, a counter statement to every one of the statements you wrote down earlier.  Identify the rules you are playing by and create new rules that help you win.  Answer the questions, “Who says?”, “How do I know?”  “So what?”  “Is this true or do I just think it is?”  “Who could shed some light on this for me?”  “What would I do if I were being true to myself?”

Now, start acting like the winner you are!  You can do it and you’ll be amazed at how just taking the first small step can crack things wide open!

Creating new habits takes awareness! We’ve got to have conscious thought about what our new behavior will be.  Since we can’t easily smooth out the old rut in our brains, the path to new behaviors is made by creating new habits.  We need to create a whole new rut that goes off in a different direction in our hippocampus.   That requires something different than trying to change the course of the one that’s already there.  Instead of concentrating on thoughts like “I’ve got to stop smoking,  which keeps us focused on what’s not working (the old rut), we need to direct our attention to our new intention and practice actions that make that our new habitual way of behaving.  There’s no value in the concept of  ‘not smoking’ to change the behavior.  Saying or thinking “not smoking”, brings the concept of smoking into your consciousness and puts you in a position to have to fight against it.  Instead, we need to think about the behavior we want to move toward.  In order to not smoke, we need to think about what we do want to do and the positive outcome that will produce.  So, when you feel the urge to have a cigarette (eat a piece of chocolate, lunge across the table and strangle your boss, fill in the blank), think about taking a deep breath, having a glass of water, going for a walk, eating a piece of fruit.  Redirect your attention to something you can move toward instead of keeping it on something you we want to resist.  Try this experiment:  Look around the room where you are sitting right now and notice all of the things that are green.  When you are done, read on.  (don’t cheat and read ahead, it won’t work).  Now, look around the room and look at all of the things that are NOT green.  What do you notice?  Chances are, you found your eyes drifting to the green things and then saying, nope, not that, that’s green.  Now if that were a cigarette, you’d probably have lit it and smoked it by the time your conscious brain got around to ‘dis-sing’ it.  You’d have traveled down the path of the deep rut.  Only conscious thought about an alternative action will allow you the freedom to go in a different direction.

Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.
~ Shaquille O’Neal

Did you know that there’s a huge physiological factor that makes change hard?  It’s not all about will-power or personal strength.  So, stop beating yourself up if you are having trouble changing your behavior!  Here’s a simplistic explanation. Once we do something often enough, we begin to create a ‘rut’ in our hippocampus (part of the brain).  I liken it to a tire track on a soft dirt road.  Each time we do that behavior, (drive over that road), the rut gets deeper.  At some point, it gets so deep we can’t drive out of it.   It, not you, steers the car.   Habits work the same way.  After a while, the habitual behavior, not your conscious thought, is running the show.   How often have you interrupted someone and then thought afterward, “I really didn’t mean to do that, my mouth was moving before my brain engaged?”  Or, right after you nibble on that piece of chocolate cake you say, “I didn’t even want that cake, I just ate it because it was there.” ? Who was running the show there?  What options did you have?  In order to change a behavior, you have to create and practice a new, different and more effective one.  You have to create a new rut in the road.  And, you have to have a conscious thought or intention about using the behavior before the automatic one takes over.  In order to change you behavior you you have to see the value of adoping a new way of being.  And it has to be something that YOU really want for yourself, not something that you think you should do because someone else thinks so.   I must confess that since I’ve become a student of habits and behavior change, I’ve noticed just how much of life I do on auto-pilot!  So, I’m off to prioritize my list of things I want to do differently!