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Enjoy the Holidays Mindfully

In this post, I discuss how detrimental I think it is that our society rushes us from one holiday to the next and how Mindfulness practices can help us keep our sanity, especially during the upcoming, Holiday Season.

Gird yourself for the Holidays folks, ready or not…they are coming! 😮

Here we go again…I’ve been noticing the Old Navy Christmas ads are already going strong and it’s not even Halloween…yet! 🙄 EVERY year this happens and EVERY year it makes me irritated. 😝

Straight, No Chaser has a great song that speaks to this very issue

One of my biggest pet peeves is the overt rush to the Holiday Season, which seems to start in September. 😋 Why the rush? It completely goes against all principles of Mindfulness and being Present, or living in the moment–especially as this year felt like we had summer to the middle of October! 😓

I will acknowledge, that the pretty lights do help to lighten the mood as our days shorten…but there are plenty of Halloween/Fall-related decorations we could be focusing on right now! 😤 –I do appreciate that our local neighborhoods have seen an explosion of Halloween and fall decorations this year!

Christmas…in Fall?!

It seems like a week or two before Halloween each year, the seasonal sections of stores are already alight with Christmas decor. Not one or two things, here or there, mind you. No, there are rows upon rows of Christmas lights, outdoor and indoor decorations, and fake Christmas trees already filling the shelves.

This isn’t that big of a deal. It happens every year, so I know I should be prepared for it and should just ignore it. At the very least, it is NOT important enough to be wasting my precious, mental energy on…yet every year it irks me more! I just get irritated that while I’m busy thinking about goblins and ghouls, Christmas decorations are shining at me from the shelves. 😝

The stores have Halloween candy out in August! Seriously, if you buy the candy then, it would be gross come the actual holiday. And let’s be honest, who could keep it in their house that long without eating it?

Maybe that’s the plan of the stores and candy companies, get it out early so we start enjoying it…so then we have to buy more by the time the actual holiday comes. 🤔 They’re making us fat while simultaneously slimming our wallets! 😡 They probably partner with the weight-loss companies…we’re on to the conspiracy now though! 😉 (Ok, time to take off the tin-foil hat. 😇 )

Have we always rushed the Holidays?

I wonder if this rush to the Holidays is really a new thing? Maybe it has always been this way? The over-commercialization of Christmas is even mentioned in The Charlie Brown Christmas movie from the 1960s…

Perhaps our rush to the next event we are anticipating is just a weakness of human nature? I wonder if people who participate in less, mainstream holidays experience this, as well? Are those who celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa allowed to enjoy these holidays in their proper season?

I think one reason this yearly phenomenon bothers me so much is that it makes me feel rushed. I feel like it adds an additional level of stress to the everyday pressure I already struggle with. It’s no wonder we have so much ADHD and anxiety in our world today, we’re constantly being rushed from one commercialized holiday to the next and never given the opportunity to rest and enjoy a given event in its moment.

Stop Rushing the Holidays!

You barely finish your hot dog and watch the 4th of July fireworks…and “Back to School” and pumpkins are being rammed down your throat…then, a month before Halloween even occurs, and THREE FULL MONTHS before the Christmas holiday, I’m supposed to start getting excited about Santa and his reindeer…?

It seems like we skip right over Thanksgiving, which is so sad. That is the holiday where no gifts are expected, we can just enjoy the moments spent with family and friends. It’s the one time where we are actually supposed to reflect on our many blessings and how thankful we are for them. It’s one of the most mindful holidays of them all!

…then with the Christmas holidays barely past, we’re already seeing chocolate hearts for Valentine’s Day…then green clovers start appearing for St. Patrick’s Day…and shortly after, candied bunnies and chicks, for Easter, will be on the horizon…then the red, white and blue, patriotic decorations start flying for the summer festivities…and before we know it we’ve returned to Back-to-School and Halloween again!…and I swear we JUST took our Christmas tree down a few weeks ago! 😅

No wonder the years seem to fly by, we’re all living three months in the future at all times! It reminds me of a scene from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Upon learning that another holiday is just around the corner, Charlie Brown’s sister, Sally, states, “I haven’t even finished eating all of my Halloween candy yet!” I remember having this same thought as a child. (Regular readers will note I reference Charlie Brown rather frequently. The Trekkers like Charlie Brown ok, those stories taught me good lessons during my childhood, I’m not sorry! 😉)

I just don’t understand the constant need to always be reaching for the next thing. Do we ever take the time to just enjoy the current moment? Are we even able to anymore? On one hand, it seems silly to be concerned about this. But on the other, I think this is just another example of our over-stimulated, modern culture where we need to be constantly hyped up about something at all times.

Enjoy the Holidays Mindfully

Mindfulness principles can be really useful here. By focusing on and appreciating the individual moment, event, day (or at the very least, holiday) that we are CURRENTLY experiencing, we can help keep the stress and pressure of the Holiday Season at bay. We will feel less stress when we aren’t always preparing for something that won’t occur for several more months.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE everything about Christmas, I just REFUSE to participate in holidays until their appointed season. For the Trekkers, this means NO Fall decorations until at least the last half of September and I 100% refrain from engaging in anything related to Christmas until Thanksgiving has come and gone…then it’s Merry Freakin’ Christmas all day, every day! 🙃

To Conclude

I think this rush to the Holidays is detrimental to us. It increases the pressure of the already-stressful Holiday Season for many people. There are so many things that always occur at once: parties, religious and school activities, and family gatherings. All of these can cause us angst.

This time of year can also be very expensive for many people, with all the gifts, and the–sometimes lengthy–travel involved to see family and friends. On the other hand, not everyone has a loving family, so this time of year can be very lonely for them.

I think it’s pretty obvious that we would all benefit from putting a little less focus on the commercialized Holidays, and a little more on making our world a better place.

Do you find that the coming Holiday Season is over-hyped? Tell me about it in the comments!

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Just Groovin’: 5 tips for Using Mindfulness to Lower Anxiety

I find myself stressed, many days, over the simple tasks of daily life. Read on for how I’m striving to reduce this, and ways you can too!

I find myself feeling anxious over dealing with day-to-day items and stressors. I know this isn’t healthy for me mentally or physically. I want to be more Present and live in the current moment. So, I’ve set the goal for myself to use mindfulness practices to help lessen my anxiety levels.

I Feel Anxious Every Day

I think the anxiety stems partially from the less-than-regular, work-from-home lifestyle that I mentioned in a previous post. My days offer incredible flexibility, but the lack of routine can make life feel chaotic. I think the stress is also due, in part, to the general anxiety I deal with on a daily basis. I just have a tendency to worry about things in the future.

I think many people struggle with this. We worry about situations from daily life; we worry about interactions or disagreements that occur in our family, friend or work groups; we worry about the health of people we care about. Basically, we just worry a lot! Often times there’s nothing particularly awful occurring, these are just the situations we encounter over the course of life for any given day, week or month. These are normal things to concern ourselves with, but what can we do to ease the strain caused by that constant level of stress?

How I Lessen Anxiety with Mindfulness

I’m striving to implement a “Just Groovin'” mindset†. Read on for tips on how to use this to reduce your levels of anxiety and to live in the moment…

†You may remember this from a previous post, where I discussed us visiting a great BBQ spot in Marble, Colorado. It was called Slow Groovin’ BBQ, but their message was basically to just take time to enjoy the simple things in life. The Trekkers have made this into a personal, family motto of sorts, though we edited the name to “Just Groovin’!”

5 Tips to “Just Groove”: Using Mindfulness to Live in the Moment and Reduce Stress:

1) Stop Catastrophizing!

This is a therapeutic term that basically means, don’t imagine what horrible things can go wrong in a situation when it hasn’t even happened yet, or you don’t even have all the details regarding it yet.

This is something I struggle with regularly. I am striving to not worry about *insert-situation-here* until it actually happens. Usually, things play out better than I imagined they would anyway.

Often, I build up all this angst around an impending event and then it ends up proceeding far more smoothly (and often more quickly) than I had anticipated. Then I’m left with this surplus of negative energy that had been consuming me that, as it turns out, was completely unnecessary. Now I have no way to release that pent-up strain, so it is just added to my ongoing stress load.

Instead, I want to “just groove” through life, to just deal with things when and if they happen.

2) Don’t Stress Yourself Out Over Everyday Tasks:

I have this habit of rushing to get everything that’s on my To-Do list for that day, or week (or month) done as efficiently as possible. While it’s good to not procrastinate when necessary tasks need to be completed, it’s also good to implement productive, time-management practices.

We shouldn’t let ourselves get stressed out about these things. That causes unnecessary mental and physical tension. Again, I am usually able to complete all the to-do items that day (or at the very least that week or month) and it often takes less time than I thought it would. So then I am stressed out, and for what? Time and again, the list has been completed (usually more easily and more quickly than I anticipated), and all I’m left with is a further build-up of negative energy that I now struggle to relieve.

Are you seeing a pattern here? 😋 This compounding of stress just further contributes to the unnecessary tension we feel in our daily lives. 🤯 Ugh! This is why anxiety is so mentally exhausting!

3) Stop Stressing About the Future:

We need to remove the word “might” from our vocabulary. People with anxiety are always worried about what “might” happen in the future. “My boss MIGHT yell at me when he calls me into the office; those routine tests at the doctor MIGHT show something bad…” Let’s stop with the “might”!

There’s only so much we can control in life. Matthew 6:34 says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Not everyone is big on the Bible, but I think this is some advice that can benefit all people, whether they are religious or not. We need to stop worrying about what “might” come tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. Because these things are only MIGHTS, they aren’t actually occurring yet, and we can’t deal with them until they happen. So, let’s be mindful, live in the present, and expend our precious, mental energy on what is actually occurring RIGHT NOW!

4) Don’t Miss Out on Today’s Joys by Worrying About Tomorrow:

Not all stress comes from negative events. We have a tendency to want to rush through life so that we can get to the good stuff, though that may mean we don’t fully experience or appreciate the simpler, everyday nuggets we encounter along the way.

A famous philosopher once described this problem in his young apprentice, “all his life he has looked away to the future…to the horizon…never his mind on where he was…what he was doing…” (If you’re imagining a small, elderly, goblin-looking creature, talking about Luke Skywalker…you’d be correct. Hey, Yoda was sort of like a philosopher! I’m a Star Wars nerd and I’m not sorry. 😉)

It’s good to enjoy the fun and exciting parts of life. But the humble joys of our daily existence are important too. Things like watching your children play on the playground, having a talk on the swing with an aging parent or pulling off the side of the road just to watch a particularly, stunning sunset. In the end, these nuggets are what we experience most often and they are what we’ll remember in the long run. These are the little things that make life worth living.

5) Just Groove!

My ongoing life goal that I’m continuously striving toward is to learn to just “go with the flow”. I will strive to not allow myself to be anxious about things unless I KNOW that there is something to be anxious about.

You may be thinking, “ever thought of trying some meds?” Anti-anxiety medication is always an option, of course (full disclosure, I do use it, occasionally, on days that feel particularly stressful). But I don’t want to have to rely on it for the rest of my–hopefully lengthy–lifetime. I don’t want to need it just to get me through the normal pressures of daily existence. It seems to me, being that most of us live in a time and place where the quality of life is about the best it’s ever been, throughout the entire course of human history, that I don’t have any excuse to build up so much stress over just getting through the day.

This is where the concept of “Just Groovin'” comes in. Basically, it means, take life as it comes. I am striving to embrace mindful minimalism, and only concern myself with problems as they present themselves (rather than wasting mental energy to worry about them ahead of time).

Want to join me on this quest? Tell me in the comments about your tips for using mindfulness to lessen daily stress, and to live in the present moment!