If you want personalized attention in creating a different holiday experience this year than you have in the past, please check out the Holiday Warm-Up Coaching Special. (Plus, register by November 6 and receive 25% off!)

Pre-Holiday Tips

For those of us who live in the US, the holiday season begins in November with Thanksgiving. Expectations about holidays can run high, with internal and external messages telling us how the season should be. This time of year can also be quite painful, highlighting family dysfunction and lost loved ones.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way! Here are a few simple tips to help you end this year right.

#1. Get over the fantasy.

No one has a Norman Rockwell life (and would you really want one, anyway?). There is no normal family and no right way to experience the holidays. Know yourself and know those you’ll be spending time with enough to recognize what can and can’t be.

For example, my parents are divorced and some of my siblings are half-siblings. I also have step-siblings. And a step-mother. And a half-step-sister. Could I ever have a nuclear family dinner on Christmas eve? No. Never. Please don’t make me.

Which brings me to the next tip.

#2. Identify what you really want.

And I’m talking about the bigger want, the meta-desire, if you will.

Here’s what I want: to feel loved, to give love, to have time to reflect on where I’ve been over the last 12 months and to really connect with myself, my spirituality and those I love. Only a handful of events could make fulfilling those wants really difficult. Baring those, as long as I don’t attach those deep desires to a fantasy experience, I can have what I want – whether I’m on an island in the Caribbean sipping mojitos or trekking back and forth between parents’ houses.

#3. Give only what you can give freely.

My marriage therapist taught me this principle years ago. If you can’t give without resentment, it’s not a gift and you shouldn’t do it. This applies to material gifts and it also applies to time.

When I first moved back East to where my entire family lives, I just went along for the ride for the holidays, going from house to house, accommodating everyone else. And then I got resentful. So I had to learn what I could and wanted to give and then communicate that to those I love. You know, keep good boundaries. The holiday’s are much better these days.

It’s not always easy to recognize the choices we have when it comes to creating the holiday season. When we do, a whole new path of freedom opens up to us. I hope the tips help you as you begin thinking about new ways to experience this season.

And don’t forget to check out the Holiday Warm-Up Coaching Special to create the personalized holiday experience you’re longing for!

A very sick woman decided that if she could only touch the hem of Jesus’ man-dress, she would be healed. So she tracks him down, breaks multiple cultural norms and religious laws and touches the hem of his garment. She is immediately healed and Jesus turns to her and says, “Your faith has healed you.” A version of that story can be found here.

The Law of Attraction

According to Wikipedia, “the Law of Attraction says people’s thoughts (both conscious and unconscious) dictate the reality of their lives, whether or not they’re aware of it. Essentially, if you really want something and truly believe it’s possible, you’ll get it.”

The Shadow Side

Both of these ideas resonate with me and I’ve experienced the outworking of them. However, the distillation and combination of these two messages forces a shadow side to emerge that warrants attention. Without a broader context, ideas of faith and belief can easily lead to a path of guilt and self-blame. In other words, if I am not healed, if I do not have what I want, then it must be my fault. I have not had enough faith, I have not believed hard enough. I’ve heard this message of blame come through from traditional religious teachers and New Age gurus alike.

The Application

I’ve recently committed to taking my business to the next level financially. Most of the time, I believe I can do it, I will do it, I am doing it. I’ve decided to embrace, however, the really wise skeptic in me who nods and says, “Yes, but you’ve never done this before” or the little kid who says, “Yes, but I’m afraid to grow up that much!”

More than believing that I’m my own personal genie, I’ve committed to discovering where I’m resistant to my goal and dealing with that so that I can be more open and receptive. I’m also committed to laying the footwork that brings me closer to more financial success in my business. As I say in this post on marriage, I look forward to achieving my goal. I just might not quite believe it until I see it.

I don’t know enough about the Law of Attraction and its history to say whether my approach falls within the bounds of effective mental processes. I do know enough about Jesus’ other teachings to say that I’m pretty sure faith isn’t about perfection of thought or laying on the guilt when things don’t go as envisioned. I’ll keep you posted on how this refined *belief* works out for me.

And you? Where do you fall out with this?

by Portia Nelson

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

One predominant treatment is called masking therapy, whereby you block out the ringing with another noise (white noise, television) until the brain learns to ignore the ringing.

“The goal is to retrain the brain to ignore the disruptive noise, the same way it stops noticing highway traffic or the neighbor’s barking dog.”

However, some people make no headway with this treatment. Lack of improvement can result from obsession over the ringing or when sufferers  get stonewalled by the limbic system which, among other things, controls our  emotional response. To quote the article’s expert:

“If you hate dogs or hate your neighbor, that barking sound is not going to fade into the background.”

Isn’t that amazing?!? In these cases where tinnitus is idiopathic and no physical medical treatment is available, we can impede recovery by:

Obsessing on the problem

Overlaying “negative” emotions

I’m all for calling a spade a spade. If life sucks, name it. Admitting you have a problem is the first step in most kinds of recovery – be it addiction, hearing loss, unemployment or spiritual emptiness. Apparently, though, there’s a lot to be said for letting go and making peace with the thorns in our sides. Only then might we be able to remove them.

What about you? How have you noticed that an obsession with what’s wrong actually impedes your forward progress?*  Can you identify the direct and tangential emotions involved?

Please post your thoughts below!

I’d like to clarify an important distinction here. Most of us actually obsess over symptoms or get wrapped up in complaint. I would guess that 75% of my clients come to coaching unable to truly identify the problem they are facing – the fundamental root of their struggle or the real reason for any goal that they have set. The problem must be clearly named first in order to ensure successful forward movement. Doing this (sometimes time-heavy) work of identifying the problem is different than obsessing!

Maria and I have a unique standpoint: multiple generations is a good thing. Additionally, the biggest piece of the “generation gap” sits in our own sterotypes, prejudices and assumptions. Once we help our audience flesh that out, we share with them our Top 5 Strategies for Leveraging Generation Capital. Interested? Check out our super cool, very funny audio thingamajig here.

I digress.

At the end of a recent presentation, one fellow commented that our material could really be applied to anything. He said, “It’s communication 101.” Maria’s immediate response was right on target: “We couldn’t agree with you more.”

It was never clear to me whether the comment was meant as an insult. But here’s the deal: it doesn’t matter. The conversation we had with the group was powerful. Powerful enough that a woman come up to us afterwards, sharing how a lightbulb went off for her, enabling her to see an entirely new way of addressing some intergenerational issues she as facing.

Communication 101 is what most of us need. We forget to lay aside our prejudice and stereotypes. We resist the idea that collaboration is better than jockeying for power. We never get around to asking open-ended questions and then shutting up to let someone fully answer. We stop speaking respectfully.

Communicating effectively is no easy endeavor. Whether it’s between friends, lovers, colleagues, races, genders or generations, we’re always swimming in a sea of noise. The good news is there are some presentations out there that remind us of some new ways to do this. The good news is we can always go back to basics.

Nothing terribly unusual there.

Except that today is our 7th wedding anniversary.

Part of the anniversary ritual in our relationship involves my expression of astonishment: Can you BELIEVE we made it another year?!?!

Scott rolls his eyes and says yes, yes he can believe that we’ve “lasted” this long, he fully anticipated it and would I kindly have a little faith.

But here’s the deal: Scott always wanted to be married and imagined himself married. It seemed a pipe dream to me. You can read about some of my commitment issues here. And you can also know that as of this year or next I will have officially been married longer than my parents.

There’s something more, however, that I’m finally beginning to understand. My yearly exclamation is not just about disbelief or family history or fear of commitment. It’s also about putting lifelong commitment in its place, which is to say that a generative marriage is among the most difficult, challenging and awe-inspiring feats two people can create together. Not only does a marriage that really works for both partners require love, shared values, hard work and a whole lot of room to make mistakes; it also takes being in the right place at the right time. It requires luck.

Said another way, exclaiming my surprise at another year of marriage is a simple act of humility.

I can’t wait to celebrate these last seven years with Scott. I am so proud of them, of my choice to marry him, of the choice I have made every day since then. I look forward to celebrating year eight, too, and years 12 and 19 and 45. That’s what having faith means, isn’t it?

Just like today, however, I know I’ll be amazed. Surprised, even. Nearly in disbelief.

We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. . .

In our relationship with money, it is using money in a way that expresses our integrity; using it in a way that expresses value rather than determines value. Sufficiency is not a message about simplicity or about cutting back and lowering expectations. Sufficiency doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive or aspire. Sufficiency is an act of generating, distinguishing, making known to ourselves the power and presence of our existing resources, and our inner resrouces. Sufficiency is a context we bring forth from within that reminds us that if we look around us and within ourselves, we will find what we need. There is always enough. . .

I am not suggesting that there is ample water in the desert or food for the beggards in Bombay. I am saying that even in the presence of genuine scarcity of external resources, the desire and capacity for self-sufficiency are innate and enough to meet the challenges we face. It is precisely when we turn our attentions to these inner resources – in fact, only when we do that – that we can begin to see more clearly the sufficiency in us and available to us, and we can begin to generate effective, sustainable responses to whatever limitations of resources confront us. When we let go of the chase for more, and consciously examine and experience the resources we already have, we discover our resources are deeper than we knew or imagined. In the nourishment of our attention, our assets expand and grow.

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is, “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. We don’t have enough time. We don’t have enough rest. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course we don’t have enough money – ever. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever. . .

This mantra of not enough carries the day and becomes a kind of default setting for our thinking about everything, from the cash in our pocket to the people we love or the value of our own lives. What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life. It becomes the reason we can’t have what we want or be who we want to be. It becomes the reason we can’t accomplish the goals we set for ourselves, the reason our dreams can’t come true, or the reason other people disappoint us, the reason we compromise our integrity, give up on ourselves or write off others. . .

It is not even that we necessarily experience a lack of something, but that scarcity as a chronic sense of inadequacy about life becomes the very place from which we think and act and live in the world. It shapes our deepest sense of ourselves, and becomes the lens through which we experience life. Through that lens our expectations, our behavior, and their consequences become a self-fulfilling prophesy of inadequacy, lack, and dissatisfaction.

Okay, I don’t either. I’ve discovered, however, that they have this interesting disarming quality to them, especially when they are packaged with cute photos of animals or children.

See, you're hooked now, right?

It’s like talking to a dear friend who believes passionately about something and during the discourse, you feel your head nodding yes and your eyebrows raised in agreement. It’s not until you walk away that you realize that no, you don’t actually think waterboarding is ethically sound.

I received a forward today that compared the experience of life to that of a train journey. We get on board when we are born; we disembark when we die. The other passengers are our friends, etc.

As any recipient of such dispatches knows, the meaning is inevitably made clear enough that your 3 year old nephew would understand – no critical thinking required. This is handy. After all, I’m certainly not going to spend time on the deconstruction of a feel-good Power Point presentation that I feel compelled to read because I like sender.  

Back to life = train ride. I’m moving quickly through the slide, gently rolling my eyes at the positive use of the word “baggage.” And then comes the message:

“Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as pleasant and memorable as we can.”

I feel my eyebrows raise a bit, my head lean to the left and a slight nod start at the top of my spine. This is nice, I think. Pleasant and memorable. I like pleasant – it’s comforting, reassuring, unobtrusive. And who doesn’t want to remember positive events? Or be remembered? Maybe I should think more about being pleasant and memorable.

And then my brows furrow. Pleasant and memorable? Pleasant is as vanilla as vanilla gets and memorable seems like a partial waste, considering you know, death.

What about bold? Powerful? Creative? Helpful? Connected? Authentic?

But what I really want is to hear from you. Play a little Mad Libs, fill in the blanks and share below:

Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as _____________ and ______________ as we can.

Me: I really don’t think you should pay someone to fix the faucet in the sink.

Me: Oh yeah, why not?

Me: Because this is something you could learn. You really like problem solving and it will serve you well down the road. Plus, it will save you money to learn it yourself.

Me: But time is money. And by saving time,  I will, in effect,  save money. Or at least be able to make more of it.

So there’s lot’s to unpack there, right? We could look at some residual issues I have with money. We could examine a slight subtext of control. We could also dig into the need to justify what it is I want. Since I’m not terribly interested in the former two at this moment and I’ve already explored the latter here, let’s look at something else entirely.

Time is money.

The argument  is understandable. With time you can make money. If something – or someone – takes up your time, it – or this someone – also deprives you of your ability to make more money. As a business owner, I get this. If I am fixing the faucet, I am not coaching, writing, submitting proposals, attending workshops or leading my own. I am doing something other than those activities that allegedly bring home the bacon. And bacon (especially tempeh bacon) is mighty delicious.

It just so happens that “time is money” doesn’t really reflect my deepest values, at least not in the way we typically understand the concept of money.

A former college professor and friend on facebook shared a blog posting entitled, A Calendar is a Moral Document. Its author asserts that your calendar reveals what’s most important to you. How you spend your time (like how you spend your money) is both a reflection of and a way for you to express your deepest values and beliefs.

Fixing the faucet is good. So is working on my business.

But time isn’t just money. Time is also laughter. And my husband’s complex hazel eyes. And playing fetch with the cats. And feeding the hungry. And helping a friend move. And watching the trees bend in the wind.

As my wise mother said this weekend, “We’re really only on this planet for a short time.”

How are you spending it?