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The Spirit of Christmas

12/13/2016

During the holiday time, we receive mixed messages regarding what Christmas is about. We see the commercialization of Christmas and it's message about the purchase of material possessions to give to others. We see Christmas shows and hear Christmas music. The stores are full of decorations, holiday food items and they are bustling with Christmas shoppers.

People are stressing over getting their decorations up, sending out their Christmas cards, buying their presents, baking their cookies, prepping their food and attending holiday parties. There's this kind of tradition and that kind of tradition. But, what does it all mean? What is the Spirit of Christmas amidst all of this holiday clamor?

For Christians, Christmas honors the birth of Jesus. It is a joyous time to give thanks for God's love and mercy. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus and rejoice in our salvation and God's love and mercy for us.

We commonly think of Christmas and the birth of Jesus as a season of giving, but Christmas is also a season of receiving. Christmas is a time to receive and accept God into our hearts. Christmas is a time to receive God’s mercy, love and grace.

For me, the Spirit of Christmas is receiving God's love and then giving it back out. Love offering itself in it's many varied forms. Love manifesting as giving and generosity. Love manifesting as believing in someone. Love manifesting as giving attention to someone in need. Love manifesting as forgiveness. Love manifesting as gratitude. Love manifesting as compassion for all of humanity.

The Christmas lights, trees, decorations, cards, neatly wrapped gifts and carefully decorated cookies are beautiful and a fun part of the holiday tradition, but the deeper, true meaning and Spirit of Christmas is the important part. May our hearts receive God's love this Christmas and reflect it back out into the world. Wishing you and your loved ones a very joyous and loving Christmas!

This next week I will be enjoying time spent with my family, so I won't be posting a new blog next Tuesday. I'll be back in two weeks to kick off 2017!

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Reflecting

12/13/2016

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It's that time of the year where we are winding down the old year and looking toward the new year. A lot of us are contemplating what the new year will bring. Budgets, accomplishments, goals, and resolutions are being analyzed and discussed. Before we can move onto looking toward a new year and possibly setting goals and resolutions, I think it's important to first close out the old year. To spend some time reviewing and reflecting upon the year that has passed.

What is your process for concluding the year before setting forth your intention for the new year? In today's post I want to share with you some ideas on how to wrap up the year.

A process for reflecting and reviewing the year, that I love to use follows some basic tips that I learned from Marie Forleo. I've taken her suggestions and tweeked them a bit to my liking. I invite you to take some time for yourself and either sit in meditation, or sit with a pen and some paper, and reflect and review using this 3 step process.

1) What did I do, create, or experience this year that I'm really proud of? This can be in any area of your life. List out all of the accomplishments and experiences that you are proud of that happened this year. Work through month-by-month or pull out your calendar and take a look at the daily entries to help jog your memory. You may be surprised at how many you come up with.

2) What mistakes did I make and what did they teach me? What lessons did I learn that I can leverage from? What meaning was in those mistakes and lessons? Maybe it's something not concrete, like patience, or compassion, or forgiveness.

3) What am I willing to let go of? What old story do I want to rewrite and replace with a new story? An exercise I love that helps me to create the new story is to play the "imagine if" or "what if" game. When playing the "imagine if" and "what if" game there are no limitations, no rules, no restrictions, no logic. You get to freely create using your imagination what you would like the story to look like. No holes barred.

Once you've reflected and reviewed 2016 and brought it to a full and complete close, it's time to plan for the new year. I would suggest starting by going to your "imagine if" and/or "what if" envisioning exercise and write down the first small step that would need to be taken to move you in that direction. Make that first step one of your first intentions, goals or resolutions for the new year. If you already have in mind what the next step would be then jot that down as a second one. If you don't, then stop with the first intention and have faith that the next step will present itself along the way.

Do you have your own closing out the year process that you go through? What do you think about the 3 tips in this post? Would they be useful to you? I would love to hear your feedback. Please drop me a comment or send me an email.

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Stepping Into the Arena

12/6/2016

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This past year, I read the book Daring Greatly by Brene Brown and took her course on the book. Brene Brown is a researcher, professor, and author who has spent a large part of her career researching vulnerability and shame. Daring Greatly is about her research on vulnerability, shame and courage. It was not only a great read, but inspired me to step into the arena of life and get moving doing the things that fulfill me, that bring me joy and allow me to make a difference.

In our current society it's easy to get paralyzed and believe that that we have to be perfect, and where the idea of "never enough" dominates. Vulnerbility is seen as a weakness and "putting oursleves out there" feels like a great risk. We fear failure, criticism and that we are not enough.

In her book, Daring Greatly, Brene Brown says, "When we spend our lives waiting until we're perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be...a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation...with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgement and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience."

Do you find yourself at times paralyzed by the fear of "putting yourself out there"? Do you hold back from stepping into the arena? Stepping into your greatness? Embracing and stepping into the gifts that are yours to share with the world? I know that I did. I would have been doing what I am currently doing for the past 25 years if I wasn't paralyzed by fear. If I had listened to the whisper in my heart and followed it instead of discounting it's importance, discounting that it was possible, worrying about how I would do it, what people would think, etc.

In what areas of your life is it time to step into the arena? How is your fear of being vulnerable holding you back from being all that you can be? What small steps in that direction can you take this week?

We are approaching the beginning of a new year where many of us examine our lives and establish resolutions for the new year. What resolutions can you make that will allow you to step into the arena and dare to show up and be seen? Where can you exert some courage and be brave in this new year? And remember, you are never too old and it's never too late to step into the arena.

Here is a famous passage from Theodore Roosevelt's speech, "Citizenship in a Republic", that sums up this idea of stepping into the arena.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himslef in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achivement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly...."

There are two additional pieces that I would love to include in this post, but they are lengthy. One is from the book, The Sacred Romance, and I've included it in a previous post on June 16, 2015 titled, Your Shimmering Self. I invite you to go to the archive and reread it if this topic interests you. It is a great one!

The second one is a post written by author Elizabeth Gilbert titled, Start Knowing. It can be found on her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/GilbertLiz/?fref=ts.

I would love to hear your feedback on this idea of stepping into the arena. Please leave me a comment or send me an email.

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The Spirit of Christmas

Reflecting

Stepping Into the Arena

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