How to Thrive During the Holidays (And Every Day)

An excerpt from Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! by Deborah Jane Wells (Hay House/Balboa Press 2013)

When you fuel all aspects of yourself with love, respect, curiosity, compassion, and gratitude, your life becomes a fluid Journey to Wholeness grounded in who you are being, not what you are doing. Every breath, thought, word, and act—your very presence—fosters a life of generous, effortless, gracious flow filled with faith, hope, prosperity, peace, and joy. When you are free of all fear and aligned with love as your Source, your very presence raises the constructive energy of every being and situation you encounter.

The following set of simple personalized practices helps you realize the essential shift from believing these principles in your head to living them from your heart. Making these tools a way of life helps you stay centered in flow. And when you drift off center occasionally, as any of us can do when overwhelmed by stress and gripped by ancient self-destructive scripts, these tools are the key to recognizing it quickly and getting back on track easily.

Pay Attention: If you don’t recognize you’re feeling stressed, you can’t change it. Practice mindfulness by noticing what you are thinking, feeling, saying, and doing and figuring out why.
Breathe: Next time things start getting a little crazy, stop, take three deep breaths, become fully present, restore sanity, and realize you have options. Your brain needs oxygen to function effectively. Try setting a timer on your phone or computer to remind you periodically to stop, close your eyes for a minute, and just breathe.
Be Here Now: Forget rehashing the past and agonizing over the future. This moment is your only real opportunity to make a difference. Just you, just here, just now, just be. Perpetual equanimity and fulfillment come from dancing in the moment.
Opportunity Knocks: While life won’t always follow your plans and expectations, everything in life is an opportunity. An opportunity to understand yourself better, open your heart wider, and develop greater compassion for yourself and others. While the details of our lives differ, we all experience the same range of emotions, from fear, frustration, and loneliness to joy, contentment, and peace. With yourself firmly planted in the present moment, it is your ability to respond creatively and constructively that makes the difference.
Get Curious: If everything is an opportunity, where might the opportunity be in this situation? The Universe is far more creative than we can imagine. Assume the best and look for the silver lining in even the darkest cloud.
Talk to Yourself: It is the smartest crazy thing you’ll ever do. It improves your sense of perspective, creativity, and humor. You might discover that what you were dreading isn’t likely to happen or will be much easier than you feared. With a little imagination, it might even be a great opportunity. This tool is particularly effective for constructively engaging, understanding, and motivating your sage, guardian, and muse.
Write It Down: Getting stressful thoughts out of your head and onto paper can also improve your sense of perspective. Often, just putting them in writing reduces them to a more manageable size.
Move It: When in doubt, move about. A gentle walk around the room, the block, or the gym will begin releasing natural tranquilizers and restoring full breathing. It feeds your creativity so you will be able to come up with more resourceful options for handling your situation.
Hydrate: Water fosters flow and sustains life. It composes up to 60 percent of the average human body and covers 70 percent of the earth’s surface. Drink. Shower. Bathe. Swim. Cry. Hydrate yourself in every way imaginable and watch yourself flow through the ups and downs of life with greater flexibility, creativity, and resilience.
Trust Your Gut: You have inside you all the wisdom you seek. Instead of stressing yourself out by fighting your instincts or feeling compelled to justify your hunches with logic, try trusting your intuition instead.
Behave As If: There are two aspects to this one: If you gave yourself the same care and attention you give your friends and loved ones, what support would you give yourself right now? And what would you dare to do if you believed you couldn’t fail?
Take Baby Steps: Slow and steady produces meaningful, lasting results. Vast forced output is rarely sustained. Great strides of lasting value involve myriad baby steps over time. If the conceivers of the Taj Mahal had believed fast was the only way to get there, it would have crumbled in the first storm. Your dreams are the same. Don’t try to take them all on at once. Identify the next small step and take it. Then another and another and another. Before you know it, you will have built your dream, and it will last your whole life through.
Celebrate: Every step forward is a cause for celebration. Every time you move closer to your dreams, pat yourself on the back with a party moment. Ta-da! A steady stream of self-affirmation will continue releasing additional positive fuel to keep you moving forward.
Time for What Matters: Time is not a scarce resource. You have all the time you need for the things that matter. Your sole responsibility in each moment is to discern what matters most right now, to focus, and to follow through. Using the other tools will help clear the way to accessing your deepest wisdom and moving forward, in each moment, with confidence, peace, and joy.

These tools provide a path to a life of freedom based in flow rather than a life lived at the effect of any fears that may have taken root within yourself or in those around you. No longer tossed by the winds and waves of circumstance, you will learn to live anchored in the power and surety of love in every moment, knowing in your heart that you too can create the more fulfilling life you dream of.

The only person controlling your life is you. Turn unexplored possibilities into fulfilling realities by harnessing the transformative power of love to step into your greatness. Choose your energy and change your life!