By Jennifer Suri
The excitement of the holiday season is here. Can you feel it? Or are you feeling the blues?
You may be part of an overwhelming majority (64%) who report being affected by the holiday blues (NIMH). This season, shift your mindset and flip your negative feelings into positive ones to let in the joy of the season.
Laura St. John, Celebrity Mindset Coach and founder of Strong Confident Living, shared with us her tips on avoiding the holiday blues. We asked her to talk about avoiding the blues, managing expectations and not putting happiness on hold over the holiday.
St. John has been coaching people on how to find their happiness for over 20 years. Taking her tips on how to avoid the blues during the holiday season to heart can be life changing.
Shift your mindset in terms of how you’re measuring yourself in terms of success
Don’t get stuck inside being critical of not reaching your goals. A really common theme at the end of each year for perfectionists or go-getters is the feeling of “did I measure up” when it comes to self-assessing yourself. This shines the light on “am I enough” and therefore “did I do enough” which come from feelings of lack that you are quantifying through looking at external measurements to prove whether you met or fell short on your goals. This can block a lot of happiness around or after the holidays because you are not letting in feelings of joy until you meet some number on the scale, or some amount of money in your bank account.
When you don’t allow yourself to feel happiness in the process, you will end up every December feeling badly about yourself which lines you up for a terrible start for January, where you want to clean slate everything but you are still starting from a negative place to avoid more of what you don’t want. That vicious cycle sets you right back up for failure in 2023.
Here are tips direct from Laura on how to avoid that feeling:
Think bigger
Make your vision of your future bigger and brighter than the challenges of your past. If you’re an overthinker, I love coaching people to take that skill set and apply it brilliantly to solve your dreams. This takes that overactive part of your brain and redirects it toward a clear new target.
Challenge your own thoughts
Sometimes we get really stuck in a loop of thoughts that are clearly negative. Challenging your own thoughts is an instrumental way to recognize if they feel good to you, or not, when you think them. When you have a negative thought, ask yourself:
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- is this in line with who I am or where I want to be going?
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- If not, intentionally feed your brain thoughts that align to your new brighter vision.
Tap into your core values
When you find yourself measuring yourself, tap into the immeasurable things that matter even more to you. For example, that may be time with family and loved ones. It may be expressing your creativity in art or cooking. Or perhaps it’s giving back and contributing your time or energy into causes that you love. These are the things that make you feel good and tap into the creative essence of who you are and how you represent yourself and your purpose. When you can find the time in your week, month, and year to prioritize these things, you’ll feel good about yourself and that feeling permeates into all aspects.
Softly! can let you tap into those core values and help you feel good when shopping. Download the Softly Personal Shopping Assistant, an extension that is easy to add to your browser, and choose the product qualities that are important to you. It will then help you choose products that are verified to be in line with your values, whether it is environmentally friendly, sustainable, animal friendly, allergy free or made in the USA.
The ultimate way to avoid post holiday blues is to start feeling good about yourself right this second!
The Road to Happiness Starts and Ends with You!
Here are some tools to help you get started!
Softly is thrilled to share Laura St. John’s free workshop with you on how to make your vision for 2023! Start stepping into that version of you right now. Sign up to get Softly SWAPS! sent to your inbox and get a link to register for Laura’s workshop as well as 20% off her online courses!
Visit Strong Confident Living to learn more about her self-paced curriculum, online courses and private group coaching.
You can start feeling good now.
