This week, many of us are gathering for holiday celebrations or planning for ones coming up. Here are some tools and reminders to help you move through yours with more intention, wellbeing, and love.
1. Begin with remembering who’s at the table: people who carry hurts, scars, assumptions. People who carry dreams and heartfelt desires. We all show up with our limitations and our wounds. And we all show up with a core need for care and connection (even if that need is buried under a lot of other stuff).
2. At the end of each day, notice the love or connection from that day that you could amplify. Could you send that extra thank you to someone for the special conversation? Is there someone to pay a heartfelt compliment to or express appreciation to? Give language to and build on what’s good!
3. And, at the end of each day, notice is there anyone I owe an apology to? Am I feeling not quite right about that thing I said that came out in a rather judgemental or harsh way? Did I make a subtle dig? What about the moment when I fell back into an unkind behavior pattern? Grab your phone and write a note or make a call to say I’m sorry.
4. When you gather in groups, or talk 1:1, use Priya Parker’s Magical Questions to spark deeper, more connecting discussions.
5. Use the tool of Love 360. This is my tool for finding the pathway forward that’s loving to all parties involved, including yourself. When making a difficult decision, making group plans, or even when setting a boundary, ask yourself: “What would be loving 360 degrees around the circle, to all parties involved, including me?” For example, “Joe really wants to go back to our old family home and show it to the kids, and I feel like that’s just going to be too painful for me. What’s the Love 360 solution?” Or, “my mom loves to give the kids tons of sugar as a way of connecting with them, and I know it ruins their sleep and moods… what’s a Love 360 way to talk about and handle this?” Love 360 isn’t about giving everyone exactly what they want. It’s about discerning what approach is loving to all involved.
6. Do you know the wonderfully helpful serenity prayer?
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
It’s a great prayer to use in relationship situations – and so many other kinds of situations too.
Join me in turning it into a journaling practice. When you are feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, blaming, or unsure what to do, grab your pen and paper and make two columns. On the left make a list of the things about the situation you cannot control (i.e. Julie’s comments. Ted’s temper.) Then in the second column make a list of things you can control. (How I respond to that. When I stay in the room and go. What I put my attention on. Taking time out to move my body.) And so on. Make both lists! After you do, see how the situation now looks or feels differently to you, and what new paths forward present themselves.
7. Again, remember that first one. It’s probably the most important of all. Here’s who is at the table: people who carry hurts, scars, assumptions, dreams and heartfelt desires. We all show up with our limitations and our wounds. And we all show up with a core need for care and connection.
Love,
Tara
Top Photo Credit: Virginia Simionato
