Season of Belief

Many have writ­ten about the stress­es of the hol­i­days, how the time calls up unruly expec­ta­tions, uncom­fort­able mem­o­ries and unre­solved loss­es. All of that is true, and yet as I write this evening, it also seems to hold an acute irony. This is a sea­son of belief and giv­ing, isn’t it? But the one per­son left out of that may well be you. Too often we fail to believe in and offer hope to the one per­son for whom these qual­i­ties are most war­rant­ed and mean­ing­ful. We work hard to give the right things to oth­ers, and to be absolute­ly unselfish, to do our part in cre­at­ing the mag­ic, but in doing so we also fail to give back any of that mag­ic to our­selves. We’d rather berate our­selves with cau­tion­ary tales of neglect­ed gen­eros­i­ty than acknowl­edge that, yeah, we, too need something.

It is so vital that we believe first and fore­most in who we are, in our lives, our unique val­ue, our con­tri­bu­tions, and so much more than in exte­ri­or per­for­mances and pro­duc­tions. Not believ­ing in your­self cre­ates a chaot­ic, dis­tressed, ulti­mate­ly unin­hab­it­able desert of a life, a win­ter’s jour­ney if there ever was one. 

So, if the hol­i­days cre­ate anx­i­ety about mon­ey, let believ­ing in your­self cre­ate a dif­fer­ent kind of inner abun­dance. If rela­tion­ships are dri­ving you nuts, let self-belief enable you to step back and renew your spir­its. If you don’t feel you are get­ting things done, it’s a good to let believ­ing in your­self relax unre­al­is­tic pres­sures and cre­ate new space. You nev­er know, self-belief and per­mis­sion might just let a lit­tle piece of the desired mag­ic show up on its own.

There isn’t much to say about this. And per­haps I’m crazy or becom­ing too sen­ti­men­tal (or sim­ply have watched too many Hall­mark movies), and yes I know there’s a lot to do and all that old stuff of expec­ta­tions can still, in an eye blink, make itself known. 

But I say give it up. Hol­i­day self-judg­ments and per­fec­tion­ism — or judg­men­tal per­fec­tion­ism any­time — will exhaust you and make you for­get who you are. 

So, being unabashed­ly corny, here’s my gift to you this year. Go ahead, unwrap it. It’s a rather hand­some mir­ror. In it, I hope what you see is YOU, a pret­ty amaz­ing and accom­plished per­son, imper­fect and beau­ti­ful, flawed and whole, vul­ner­a­ble and very strong, the real deal and the whole pack­age, wor­thy. This is a gift that comes to you with a card writ­ten in the hand of a child. 

Yeah, go ahead and unwrap it, and enjoy it.

Indeed, I hope this present — this moment — brings you a smile today and real hap­pi­ness for the com­ing year.

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