The end of the year can be a recipe for burnout, exhaustion, and strained relationships. For many people, the good cheer and family time of the holiday season brings light to the darkness outside. Yet for many others, the holidays can be profoundly challenging. Some of us are alone, while others are with family members with whom we have difficult relationships. Some of us love Christmas music, decorations, and shopping, while others feel alienated or stressed out by those things. Despite what commercials suggest, there’s no one right way to feel at this time of year! Wherever you find yourself this holiday season, we want to encourage you to bring mindfulness and meditation with you.
Here are three practices to help:
- Take a Breather—Or At Least a Breath
In the rush to get everything done for the holidays, a sense of urgency and depletion can take over. A simple antidote? Take a moment to pause and notice what’s already present and worth appreciating. Scientist, author, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer says: “Recognizing enoughness is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.”
Reclaiming our attention, if even for a moment, allows us the chance to check in with ourselves, and focus on the people and things that matter to us. Even 5 minutes a day of meditation can help build this mindfulness and other supportive qualities like gratitude. To help keep up the habit, the Happier meditation app pulled together a group of short meditations focused on giving and receiving this season.
- Give—and Receive—Some Grace
In making our lists for everything that we want to give to others, we can forget ourselves in the equation. Dr. Kristen Neff is a researcher and author who has focused on the science of self-compassion, creating a three-step process. The first step is to simply acknowledge that what we’re experiencing is challenging, rather than berating ourselves.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the daylight is scarce, and our internal rhythms are set to rest and restore mode. We often forget that we’re mammals, to our own peril! In Dr. Neff’s practice, the second step is remembering our shared humanity—that we’re not alone in being stressed, distracted, or overwhelmed by the season. And that recollection can transform isolation into connection. The third step involves treating ourselves as a friend to not take any of our emotions too personally.
As meditation teacher, Pascal Auclair says. “If instead of being harsh with yourself, you give yourself a break, even if it’s for one second, the whole system will recognize that it’s a good way to be with this. To me, it’s an open door to compassion, like, wow, we’re all in this together. We all have this in common. And when we discover this, of course, benevolence arises. I want you to be safe. I want you to be healthy. I want it to go well for you, and for me.”
Meditation teacher Jeff Warren offers a meditation on the process of “wintering” – giving ourselves permission to rest.
- Practice Goodwill
Of course, meditation doesn’t give us an immediate superpower to be an eternal optimist, and that’s okay. But we can actively train in meditation to strengthen our sense of positive regard for ourselves and others, helping us to boost our resilience amidst any natural emotions or reactions to our complicated world. Metta meditation, sometimes translated as loving-kindness, is one way to build up the reserves of goodwill.
Simply put, it involves bringing a person or being to mind, and connecting to a sense of goodwill for that person. It can be as simple as resting with that feeling for a moment, or offering a set of words or phrases that reinforces this wish. Doing so helps rewire our default view of life.
As teacher Joseph Goldstein says, “So often, we can think about other beings in our lives from a place of worry or fear, and we can miss out on truly appreciating the gift of our time together. This expression of metta, of loving kindness, of goodwill, is a different way of thinking about our loved ones. It’s uncomplicated. We’re simply wishing them well. There’s a wonderful quality of connection and ease and goodwill if you begin to practice moments of this during the day.”
Sharon Salzberg has taught this meditation practice for decades, and written many books on the subject. Sharon offers a “Loving-Kindness for Everyone” meditation.
Mindfulness helps us to slow down, become a little freer from repetitive mental circuits and patterns, and see clearly. And when there’s clear seeing of even the simplest things—gratitude can arise on its own. There’s a subtle joy that emerges from what might be the fundamental mind-heart movement of mindfulness: seeing clearly what’s actually happening, free from the push-pull of our desires or expectations. There’s a real delight in letting go of the urge to be happy in a certain way, or to celebrate the season in a certain way. No matter what the holidays look like this year, that happiness is yours.
And it takes practice! Throughout January we’ll be practicing this together in the Happier app with our new course, Even Now, Love. Get the Happier meditation app today with a special 40% off offer on your annual subscription. Offer good through 1/15/25.