It’s almost a cliché to say the holidays can be stressful. Instead of peace and joy, the reality is we’re often just trying to stay sane. Not everyone gets along, dinner gets burned—it can be an emotional minefield.
Any picture-perfect image of the holidays we build up in our minds, filled with expectations of how life should be, rarely gets met for long.
It’s easy to get caught in the mental trap of the “the comparing mind.” We might think to ourselves: This is how things are—and this is what I picture they should be. We strive to recreate images of holiday bliss, and it exhausts us. Illusions portrayed in shows, movies, in our friend’s social feeds, or holiday advertisements set our more complex reality into disturbing relief. Consumerism itself leads to unhappiness, encouraging our endlessly hungry and restless craving for even more.
Any picture-perfect image of the holidays we build up in our minds, filled with expectations of how life should be, rarely gets met for long.
Instead of aiming for perfection and letting every detail cast us into bouts of worry, we can use the holidays to actively appreciate the people around us and our good fortune wherever we…
