How to Put Less Expectations on Your Holidays

Is anyone feeling a let-down or mini-depression after the holidays?

Perhaps they were not all you expected them to be?
To achieve a life of peace and grounded-ness, you must always come from the center.

In light of the current U.S. holidays, however, you may find yourself feeling a little less than centered. Holidays and big events, if entered into with expectations of all of the joy and glory of a perfect Christmas card, or stories and images of an amazing New Year’s Eve experience, can sometimes cause tension and stress if not entered into reverently and mindfully.

Much of Western life is lived through the expectation that we are to experience very high ‘highs’, very low ‘lows,’ and very mediocre times in between, and we measure our satisfaction of our experiences by these expectations. The attention our culture places on having a picture-perfect holiday or amazing New Year’s Eve creates unnatural expectations for days on the calendar where the sun only knows that it is expected to rise another day, and the moon is to set. The result is stress and anxiety if we think our experiences of these days have somehow missed the mark- that ourselves, someone else, or the universe in general has somehow failed to deliver the perfect experience to us.
If we live the holidays from this perspective, we can become of a victim of our holiday experiences, rather than to just experience them as they are- without all of the expectations that have been placed on them by ourselves, society, and the media.

Whenever we are finding ourselves stressed from experiences or events that are supposed to bring us pleasure and be one of life’s ‘highs,’ we need to stop for a moment and remember why we are going through them that way. Going through the holidays with a mindless numb isn’t nurturing to anyone, and when you look at it, experiencing them the way that it seems you are ‘supposed to’ is not actually a requirement for life, such as , say, eating, sleeping, or breathing. So why would we inflict that pressure upon ourselves either by choice or just to fit in?

We are allowed to have our ups, and we will surely have our downs. However, if we do not create unreasonable expectations about the ‘high’ that the holidays should give us, we can allow ourselves to see every day of our lives with reverence, and our ‘holidays’ will no longer be filled with tension and expectations.

In doing so, we will find that the tension before, and the let-down after these periods will greatly decrease, as we will find ourselves better able to live from a center-point where the highs are pleasurable, and the lows are manageable. When we live more from that center-point, society will no longer need to create the artificial ‘high’ of the holidays.

Experience your holidays (and every day) mindfully, and for what they really are. It is then that you will see the beauty that unfolds in every moment, with no pressure from you.