Chronically Cheerful #11: Doing less.
Why you should do less, the power of visualization, and having your best day.
I don’t know about you, but holiday season is here — and I’m stressed.
Since last year’s holidays were basically spent in hibernation, there seems to be extra pressure this year to compensate for lost opportunities. To do more, buy more, and even be a more fun version of ourselves.
Yet is going bigger and bolder really the right approach?
We crave community and a chance for celebration, yet we’re collectively exhausted. I think there’s value in remembering over the last few years, life often got easier and more comfortable by doing less.
Clearing the schedule. Ordering the takeout. Spend quality time with family and friends, but also taking breaks. Delegating. Letting little things slide.
Doing less doesn’t mean your holidays will be any less special. In fact, doing less can mean there will be room for more meaning.
For me, doing less this year looks like…
Spending less time thinking about how my holiday season should look…and more time focusing on how this season should feel.
Less hustle and bustle…and more quiet and cozy time spent at home.
Fewer busy gatherings…and more time letting friends and family know I care about them through personal acts of love.
Paying less attention to societal “should’s”…and more attention to my needs.
Worrying less about the past and future…and more time grounded in the here and now.
So ask yourself, “What can I do less of?” this holiday season. Let me know what comes to mind in the comments!
xo
Carolyn
Try This
I’m getting my COVID booster today (#grateful #yayscience) and my mind is already spinning narratives about potential negative side effects.
Like many people with a chronic illness, I had fairly intense side effects from the vaccine. Don’t get me wrong, I’m SO grateful I received the vaccines, and feel so much safer having gotten it. But that still doesn’t change that I experienced strong fear of having a weeks or months long flare as I recovered.
Today, I’m using a trick that I’ve practiced quite a lot this year, which is visualization. Visualization is one of the most powerful tools we have to change how we feel. By using guided imagery, we can shift our attention away from stress, anxiety and pain to tap into our own inner healing. Visualization uses the imagination to "create the state you want," changing how you feel physically by changing your mental framework. It may sound crazy, but it's science!
Our bodies react the same whether we are actually experiencing something or simply imagining something. So when we worry, it's like we're experiencing a stressful event twice -- now AND in the future. Instead, imagining a more calm circumstance or environment, you can "trick" your body into producing actual chemicals like serotonin that help you feel peaceful and happy, priming you to feel less pain in the present. Elite athletes use this technique to imagine themselves performing at their best, which then helps to prime the brain to perform better under actual game conditions.
So today, I’m literally visualizing myself receiving the vaccine with the best case scenario happening: no symptoms, no side effects, just true healing happening within my body. I’m repeating it over and over again in my mind, priming my body to feel less fear. Hopefully, when I do get the booster later today, it has a smaller chance of eliciting a stress response within my body — the one thing I have that is actually within my control.
Consider This
I recently read a great opinion piece in the New York Times by Lindsay Crouse, which argued that we can make any day the best day of the year — if we shift our mindset. She says:
The planned punctuations to life — holidays, job promotions, family milestones — often disappoint. New Year’s Eve is useless; Thanksgiving ends up being memorable not for the meal but for the next-day deliberations over how many ways you can eat a leftover turkey. The polished moments that ended up on Instagram weren’t what I remembered at the end of the year, either. I rarely had any photos at all of the best days. I was too busy living them…
I wondered, could I find a way to know when the best days were coming and really feel them as they happened? So I tried declaring a best day in advance. Even if it felt ridiculous, this effort to make the ordinary feel extraordinary usually worked.
In other words, the framing I was giving my declared best days — and the anticipation I was assigning them — was tricking my brain into seeing them as something more special, more weighted with emotional significance, than it otherwise would.
We can’t wait anymore. The stress we feel now isn’t going to magically disappear, just as it never would have before the pandemic. The world has always been a shambles. There’s only one thing we can control: How are we going to live in it?
I love this concept. This past year, I realized my husband and I hadn’t taken a real vacation since 2016. We were always waiting — waiting for my health to improve, waiting for pandemic circumstances to change. But we finally decided that we just couldn’t wait anymore. The vacation we took was absolutely wonderful. And I think it was even more special because of the unideal situation. Here’s to finding ways to make magic in the mess.
Tell Yourself This
