Reflections for growth

 One of the assignments I disliked most when I was in school was reflections.  I think all my English teachers had us do reflections.  We would turn in a piece, and we would also have to turn in a reflection on our piece, and we would be graded on both.  Looking back, I'd have to thank my teachers, and apologize for the lackluster way in which I approached those reflections.

Reflection is a huge part of my life.  I'm a planner, planning helps me keep my life on track.  And for me, reflections are integral to my planning.  I give myself more space for each day, not because I need more space for tasks, but because I want to be able to reflect on each day.  Looking back at the day and writing about what went well (and what didn't) helps me stop and think about what is working (and what isn't).  Doing it daily means it's easy to directly connect my mood to the things that went on.

I also do monthly and yearly reflections.  Monthly reflections allow me those small 'bigger picture' moments.  I have a lot of tasks that I do on a monthly basis, so taking a moment to stop at the end of the month and evaluate the month helps me make sure that I'm staying on track and that the things I am doing are working for me.  If I need to make adjustments, a month is a great yardstick for whether the adjustments are beneficial or if I need to keep adjusting.

I'm in the midst of my end of year reflections right now.  I feel these are the big ones.  Since I do themed years, this is my time to look back and see how well I worked on that theme for the year.  My yearly reflections aren't judgemental, I don't think of it as succeeding or failing (even on years where I end up not being anywhere near where I thought I'd be at the end of the year), but more as a way to check in and see what the triumphs and struggles were.  Any struggles are examined as teaching moments...what can I learn from what went poorly and how can I support areas that I feel I am not well supported in.

And I think that's something really important to keep in mind when doing reflections.  It's not about beating yourself up...no matter how spectacularly you 'failed' at accomplishing your goals.  It's all about how to move forward.  It's all about growth and self-care and being honest with yourself.

When looking at places you don't feel great about, really be brave and explore why you feel the way you do.  Poke at what caused the issues.  It can feel overwhelming and it is easy to fall into a self-depreciation trap and only see the places we messed up...while ignoring all other factors.  But there is a lot to consider, and when you root out all the details you have a better idea of how to do things differently the next time.

Sometimes, we pick our goals poorly.  Maybe we thought we knew what we wanted, but as we explored it more it didn't really fit us well...but it was a goal so we stubbornly plodded along (but secretly resisted it and didn't ever have good motivation to work on it).  

Sometimes things completely out of our control derail our goals.  Maybe we got sick or injured, maybe our job situation changed, maybe our personal situation changed...and all of a sudden the resources we thought we'd have just aren't there.  These changes can be really hard to accept, but it's worse to continue to beat ourselves up for things that are out of our hands.

A common issue is that we bite off more than we can chew.  Especially if you are like me, and have a ton of things you are excited about, it's easy to set a bunch of goals for different areas of your life...and then realize you absolutely don't have time to do all of them justice.  When you're in the midst of it, it can be hard to see that if you picked a few less goals you would have been okay.  Especially when the individual things you were doing for each of your goals were simple, it can leave you feeling like you can't do anything.  This is one of those places where perspective really comes into play (it's also helpful sometimes to actually plot out all the stuff you need to do for all your goals in one place....tackling one goal that requires ten minutes a day is very different from trying to manage ten goals that take ten minutes a day)

It could also be that the method we chose to reach our goals wasn't a good fit to us.  We may feel very strongly about the goal, but we struggled to follow our plan.  Reflecting on the things that didn't stick can help us figure out why they didn't work, and we can come up with a new plan to try.

I also feel it's very important to recognize the things you did well, and not to just focus on what didn't go well.  It's really easy to get caught up in trying to 'fix' the things that you feel you failed at, but taking the time to reflect on the things that were good gives us that other perspective.  It shows us what works for us, and that gives us more tools to use for the things we want to work on.  Knowing your strengths is just as important as knowing your weaknesses!

This also includes recognizing those unexpected successes.  We often have things that we did that turned out surprisingly well.  Perhaps the tables were turned on you, but instead of dropping the ball you juggled everything and ended up being really pleased with yourself.  This is especially important to remember if the success was a small thing in the middle of a bigger mess.  If your day went horribly, but you rallied together and managed to do one thing extra well, you should recognize that!  I find that by looking for those small wins, I notice motivations I might have otherwise missed.  For me, when I'm feeling particularly bad, doing something small can turn my energy around, and the more little things I remember that I've done, the more options I have when I find myself in that place.

I think that too many people don't stop to think about how their life is going.  They just muddle through each day, as if it weren't connected to the days that had gone before, and I think they are just missing out on so much.  Growth is often impossible to see in the moment.  The only way to see growth is to compare where you are now with where you were before...that is all reflection is!  Looking back and seeing where you were, and then looking at the path that took you from there to here.

Reflection is such a great tool to use to help navigate your life.  It can remind you of the highs, of those fun, motivational, emotional and powerful moments.  It can also show you the places you are starting to wobble, allowing you to course correct before you crash.  And even if you hit a personal low, you can unravel the mess that you were in and see which threads you can cut to avoid ending up in that tangle again. 

Blended Holidays

 One of my favorite memes about the whole "Happy Holidays" tantrums points out just how many winter holidays there are, and it's sort of bizarre (to me at least) to get all in a ruffle because a stranger doesn't believe and celebrate the exact same way you do.  But that's another rant....

Instead, I want to talk about how to blend holiday traditions, whether you are wanting to honor different holidays in your own practice (especially for people who feel called to honor the holidays of their childhood or their recent ancestors), or whether you live in a household with people who practice a religion (or are of a culture) different to yours.

I pulled the term blended holidays from the old term blended family.  To my mind, it's a very fusion concept.  It really embraces the idea that you aren't just celebrating both (or all) of your traditions, but you are really working on weaving them into a cohesive union (just like you do when you join families together).

The very first step is absolutely communication.  You need to gather together the people who will be involved and talk about what holidays you want to honor and in what ways.  Part of this discussion will be really looking at what parts of the holiday are most important to the person who celebrates it, and what bits are mostly fluff and they don't mind if things are adjusted a bit.

Most holidays we celebrate have a lot of different ways you can personalize them.  Even commercialized 'social' holidays like the Santa side of Xmas (for this blog post, I'll be using Xmas to refer to the commercial and non-religious celebration of Santa, while Christmas will be reserved for Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus) can have many ways of showing up in your life.  Some people have very specific rituals of putting out cookies (maybe of a family recipe), or traditions of opening a present on Xmas eve.  It can even be little things like talking about when the decorations go up...and when they come down.

When you add religion into it, often things become more strict, as many religious holidays have certain ritual actions that are a part of honoring the holiday, whether that means reading the advent story, lighting the Menorah or lighting a Yule log.  Often these things need to take place on certain days, maybe even at certain times.  This is one place where things often get tricky, especially if there are conflicting times, or if some people prefer to sit out of religious observations that they aren't a part of (but maybe the person who is celebrating would like their 'family' to be there with them).

The important thing to remember is that this is a discussion and the end goal isn't to 'win' the conversation, but rather to find the best way to make everyone as happy as possible.  Often, if someone is reluctant to participate in an activity, they may not understand why their presence is important, and talking that out makes them more willing to participate.  Also, explaining what will be going on at different times helps people who may not be a part of a particular tradition know what to expect, which often makes them more comfortable being a part of it.

This also gives you the chance to explain if certain parts or activities are reserved for members of a particular faith or culture.  Again, talking it through helps people who aren't a part of it understand why it might not be appropriate for them to participate.  It also helps you explain what your needs are, if maybe you need to have some private time for an hour, or if you need them to go visit friends for an evening.  Or maybe, they can be present, but they shouldn't be directly involved at certain points.

Something to keep in mind, about blending holidays, is that it may end up being a progression.  The first year you attempt it, you may feel like you are just celebrating the different holidays all at the same time (or over the course of the holiday season), but they are still distinct and separate holidays.  And if that works for you, that's perfectly fine!  But if you want more blending, think about ways that the holidays overlap, ways in which there are similar practices that might be combined into a new practice.  Over time, you can continue to fiddle with these blendings until you find the ones that work just right for you and your household.

For example, one of my fond memories of Christmas when I was little (my parents are both holiday Christians, they believe, but really only do stuff for Christmas and Easter), was advent.  I loved the little story, opening up the little windows (we had a book with a corresponding reusable advent card, where each day had a little window to open).  But the story doesn't really fit my personal practice (and hubby/son are atheist, so no need for the traditional advent story here), and instead I've been turning to a Norse celebration of the 12 days of Yule, where different deities, beings and values are honored each day.  I could absolutely create my own personal Yule advent, where I collected stories for each of the days, and perhaps a token to add to a display, so each day I could read the story, then add my tokens to a growing display for the season.

And if you don't have other people you are needing to include in your 'discussions', you can still go through the same process, though I might journal it out.  Write down what you want to celebrate, and what the core parts of those celebrations are to you.  Look at ways to combine them or honor them side-by-side, whichever way calls out to you more.

No matter how you work on blending the holidays of your household or practice, it can be a really unique experience to weave together different strands of the celebrations that are important to you.  Not only do you end up with a personalized holiday season that fits you, you may find that the process of identifying what is important and working to create a good merging of different celebrations really helps you deepen your connection with the practices you are cultivating.

Thinking outside the gift box

 We live in an unprecedented time of consumerism, when the world is telling us we need to go big or go home.  We watch holiday movies where people give extravagant gifts to each other, from cars to piles of presents.  Social media builds up these insane expectations and people judge gifts without context.

We also live in a time where many people have all the things they need and often even most of what they want.  It's not uncommon to know someone (or multiple someones) who buys all the things they see that they like, which can make gift giving hard.  Or maybe you know someone who really doesn't have any hobbies (and you don't want to get them a 'useful' or work related gift).  Or someone who constantly complains about having too much stuff and how they don't want anything.

And this year, we add in shipping issues, where one of the things we take for granted in the modern age (being able to buy just about anything online and have it at our doorstep in days) might not be possible.  We are seeing things stuck 'in transit', shipping costs have gone up and many places are giving shipping estimates that are much longer than we are used to.

This has led a lot of people to be unrealistically concerned about holiday gift giving.  Which is sort of strange considering how long, in the history of gift giving, overnight shipping just hasn't been an option.  Of course there is always the (wonderful) option of buying local and supporting small businesses, but that still may leave you struggling to find things for those tricky people in your life.

 

We often get trapped 'in the box' so to speak, when it comes to gifting.  We think that gifts need to be things we have bought, stuff that is will last for years, things that can be wrapped and put under a tree or in a stocking.  And yet, that leaves out a whole realm of gifts that are often well received and might be more desired than another item that will sit on the shelf and collect dust.

Let's first talk about the elephant in the room.  Gift cards and money.  These are often seen as generic gifts, like the things you get people you don't know much about.  And they certainly can fit that bill, as money is useful for anyone!  Especially for people who are struggling (and aren't we all right now...), a little extra cash, or a gift card for somewhere we like to go, is just so useful.  Plus, many places give extras when you purchase a gift card, so your money can stretch just a bit more.  Honestly, I've never gotten a gift card that I was unhappy to receive.

Another gift that many people don't think of as a gift, or think of as a generic gift is food and drink.  But it's a great way to treat someone to something a little extra.  Think of a food or drink they like, and look for a fancy version of it.  Do they like cheese, maybe find a nice cheese sampler box, so they can try a variety of cheeses that you just can't find at the local grocery store.  Maybe get them some exotic coffee blends or chocolates from around the world.  If you want to go homemade, bake or cook their favorite dish for them, or share with them that coveted recipe that they always ask for.

Speaking of handcrafted, this is a great way to support small businesses.  This is especially great if you know they like a particular artist, but haven't gotten something of theirs yet.  Or maybe you know someone local who is making things for some extra money for the holidays.  You can help them out and get a nice gift in the process!  One of the best things about handcrafted things is they are unique.  

And, if you are the crafty type, you can make things yourself!  Some people scoff at handmade gifts, thinking they are cheap, but let me tell you, firstly crafting supplies are not cheap, and even if you do start with cheap items, making stuff by hand is a labor of love.  It always takes longer than you think it will, and normally ends up having some kind of issue along the way you have to figure out.  But it's also super fun and you can literally make things specifically for the person you are crafting for.  Fair warning, if you are planning on crafting gifts, double the time you think you are going to need....you'll thank me later!

Time is also a great gift.  Time can be gifted in a lot of ways.  Maybe you spend extra time with someone (a wonderful way to gift any elderly people in your life who may not get out much, especially if they live in any kind of assisted living facility).  Also great for stay-at-home people, who might spend a lot of time alone in their daily life.  Or maybe you take your time to give them more time.  This might mean doing some housework to give someone some extra leisure time, or offering to watch the kids so they can have a date with their partner.  If you are going to a gathering, you can help organize or show up early to help set up (or stay late to help clean up), as a gift to the host.

Another neat thing to gift is experiences.  This might be giving someone a coupon for a spa day or a rock climbing adventure.  Some kind of activity they can go and do makes a unique gift that will give them memories to remember.  You could also make it a group activity, and go with them, so it becomes a shared memory!

And finally, if you have someone who is really trying to downsize their life, and who also is very community minded, making a donation to a charity in their name is a unique way to gift them.  Some companies also do a combo-gift, where you get a small token to remind you of your donation, but the bulk of the money goes towards the cause. 

Whoever you are gifting this holiday season (or whenever you need a gift), it's okay to think outside the box, to give something that may be less commercial and will definitely be more unique.  Think about the person you are gifting, think about what kinds of things they like, and what might make a good gift.  I think that is the most important thing of all...to ignore what you might want or any thoughts of how the gift might appear to other people, and just think about what the person receiving the gift wants.  That is the key.

Winter crafting

 As winter time approaches, we may find ourselves with more free time, as we are unable to do our favorite outdoor activities.  It is a time of year where many people spend more time inside, and often look for ways to fill the time.  Crafting is a great activity to pick up in the winter, whether you consider yourself a crafter or not.

First, I think we need to bust up some impressions of crafting.  The first one is that you don't need to be 'good' or 'artistic'...and yes both of those are in quotes because I really dislike how these types of valuations are thrown around.  Crafting is a wonderful hobby, and the great thing about hobbies is you don't have to have any kind of skill.  The important thing is that you enjoy the process.  It's very much about the experiences and not about making a thing that has value or improving or any of the other judgments we level on the rest of our lives.  In fact, I might say that is the value of a hobby, it is something we do purely for the fun of it, and we give ourselves permission to be bad at it but still love doing it anyways.

Also, crafting is for everyone, young or old, irregardless of gender.  I promise I'm not going to go on a rant about the ridiculous gendering of things (I could, I have some great rants saved up!), but really there is no craft that can't be done by anyone.  If you wanna sew, carve wood, bake, paint, sculpt, scrapbook or forge metal...go for it!  If someone tries to give you a hard time...craft harder out of spite!  (Or find people who are happy to support you and ignore the rest)

Now, back to the bit about not having to be good at it.  It really doesn't matter if you have any experience at all, or really any knowledge about a thing.  If it looks interesting, try it!  There are resources all over for anything you can imagine.  I have talked to a few people who taught themselves how to forge metal (watching videos online), and that's pretty impressive to me.  There are groups for about every hobby and craft you can imagine, where you can chat with people who are just as excited about the craft as you are.

It also doesn't have to be something you do alone!  Poke about and you might find that there are groups in your town that meet up and craft together.  Our library (which is always a great place to find out information about anything) often does crafting workshops, where you can go and try out a craft.  Many are free, and the ones that aren't have a low fee (to cover materials).

You can also throw a crafting night, invite some friends and make a party out of it.  Potluck snacks and drinks (so you don't have to do it all), and have fun making things together.  One of the great things about crafting is it often is something you do with your hands, so it leaves you free to chat and hang out while you do it.  I used to go with my mom to her quilting group, and that was pretty fun (speaking as the only teen who went, it was still fun to chat with the older ladies).

Winter crafting can also be a time of experimentation.  Just because you try a craft doesn't mean you have to do it forever.  Maybe you don't like it once you get into it.  That's fine, put it aside and try something else.  Or maybe you like it just fine, but you don't want to get further invested in it.  Play with it for a season and then, when the weather warms up and you get into other things, you can set it aside.  Maybe you come back to it next winter or maybe you try something else.

Crafting can also become part of your spiritual life.  Crafting as devotion is nothing new, and maybe you find a craft that is associated with one of the deities you work with, or that is part of your cultural heritage.  Learning the craft brings you closer to that part of your spiritual life.  

You could also craft things that directly enhance your spiritual practice.  Making tools is something that a lot of people enjoy doing, and there are many different crafting options that can be used.  I've made wands, smudge fans, statues, offering stones and more!  Maybe you have seen some of those amazing videos of people making fancy scrapbook style BOS and you want to try your hand at that.  

You can also craft things to give away.  With holidays coming up, many people don't have family to share the holidays with, and gifting handmade things to retirement homes, hospitals and the like can make a huge difference in someone's life.  If you are enjoying making food items, you can gift those to friends and family (you might be able to gift to other places, but you would want to check first if they can accept home-made food items).  

And, if you are someone who feels a little down, or stressed over the winter and with all of the holidays, crafting is a great mental pick up and way to unwind.  There is a real sense of accomplishment when you make something, especially when you figure out how to do something that you were struggling with.  Many crafts also include things that appeal to our senses.  Fiber arts, metal and wood working all involve our sense of touch.  Baking and cooking invoke our smell and taste.  Painting and drawing utilize color.  Learning an instrument or singing gives us sound.  Engaging our senses helps ground us and energize us at the same time!

So, whether you think of yourself as a crafty person, an artsy person....or just a person, winter crafting is a great activity to explore as the weather turns cold and the nights get longer.  Look around and you will find crafting inspiration everywhere.  Let yourself be curious and see what crafts call out to you.  You might just surprise yourself!

Focus on what is

 

We have this tendency to slip out of the now and either worry about what is coming or focus on what has been.  Especially around the holidays, I think we experience heightened nostalgia as well as a looming sense of concern for the future.  Sometimes we fall into the opposite trap, where we look at the past and only remember the horrible things or we paint the future in some kind of idealistic way (that is often unreasonable).

This can be a very dangerous thing, because too much focus, either good or bad on the past and/or the future drastically influences how we experience the now.  It flavors everything that happens in our lives and often ends up robbing us of being able to be fully present and actually experience what is going on.

When we look to the past and we think of the 'golden days', we are remembering an idealized past.  There hasn't been a time in the past that was magically perfect, and when we think of 'better times' often we are using very closed vision, looking at specific events or remembering certain parts of life...and completely refusing to see what else was going on at the time.

Fact twisting is a common thing, when delving into the past.  When we look back and we decide things were good by looking at a very small set of statistics, we not only set ourselves up for feeling dissatisfied in our current lives, but also we make these unrealistic expectations for the future (since it wasn't actually that way in the past, how could we possibly expect it to be that way in the future?)

Take marriage, for example.  I've heard many people talk about how 'in the olden days' marriages lasted and people didn't just get divorces willy nilly.  Which is statistically true, that divorce rates were very low.  But it's not because marriages in those days were good (of course there are exceptions, there are good marriages in all times, even from crazy starts), it was simply that there were no other options.  If a woman had no access to money, would be branded as some kind of moral and/or social outcast and literally had no place to go...she couldn't leave.  And if both partners needed to be in an altered state (remember that in other times many drugs were readily available) or seeking companionship outside of the marriage bed, or were miserable but stayed married because that was the only option...was that really better?  (Hint:  my answer is no).

When we cherry pick our history like this, we set up unreasonable standards for the present.  If you start with the standpoint that marriage is the golden standard, than you make anyone who has left a marriage (or who hasn't gotten married...or has no desire to get married) feel like they are a failure.  And that's not even dipping my toes into the pool of horror that is the way that we try to regulate who can get married (not just talking about the LGBT+ community, but if you aren't aware of the struggles of disabled people trying to keep their health care and income and get married....well let's just say it's pretty demeaning).

If we look to the past and we see only the worst, if we focus on how hard things were, how bad life was, we can rob ourselves of some really good memories.  Life isn't always just one thing or another.  It is entirely possible for a time to be both good an bad (and surprise, people can be both good and bad as well).  When we forget this, we may feel conflicted when we face the good parts of something we saw as bad, and we may start to feel that those good bits couldn't possibly be right, because it was a bad situation...right?

The danger with this way of thinking is that it seeps into other places, specifically how you feel about yourself and the people close to you.  If I fall prey to the mindset that things are either good or bad, and I recognize the bad habits or choices I've made...I might completely discount the good things because 'obviously' I'm a bad person.  We can also end up making harsh decisions about people in our life, because of previous bad experiences.  When someone does something nice or good, we may not be open to it, because we have already decided they are a bad person, so obviously they can't do anything good.

If we are focused on the future, and we expect everything to fall into ruin, it becomes very hard to stay invested in our daily life.  I mean if everything is going to turn out horrible, why bother?  If your job isn't going anywhere, why should you do more than the bare minimum to not get fired?  If your family is going to hate you, why try to mend those bridges?

Future fatalism is extremely dangerous because it causes us to create the very future we are worried about.  When we stop trying, we stop noticing opportunities.  We don't set ourselves up for success and we see everything as the precursor to something bad.

The funny thing is, seeing the future as impossibly bright sometimes has a similar effect.  If we believe, without any doubt, that the future is going to be amazing, we may not try as hard as we should.  Why should we push if things are going to turn out great no matter what?  It's like if you know you have a big paycheck coming in, you may not work those extra hours, even though you are trying to save up for a luxury purchase.  Your windfall is coming, you just have to wait and everything will be fine.

The thing is, nothing in the future is set in stone, and there is always room for change.  Maybe whatever it was that you were counting on doesn't happen.  Maybe some other thing comes up that changes your circumstances, and now the money that you thought you could spend on whatever you wanted is needed for something else.  

Worse, when we assume the future is going to be bright, we can turn our back on problems that are happening right now.  If we think 'change is coming,' then maybe we don't fight as hard as we should against the injustices that are happening now.  This is especially true if it's something that doesn't directly involve you, as I don't know about you, but as well intended as I might be, I'm much more likely to overlook issues that aren't smacking me in the face.

I think the biggest thing to remember, is that both the past and the future aren't 'real'.  Yes, the past happened, and the future is going to happen.  But the past is inherently flavored with opinion:  the opinions of the people who observed it and recorded it, the opinions of the people talking about it, the opinions of the people hearing about it.  And whatever influence the past might have had on leading you to the now....in the now it has no power over you.  

 

The present is a powerful thing, but all it's power is tied up in what is and what you choose to do with it.  Nothing that happened in the past can change the now...because it's already happened, all it's power is spent.  In this singular moment, all the power lies in your hands...in your ability to decide how you want to respond to what you are presented with.

And the future...well the future is just fantasy.  It is a dream of what we hope or fear will happen.  Dreams can't effect you unless you let them.  You can allow a dream to lead you astray or you can use your dreams to motivate you.  You can get caught up in your dreams and loose track of reality or you can enjoy your dreams and then do what is needed in this moment.

One of the joys of focusing on what is....is that now is both eternal and already changing.  Each fleeting second is gone in the time it takes you to notice it.  If you keep focusing on now, you don't have to worry about the past or the future, because now is keeping you busy.  

Yes, I think there is a time and a place for both the past and the future.  We need to learn about our past, in a way that is balanced and with perspective.  And we need to look to the future so that we can plot a course to aim for.  What we need to avoid is loosing sight of the present.  Because when we forget about now, we loose all our power.