Making peace with the holiday scrooges in your life

You're looking forward to sharing meaningful connections with your family and friends during the holidays. After all, this is the season of celebrating joy and peace. It's the perfect opportunity to gather, relax and appreciate the holiness of the unique goings on of each others' lives.

But how do you remain centered in your holiness when you meet up with the scrooge in your family who always seems to kill your sense of holiday spirit rather than increase it?

It's not as if the family scrooge is the only thing challenging your sense of sacred space. Shopping, writing holiday cards, getting to the post office to mail out the cards and packages on time, waiting in line, tackling the crowds, rushing to it all done with very little time, can easily kill the joy of an otherwise restful time.
As an exercise in creating peace, you invest lots of time and energy thinking about preparing that special recipe they took three helpings of last year. Then you run around town looking to find them that special gift that will also fit within your budget. Fear of their displeasure causes you to buy a gift more expensive than spend more money than originally planned leaving you with a sick sense of shame and embarrassment.

It's anything but sacred.

In wanting to keep the peace, you second guess yourself and them. You act nice and speak pleasantly, but you aren’t authentic with yourself or with them. It feels really empty.

So how come with all of the energy you're spending to go out of your way to please them, you're feeling even more stressed than you dare admit?

Perhaps it has nothing to do with what you are or aren't doing.

What will help you most to bring the sacred into the holiday season, even in the face of the family scrooge is to accept the sacred in yourself, exactly as you are.
The key to creating peace with yourself and the family scrooge is accepting yourself and the scrooge, right where you are, in the midst of holiday overwhelm. It's not enough to want it. You've got to place your heart as first priority to connect to the real holy and remain open to your critical family member.

Scrooges don't necessary have to be people.

They often show up as unseen voices of inner criticism. Whether heard or silent, your voice makes an impression upon the entire atmosphere. How you attune your voice makes the difference between your experience of harmony or disharmony with yourself and others.

Consciously attune your voice as an instrument of harmony and peace during the holidays.

Here are three ways that you can attune your voice to create peace and harmony within yourself and with those around you:

1)Reconnect to the Source of your voice. Silence is the source of all sound. It is the source of true harmony. In the morning, even before getting out of bed, take a few moments to listen to that silence. You may notice the scrooge voices begin to clamor for your attention. That's ok. Just noticing the difference between them and the silence will help you to choose where to place your focus.

2)Attune yourself to the Source of your voice. For example, when you need to speak with the scrooge on the telephone, take a moment to tune into the vibration of calm and peace you would like to experience within yourself, before you dial the number.

3)Feel the harmony in the Source of sound. When you are listening to your favorite holiday music, notice what it is about it that you love so much. Allow that to deepen. When someone says something that has a positive impact upon you, notice where in your body you feel the harmony of the sound behind their words. Then, when scrooge comes –a- calling, you can easily tune yourself into the source of harmony and meet them with love.

Remaining centered in your holiness when you meet up with the holiday scrooges can actually increase your sense of holiday spirit and true joy when you are willing to meet yourself and your loved ones, right where you are, right now.

This is what creating joy, peace and goodwill during the holidays is all about.

PS. If you are wanting to enjoy some peace right now, click here for a free download of holiday musicfrom the Holy land that will help you bring the holy back into your holidays. It was recorded in an ancient Galilee cave with peace doves who flew in for the occasion from Jerusalem. The album makes a great gift item, and it's instantly downloadable.