When something feels right you feel excited and alive.

You look forward to learning more.

It feels interesting, fascinating.

And you feel sure.

Your mood is a choice.

It is a result of adequate care for yourself— sleep, nourishment, nature, movement, etc.

Your brain may tell you that you have to understand to accept something.

That if you only “understood",” you could accept how another person is behaving.

When everything feels overwhelming. You have no clarity. You are reactive or not at your best.

It just might be because you are tired.

When you are over-responsibile, you end up resentful, frustrated and exhausted.

What if no explanation or justification were needed?

What if you could wear a shirt because you like it?

Work somewhere because you like it?

Feeling physically tired is expected given the lives that many of us lead. Most of don’t rest adequately.

The more we do the more we need to rest.

Attention is our most valuable resource something Dr. Shauna Shapiro, a mentor of mine, says often.

Choose what you want to pay attention to.

Are you paying attention to what’s most important to you?

Rumination leads to stress, lack of sleep, and chronic cortisol release.

Making thoughtful decisions with the skills and knowledge we have at that time is the best we can offer.

We are trained in medicine to think that overthinking is valuable.

Just in case we might not have thought of something, we should think and worry more.

To make sure we didn’t miss anything inadvertently.

What if the way others are doing it, isn’t the best way for you?

What if the thing bothering you doesn’t have to change for you to feel better?

What if it or they is offering exactly what you “need” in this moment.

As adults we also do this. We look for others to “clap for us in life” to validate that we did enough or a “good job.” The clapping just looks different and is usually less joyous.

Holidays, especially when spent with young adults, first grandchildren and newly blended families from different cultures are the epitome of “complicated dynamics.”

Embracing the season you are in is commiting to living in alignment and a choice to not resist reality or swim against the current.