For the first time ever in the history of my entire adult existence, I’m not freaking out during the holidays. I’m buying a house, doing YouTube Next Trainer assignments, running my business, helping my husband run his, studying to be a certified yoga teacher, herding chickens and other assorted pets, maintaining a kind-of clean home, and – oh yeah – there’s the whole being a mother-of-four-incredibly-active-kids-including-a-nursing-baby thing (I just got tired writing that).
I’ve yet to buy one Xmas gift or place an ornament on my tree, but I’m completely in the zen zone. I’m refusing to freak out (well, except for the ugly crying episode the other day).
I’m no enlightened being, magically om’ing away my troubles; I can get rattled as easily as the next person. I’m just trying to balance the rattled parts of me by cultivating more peace in my life – through physical exercise, spiritual practice, and practical application of goodness and yumminess in other areas (hmmm, sounds like a yoga practice… see me doing some balance poses below).
This is how I keep my head from exploding and my brains from pouring out of my ears (my dad once said that if someone cracked my head open, 90210 would spill out, but that’s a story for another day):
1. Sleep – can’t function without it. It’s extremely tempting to take care of all my extra holiday responsibilities in the wee hours of the morning and well into the late-night while everyone else is sleeping (well, everyone except Baby Summer), but all that does is leave me tired for the rest of my day, half-doing everything that needs my full attention. So no matter what, I shut it down at 10:00pm and clock a full 8 hours in bed. In my opinion, nothing good happens after 10:00pm anyway… I mean, that’s how I got into this 4-babies trouble to begin with (I kid, I kid).
2. Diet – have to maintain it. If my kids bring home one more leftover tin of cookies from a school holiday party, I’m going to eat myself to 2008 (or what I refer to as “Bex’ Year of Chubby”). So how do I keep this from happening? You got it – my good old food diary. For the season when it seems that overeating is the reason, I’m bringing back my little black moleskin notebook and writing EVERYTHING DOWN. If I bite it, I write it. I can still have my rainbow cookies, but now I can also see that I already ate three by 7:00am and it’s time to stop. My food diary will forever remain my #1 tool for maintaining a healthy diet and weight loss.
3. Physical exercise – will explode if I don’t get it. Yoga, weights, running, playing, hiking, climbing a tree… whatever you like to do to get your body moving, DO IT! Exercise also doubles as much-needed alone time away from kids climbing all over me and husband asking me where his [insert man possession like wallet/hat/keys/boxer shorts here] is. If I’m not moving to workout the stress building up in my body, I’ll explode – like, literally – into pieces of Bex everywhere.
4. Charity – can’t enjoy wealth without sharing it. It’s so easy for me to become wrapped up in my own life (isn’t this true for all of us?), so I’m constantly making efforts to share my time, good fortune, and knowledge with those I love and the world community at large. Charity doesn’t have to just be about giving money (but please do it if you can)… you can donate time, items you no longer have use for, or even a free service that you usually get paid for. I have so much abundance in my life for reasons that aren’t even my doing – sometimes it’s just luck, and I wouldn’t feel good about accepting this abundance without balancing it with the act of sharing it.
5. Living sustainably – won’t have a future without doing it. To me, this season is too much about the opposite of what my regular life is all about – running around like crazy, fighting for spots in parking lots, mass consumerism. I love all the gift giving and wrapping and unwrapping, but I just wish I could do it all and be good to Mother Earth, too. Well, of course I can. This season, as a part of a bigger effort to keep more of my money local and the air a little less polluted by trucks carting my stuff around, I’ve committed to only patronizing local, small shops and indie artists, designers, and suppliers for all my holiday gifts. Hopefully, this practice balances out the huge inequity in the amount of money going to big businesses and national chains. And just because I have a platform where I can shamelessly give props to people I love, my FAVORITE gift idea for the holiday is a mat bag from oGorgeous by Cassey Ho (of super duper Blogilates.com fame). I love, love, love mine, which I’ve since named “Prince” for it’s fabulous purple hue. Total swoon-fest… get your own!
So this is what I do to stay sane during the most insane (um – I mean – happiest) time of the year. I figure it’s working because no one has had to call 911 on my behalf yet. Stay tuned… xoxo
PS – Think you don’t have the time for any of this?? Imagine how much better you’ll feel if you just let some of the errands/laundry/dishes go and spend some time loving yourself a little more… a happy body and mind is the path to enlightenment, NOT an organized sock drawer.