Some questions for you in this odd November
Why am I calling this an “odd November”? Well, ordinarily, November doesn’t demand that much of our attention, right? There’s Halloween at the end of October, and then everyone in the USA focuses on Thanksgiving, which is the fourth Friday of the month, and looks past it to the December holidays.
If we think about November at all, we in the Northern hemisphere likely think about loss: the loss of daylight, the loss of leaves, the loss of loved ones who won’t be with us for the holidays.
This year feels very different.
It feels full of hope to me, in part because of the election this year, but also because of the unseasonable weather we’ve had here this year. In the southern part of New Jersey, where I live, we’ve had far more sunny days than are usual for November, and the temperatures have been more moderate than we are used to.
This spring, we enjoyed a long, drawn-out swing season and 2020 seems to be gifting us with another. (For those of you in the hurricane zone along our southern coast, I am sorry that those are still a concern this late into the year.)
This November is, of course, also full of loss. The usual sort (shorter days, plant life dying down), and the loss of traditional holiday gatherings due to COVID-19. The doctors have been advising us all to avoid getting together with others outside of our immediate household or our usual “pod” (which for me and Morris, is the same thing—we are our own pod).
And yet, on a good day, I can view even that as something hopeful: that we love ourselves, and love the other people in our lives, enough to stay apart during Diwali (which just passed) and Thanksgiving. Staying apart physically doesn’t mean we have to be isolated, in these days of cell phones and Zoom calls. And in that separateness, we can hope that all of us remain well, and live to get together in a joyful way in the future.
The thing is, we get to decide how we are going to feel.
Notice I said “how we are going to feel” and not “how we want to feel.” That’s because if you set an intention and figure out an approach that works for you, you are exceedingly likely to feel the way you want.
So if you decide, even with restrictions on gatherings, that you are going to have fun, then you are exceedingly likely to have fun.
If you decide that, even though you won’t do the things you usually do for a particular holiday, you are going to find the meaning in that holiday, then you will.
Same goes for you setting a slightly different intention for this year’s events—instead of “this year I want to make the holidays small, but satisfying”, then you are likely to find satisfaction with your choices, rather than disappointment.
As I was going through my journal over the weekend, I came across an entry in which I’d written myself a list of questions to consider, and it occurred to me that in this odd November, in this unusual year, these journaling prompts I created might be helpful to you as you contemplate what your Thanksgiving (or December holiday) is going to feel like this year.
Here are three questions for you to think about:
What would feel like fun for this year’s holiday? (Pro tip: pick something that you can actually do; don’t just wish for an all-expense paid trip to Paris, fun as it sounds.)
What sort of holiday celebration feels achievable to me this year? Take into account your own energy (mental and physical), your emotional needs and desires, and set yourself a modest holiday goal that you are 99.95% certain you can reach.
Where can I add just a bit more this year, or be just a bit “extra”? Assuming that you can reach the holiday goal you set in the prior question, what might you add in that is just a bit extra? It could be as small as “bake a batch of cookies” or as extra as “order myself an inflatable reindeer suit and wear it to deliver cookies to the neighbors”.
I hope you can see how answering these questions can help you adjust, and then set, your own expectations for this year’s remaining holidays. Because even though I was mostly talking about Thanksgiving earlier, all this COVID-19 stuff is still going to be an issue in December, when we get to Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Years. So taking just a bit of time now to set and manage your expectations for this year’s holidays will for sure help you to feel (a) more in control and (b) more satisfied with what occurs.
If you missed out on ALL IS CALM, when I ran it earlier this fall, you can opt in to the second session, which I just now decided to run starting on Sunday, November 29th. It runs for four weeks. It’s about finding the joy and the peace of the holiday season, especially in this crazy year. It will help you figure out what you have the capacity and desire to do this year, so you can feel more in control, and less stressed.
You can expect some journaling questions like the ones I just shared with you here (because you know I can’t help myself and give you quite a lot of my best stuff for free), a brief weekly Zoom call, and a designated private Facebook group in which you can meet and share with the others in the group about how you are feeling and what’s going on with your holiday mindset, planning, preparation, and celebration. The Facebook group will also include a daily mindfulness prompt for you. The entire coaching course will be fun and supportive, and it’s priced at just $59.
Sound good? Click here to sign up!
