Happy Mondays
Leading life and happiness coach
UNDO that top button and let it all hang out. In fact let it flop, flow and roll with it. Not just the plum duff tum but everything, really. Kick off your new slippers, slide down on to the sofa and let it go. So many people are sighing “It’s been quite a year” and it’s true that it feels as though a juggernaut of change has barrelled past us while we shudder with the repercussions on the hard shoulder of life.
It’s hard to make sense of a lot of things in retrospect. We can’t always find clarity or the answers we seek so befuddlement is fine too.
For many of us the weeks leading up to Christmas Day have been a frenzy of preparation, merry-making and trying to guess the right gift choices for the most obdurately obscure people.
What we don’t realise is the toll such a breakneck pace of life takes on us. It’s as if you are walking against the tide in cement boots. This can come to feel so normal that we can’t trust or enjoy serious downtime: the sublime joy of nothingness.
Some are so hooked on the toxic negative energy of stress and burnout they use it to define their very being.
You know, the types who always make an entrance with “OMG, you won’t believe the day I’ve had.”
Even if we did our utmost to convince them that we do believe, they would still trundle on regardless with their tales of how the universe has conspired to make their lives a torment.
Coming to Boxing Day and this peaceful time between now and New Year can, for some of us, seem like we’ve been at a Motorhead concert for weeks and suddenly someone pulled the plug leaving us with a howling silence to which we must now make the effort to acclimatise.
Try not to be tempted to get back to the “doing rather than being” mode by mindlessly trawling the sales on stress autopilot.
Why not instead invest in creative loafing? Doing very little. Moving less. Enjoying the reverie of your thoughts while Dorothy’s ruby slippers click her home somewhere on a TV channel. Really relish the glee of not being too responsible for having to do anything at all. Admittedly it takes a bit of practice for those of us oppressed by the cult of busyness.
There are ends of cheeses to nibble and tidbits so divine you can skip the plate and eat straight from the fridge just like Nigella Lawson, pictured.
Allow your thoughts to marinade in sweet sherry and chocolate boxes. The new year will bring plenty of time for diet regimes and self-denial.
Let grievances and unfinished business roll over you and accept what you can’t change. Consciously choose to turn down the volume on negative and sad thoughts.
We do sometimes forget we always have a choice which thought avenue to go down. So today choose the one with a soft landing – whether that is the sofa, your favourite soap or a secret place in the labyrinth of your mind that reminds you that in the end everything is and will be all right.