Your Holiday Gratitude Guide

This holiday season, say goodbye to the blues and say hello to illuminating the path of love and light!

Think of your inner guidance as a navigation system that will notify you when you need to direct your attention to a particular area of your gratitude journey. I’ve divided up the gratitude journey for you as a roadmap of three main areas that need tender loving care during the holidays: the body, the mind, and the soul. Here are “turn-by-turn directions” to gratitude for the holidays, plus intentions and affirmations to support your path.

First Area: The Body

The body is an integral part of your journey to gratitude. There are many things we take for granted because we become disconnected from the body. Making a point to express gratitude for your health, strength, stamina, and ability to nourish yourself each morning before you start your day is a great way to begin on the right track. Embody gratitude even if you struggle with pain or illness – healing is an interval process and gearing your perspective and attitude to positivity can help you improve each day.

To embody gratitude at the most basic yet powerful level, you can tune into your five senses and express gratitude for the tastes, sights, feelings, sounds, and scents that delight you throughout the day. Simply focusing on your breath can be a great way to feel reconnected to your body. Let’s address two tricky directions on the path to love and light for the body that can become especially challenging during the holiday season: overindulgence and tension.

Overindulgence Overpass: You may struggle with the temptation to overindulge in holiday food and drink, but it’s critical that you honor your body as your temple and resist giving in to impulses that arise. You may feel inclined to indulge as a coping mechanism for stress. Ensure you stay mindful of your body’s needs (healthy meals, plenty of water, exercise, and quality rest) and meet them with respect and reverence. If you know something is going to upset the balance in your body, avoid it.

Know that overcoming overindulgence with holiday fare and feasting on gratitude instead is the most delicious and decadent experience of all.

Turn Away From Tension: The holidays can involve lots of traveling and tension. After a rocky road trip or stress-fueled encounter at the airport, store, or family dinner table (‘tis the season!), your body tends to hold on to the tension and default to “fight or flight” mode. You must stay aware and check in with your body frequently to release the tension. Take deep breaths, consciously relax your muscles (shoulders, neck, and jaw especially), and make self-care a priority. To support the body’s journey to gratitude, write down the intention below somewhere you will see it frequently and repeat the following affirmation regularly throughout the day.

Intention: “I live in a state of gratitude for my body. I release resistance and any behaviours that do not serve my greatest good.”

Affirmation: “I allow the flow of love and light to pulse through my body - giving me health, vitality, and strength.”

Second Area: The Mind

If your body is the vehicle, the mind is the gas you need to travel to your destination. Without steering the mind toward gratitude, you won’t get very far. You can be the master of your mind by on this gratitude journey by detouring drama and hitting the happiness highway!

Detour the Drama: It’s not uncommon for the holidays to bring more drama than the rest of the year. Family feuds, tighter budgets, and draining travel can be a recipe for disaster, emotionally. When you are feeling on edge, it can be so easy to slip into the trap of petty gossip, arguments, and overreacting. Avoid reacting out of impulse or anger and know that participating in low vibrational interactions like gossip is unhealthy for your mind, body, and soul. Try to expect the best instead of fearing the worst – when you do so, it’s like suffering twice if the experience you were ruminating over is unpleasant.

Before you involve yourself, take some deep breaths and get centered. Make sure you are thinking clearly and coming from a place of love. A surefire way to get into a mindset of love quickly is to think of things you are grateful for. Whenever drama presents itself, ask yourself – “Will this matter a month from now? A year from now?” The answer is probably no.

Hop on the Happiness Highway: Studies show that an incredible phenomenon occurs when a person consciously directs their mind toward happy thoughts. Positive thoughts and emotions have a powerful healing effect on the body. You can even manifest your desires by choosing and monitoring your thoughts with positive intentionality.

Each time you choose happy thoughts like gratitude, “positivity pathways” in your brain are reinforced and your ability to break the cycle of negativity is amplified. Your thoughts of gratitude and reality merge in beautiful, supportive ways. Little expressions of gratitude add up energetically – like a currency for abundance. The energetic feedback system of gratitude operates in an incredible way: the more gratitude you show, the more you will have to be grateful for! That is the best gift you could give yourself this holiday season.

Mantra: “I live in a state of gratitude for my mind. I release unsupportive thoughts and emotions that do not serve my greatest good.”

Affirmation: “I invite the flow of love and light to pulse through my mind - giving me health, vitality, and strength.”

Third Area: The Soul

Green Light to Accelerate to Gratitude: We are literally light-filled, light-emitting beings. Green light, specifically, is a powerful ally when it comes to traversing the complicated landscape of the human heart. In the chakra system, the energetic doorway to the heart is associated with the color green – so seeing a lot of green around holiday time is actually very supportive for your soul’s gratitude journey! Take time to notice and gaze at the beautiful green fir trees, decorations, and lights. Pause and take some heart focused breaths, envisioning a beautiful green light shining into your heart center to charge your energetic batteries as you go about your holiday shopping and family visits.

Know that closer connection to the heart is the key to nurturing your soul. Expressing gratitude from the heart improves your life and creates a ripple effect of energetic flow around you – influencing and supporting others and your environment. It all begins with your choice to release attachment to negativity and find a neutral state that can serve as a healthy launching pad to gratitude. Find out more about how to go from negative to neutral here!

Mantra: “I live in a state of gratitude for my soul. I release negativity and any low vibrations that hold me down from connecting to my higher self and source energy.”

Affirmation: “I invite the flow of love and light to pulse through my soul - giving me health, vitality, and strength.”

Want more tips and tricks to invite more gratitude into your life?

In case you missed my live webinar about nurturing a grateful heart, you can check out the recorded version below!