Christmas is a time of excitement and expectations

Trees, lights, presents, food. 

It’s also a time when people get stressed or they just want to make everything go perfectly. 

If you’ve experienced this you may have found that turning to pornography has been a way that you deal with the discomfort that you have.  

In the membership, we work through that with proven techniques that allow us to resolve the discomfort.   I’ll put a link in the description for you, so you can join the membership and start learning how to do this yourself.  www.zachspafford.com/workwithzach

Now, before you can use those skills, one of the things that I like to work on is recognizing some of the ideas that our minds offer us and just step into some new ideas that we can use to get our head ready for the realities of the holidays.  

So, here are 3 essential ideas that you need to know to make this Christmas amazing. 

Don’t expect others to be different than they are. 

This morning was tough.  

We have church at 9 am and sometimes on the weekend it is difficult to get kids out of bed. 

I went down to wake up my 3rd child and, you may know this about 15 year olds, but he did not jump out of bed, chipper and ready to roll .In years past I might have gotten upset, bugged him over and over, tried to dump water on his head and made a fuss until he was out of bed, I was frustrated and he was upset. Fortunately, I’ve been working on this and I simply asked him, are you up?  If not, do you want me to come back and wake you again?

He said he was up, and I left him alone.  In fact, I completely put him getting up out of my mind.   I did my part and I let him be responsible for himself.  Previously, that interaction might have been frustrating and demoralizing.  Letting him be who he is and not making it mean anything about me helps keep me centered and allows him to grow up. 

Don’t expect yourself to be different than you normally are. 

In past years, I would have told myself, You can’t mess up this week, it’s a really important time and if you mess up you’ll ruin it for Darcy.

This is setting yourself up for a battle mentally. It’s also likely to fail. 

I’ve talked about the pink elephant experiments before, but the more we tell ourselves that we can’t do something, the more our brain is likely to obsess over it and bring it up over and over.  In the membership, I teach you how to deal with this directly, but for right now, I want you to try not to be different from who you are.

This means doing your best, keeping your word, and striving to get better every day.    

Be prepared to be disappointed.

You might not get the gift you want

Your kids might not take the picture that you want with the smiles and looking at the camera

Your parents or in-laws will probably still be who they are, so they will probably be exactly the same people they are on other days of the year

Be prepared for someone to say something rude. Recognize that you won’t be able to change anyone this holiday season – despite what you may want.

Knowing that people are not going to do exactly what you want them to do and letting go of that allows you to focus in on yourself, choosing how you want to show up, and not letting that disappointment build up until you finally snap. 

You may have heard this before, lowering your expectations is one of the many keys to happiness.  The research is clear.  I suspect that has more to do with loving people as they are than it does with letting things be awful. 

When we love people as they are, we can also love ourselves how we are.  People who feel good make better decisions and loving yourself is an amazing way to feel good.  

When you feel good, because disappointment isn’t constantly on your mind, you’ll love those around you more fully, and your holiday is more likely to be the awesome time you want it to be. 

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