Peace & Harmony Begin With You

What energy would you like this holiday season? I don't think any of us want to be frustrated, resentful, annoyed, or aggravated, which is a frequent mindset during the holiday season.  We give lip service to the idea of “peace and harmony”, but how much effort do we each actually put into doing OUR part towards that end? 

Many of us wait for a sense of peace passively, as if it's a state caused by life circumstances going well or based on what other people do, as if we are victims to the whims of the world and those around us. This is not accurate thinking! 

Did you know that peace and harmony CAN begin inside you, regardless of your life circumstances?  It’s a choice and an intention.  Take a listen and learn some strategies to increase a sense of peace and harmony inside you while also managing your energy budget during the holiday season and all year long. . 

Main points: 

• Practice choosing repeating thoughts that can create feelings of peace, harmony, and love.
• Accept and notice that your energy is going to be affected during the holiday season; notice what brings vs drains your energy. 
  • Ex. Having a bunch of people in my home gives me emotional energy but drains my physical energy. 
• How can you protect your mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual energy? What practices and tools can you put in place?
• Don’t pretend you have more energy than you do. How can you modify your normal energy budget to accommodate the changes caused by your holiday season? 

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

0:09

Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Kibbitz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Welcome Hey friends. This week we're talking about our energy. I think one of the most important things for us to put attention to is aligning our energy. So we've talked before about the values that help us stay in aligned energy. If it's safe to do so, you can close your eyes, you can take a few breaths. What energy would you like this holiday season? I don't think any of us want to be frustrated, resentful, annoyed, aggravated. Those are not the energies we want to walk through life in. So what would you like? If you took a few breaths in and out, what energy would you like to be in? Aligning to the truth of who we are, 100 percent loved, 100 percent valuable, No one wants to be that frustrated, annoyed, overwhelmed human that so many of us accidentally walk into that energy as the holidays come along. So we don't want that. What do we want? Take a few breaths, figure out what energy you would like to be in. What does your aligned vibrant energy look like for you? For some of us, it's peace, joy, love, patience, kindness, goodness. The big idea for this whole series is peace and harmony start with you. I want you to think about throwing a rock into some water and the ripples that come out. If we are full of judgment, that's the word I'm working on right now. I don't want to be full of judgment. I want to be full of love. If we are full of frustration, resentment, that's what's going to go out into the world. So what would it look like if we are people who are committed to the idea that Peace and harmony start with us. Well, we're going to need some action steps that create peace and harmony. We're going to need the feelings of peace and harmony and love. And we're going to need the thoughts that produce those feelings. One of the most powerful thoughts that. created this whole program is someone that's very close to me saying I wish the holiday was over. That is not the kind of thought that we want on repeat. It's okay to have it, right? We're not going to judge ourselves. That's somebody who's feeling overwhelmed. That's not the thought we want on repeat. I'm offering you a power thought for the holiday season. Peace and harmony begin with me. So whatever you're noticing, let's just start here. What do you want? What's the energy result you want? Again, without noticing, we can accidentally become resentful and frustrated and overwhelmed and confused and judgy. What do you want? So that's what we're talking about today because the good news is that is within our reach. Our box. It's within our agency. The Holiday Harmony series is focused on the holiday, but it's not just about holidays. Some of us, my daughter in particular, has five birthdays in the month of May. It would be good for her to notice in advance, this is what May looks like with all of her work and all of her family relationships. And so we have for you a good journal page where you can just think through, What do I want? What drains me? What adds to my energy? That's where we're going to start today. Okay, so I want to offer you the Word of the Year that I've decided on for 2025. For some reason, I have, since 2015, chosen a word that directs the path that I'm on for that year. Came to me accidentally, and then after that, it's just served me. And I look back now, and I realize those are the values I'm trying to live my life by. And so my word for this next series of months, whatever it'll be, is presence. I want to be in presence. I want to be in the present moment, but I want to be in loving presence. And so for me to be in loving presence, I need to know what adds to my energy and what drains my energy. I think that's what self awareness is. And I think self awareness changes everything. So one of the ways to find out what adds and drains your energy is the tool, the working genius. There are six steps to doing work. Some of the steps drain us. Some of the steps energize us. So if you know that you have an event coming up, people are coming to your home, you're traveling, there's a work event, whatever you're noticing, something is coming. If you can use the six steps of the working genius, you can do the work more efficiently and you'll be aware, Oh, this is where my energy is dropping. This is where my energy is coming up. How can I do more of this? How can I collaborate? So let's just take a moment and notice what you're noticing about your energy. Some of us notice everybody in my home fills me with energy. Some of us notice everybody in my home drains my energy. We just want to notice what adds to your energy, what drains your energy. See if you can notice anything. Write it down, put it in your app, wherever you want to put it, in a journal. I want you to think ahead, that your energy is probably going to be affected as you go into the holiday season. So what can you do? What can you decide in order to protect your mental, physical, emotional, social, spiritual energy? There's so much energy that we need to be noticing, deciding, and then practicing. And so if you're noticing something that adds your energy, Hopefully, you know one of those things. Think ahead for the next few days, the next few weeks. Where will that take place? So for instance, I notice that if I go for a walk, even if I don't want to, at the end of the walk, I usually feel better. I would put walking into the category, something that adds to my energy. So I want to make sure that I put that into my schedule because it's important, but not urgent. If anybody is noticing anything they want to share, again, I think community is often benefited by other people's thoughts, not just mine. We'll keep going if not, but I just want to hold space. If anyone's noticing, this is something that's important. I want to remember it. I want to make sure I do it. And then we also want to notice what drains our energy and how do we notice without judgment? It does not mean anything's wrong because I need to take a break when there's more than three people in a room, because that gets overwhelming, if I have to do all of the groceries and all of the cleaning that my energy will get drained. I will need some people to support me. We just want to be able to notice it and then have a plan. Then if you have been doing this work long enough, you're going to start to notice that different situations affect different parts of who you are. Having a bunch of people in my home gives me emotional energy and drains me physically because there's more cleaning and there's more cooking and there's more grocery shopping and there's more laundry. So both are happening for me. I'm getting emotional energy and I'm losing some of my physical energy. when I get a chance to read a book, that often is really good for my mental energy, but it's also good for my physical energy because it causes me to rest. So you just want to notice, here's what's coming. This is what's going to happen. I'll probably gain a little physical energy, but I'll lose a little bit of my emotional energy. And when we were meeting together September and October, we were talking about creating a protocol, which is a budget for your energy. Is it possible that you might need to adjust it? You might need to tweak it going into the holiday season. If in general you plan out three blocks a day, a morning block, a work day block, and then an after work block, that's how you currently plan your life. Is it possible with the holiday season coming, you might not need to add in a fourth block a day of intention, or you might need to cut back one of those. blocks of intention a day. Okay, the house might not get any attention for the next two weeks because it's going to be a lot of emotional energy and I'm going to have to put that to the side. That's what we want to notice. And then what is the difference between something important and something urgent? Urgent comes with energy. If somebody is coming up to you in urgency, they're going to bring the energy to get your attention. When something is important, but not urgent, it might not come with energy. You need to spend some time intentionally deciding. So I think white space and self care are not often urgent. They're highly important, but they're not urgent. So if you don't decide, I'm blocking space every day for the next 10 weeks. I'm scheduling a massage every other week. I'm going to bed 30 minutes earlier. It will be hard to do it because there's no urgency. So that's the first thing. We're going to notice our energy. What's the reality? I don't want to pretend I have more energy than I have. And I definitely don't want to think that somehow next week, three weeks, five weeks from now, I'm going to have more energy. Let's make a plan from where we really are and maybe even bring the plan back a little bit because things might happen that take some of our energy. In order to have white space and time for self care, you might have to say no to some things now, so that you have the time and the space and the energy to have white space to have self care. So, is there anything you'd like to decide? I just want you to notice, when you make a decision, your brain Probably would prefer you don't make the decision. Keep all the options open feels better. You don't know, maybe there'll be time. What you're doing by making a decision is you're stopping the thought loop. Okay, I'm going to decide this is a no and I'm not going to give it any more energy for this month, for this week, for this year. So here's four questions. These are just a starting point. If you're good at wondering, you probably have more questions that you could put down here. But, is there anything that's a tradition? I do it every year. That this year I'm going to pause. This year I'm going to say no to. This year I'm going to delegate. Our next thing. What do you want to say no to? How about invitations? Things that sound so fun in the moment, but actually require energy. Are there any invitations that maybe you have to say, I'd love to do that after the new year? I'd love to do that, but I'll only be able to come for 30 minutes. And also maybe check in with yourself. Maybe you do want to say yes. Maybe you want to find a way to say yes. To move a few things around so you can say yes, going back to, because it adds to your energy to be with that person, to go and see those Christmas lights, to go and do that thing. So that's all we want to do is take some time today to say, where am I with my energy? Am I in good energy? Am I tired? Am I depleted or exhausted? Do I need rest, joy, or work? Make those decisions. And then our question right now is, what do you want to say no to? And then I really want us to spend just a moment with our breath connecting to ourselves. What do you want to say yes to? So to do that, close your eyes, take a breath, maybe put your hand on your heart. Sometimes patting your hands on your heart can just really connect you to your body for a moment. What would you like to say yes to? What would you like to say yes to? I want to read a book. I want to get my nails done. I want to go see a friend. Whenever it is, let's take a moment and decide that belongs in my schedule. It's important, but it's not urgent. Make a decision for you with the same kind of love you have for everybody else. We're going to start with loving ourselves first. All right. So that's the first thing we want to discover is what would I like to say yes to? And is there anything I'm going to say no to? What's the reality of my energy? What's going to deplete me? And what's going to pour back into me? What are you noticing coming up? It could be a work project, it could be something with your children. It could be, you know, for instance, my children coming home for Thanksgiving, I had to put four of these blocks where like clean their rooms and do their laundry and all kinds of things that I don't normally do, but they're coming home, so I have to put that in. And what we want to notice is what kind of energy do I need? So what kind of energy is there? There's mental energy. Some of us have fantastic mental energy first thing in the morning. So you should get up with a journal and a planner and say, this is what I'm doing when. Some of us find that in the middle of the day. You need to know where your mental energy is strongest and do your mental energy work then. Do you do some physical activities? What we accidentally do when we're not paying attention to our energy is we squish things in whenever there's time. And sometimes that is to our detriment. Oh, I have two o'clock on Friday free. I'll go balance my bills then. And then I make a mistake and then it's going to take me two weeks to figure it out. And it could have been so much better if I did that first thing Friday morning. So you're noticing what's coming up and then you're deciding in advance. what energy is needed, and we're going to allocate the right energy to what's important. Now, like most of us, you probably have more things to do than the time and energy to do it. That's just part of being human. So then we have to make some decisions. Are we going to defer it for this year, for this week, for this month? Am I going to delegate it? I'm going to let somebody else do something and they're not going to do it as well. I'm going to do it anyway. Am I going to decide? Okay, I'm doing it. And I know the energy it's going to take, but I'm making the decision because it's important to me. I'm going to go and do it anyway. And then I'll have a plan. How do I prepare and how do I recover? That's what our 30 minutes are for. It's to make these decisions. It's to notice from a place of love, make a decision, and then to create those small action steps. So before we finish for today, all the things you could focus your energy on. There's so many good things in our lives. There's so many hard things in our lives. Our energy could go to any number of directions. Connect to yourself. What would you like to start with? Maybe it's the yes. You decided a yes. You want to make sure that happens. Maybe it's a no and that involves a conversation and you want to go and do that conversation and feel all the feelings because that's important. Maybe it's delegating or deferring or deciding. Maybe it's holding space for 10 minutes a day for you to meditate so that you can stay in aligned energy. Whatever it is, make one decision and then see if there's three to five small steps that move you in the direction. For instance, if I was noticing, like I did a couple weeks ago, I'm exhausted emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, my decision would need to be how am I gonna rest? Because it's not always laying down. That wasn't even working for me. I had to go sit out in the sun. I need to go find a book. What are your small steps in the right direction? If you look at your step, and you're like, Ugh, that's too big. Cut it in half, cut it in half, cut it in half. You want to be able to feel like, okay, I can do that. I can open the dishwasher and put two things away. I can, write three sentences to my newsletter and say, I'll see you in January. I can do something small that feels aligned, but I don't want to be unkind and set myself up to be expecting myself to do more than I have the energy for the reality of your energy is the goal of this course, align your energy to what you want, but let's acknowledge the reality. If you are exhausted, you rest, you'll know you've rested enough when you have the time and the energy for your joy. What brings you joy? What are your yeses? Where are they taking place? Yes. And then once you've rested and given yourself joy, then you do your purpose filled work. When we do our purpose filled work from unaligned energy, guess what we're bringing into the world? The opposite of peace and harmony. Peace and harmony begins with you. Rest, then joy, and then work. I hope our time together encourage you and we'll equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave creative. Purpose filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly Tibbetts life coach, or visit my website, kelly tibbetts. com. I look forward to connecting again soon.