Holiday Happiness: Accept, Appreciate, Believe in and Love Yourself

Don’t forget to say positive things to yourself daily! You must love yourself internally to glow externally. ~ Hannah Bronfman

Originally Posted in December 2019

The holidays are a very stressful time for everyone and an exceptionally hard time for some.  So, until the New Year I’ll be posting a Holiday Happiness post each day to try help folks out who are struggling.  As always you can reach out to me at Happinesskane@aol.com for a kind word or someone to listen. ~ Rev Kane

During this time of year, those who get down on themselves often start to feel bad because of a sense of loneliness and disconnection.  For me, the place that I grew up is the toughest place to be this time of year.  In addition to plenty of painful memories, there is the cold, the dark and a feeling of isolation that winter at that point in the year creates in me.  I seem to feel the blackness that comes in the night, the cold penetrates a little too deep.

No matter what seed starts the feeling, being depressed this time of year can lead you into the well, that place where you feel down and don’t seem to be able to get out of.  Of course what spirals you down into the depths is that once you feel bad, you start piling on to yourself.  You tell yourself that you’re not worth the connections, community and happiness other people have this time of year.  You focus on your faults and inflate their relevance, you stop reminding yourself of all of the good qualities you possess.  You start to assume that people don’t want you around, you decline invitations because you convince yourself that people are just being nice, or that it really won’t be fun.

As I’ve written about it before, this time of year it is particularly important to focus on the positive, even something as small as remembering to smile.  You have to believe in yourself, you have to accept that you’re not perfect and be ok with that, you have to love yourself.  Stay as positive as possible and the holidays will be past soon enough and by staying positive you CAN have happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane