2025 is Here!!

After the celebrations are over it can be daunting can’t it to look ahead to a new year.  What’s in store for us all globally, nationally and personally?   Trouble is looking ahead through our imaginary crystal balls is notoriously difficult – well let’s be honest impossible.  What we really achieve by trying to predict the future is usually negative thoughts and emotions such as worry, anxiety, fear, doubt, panic and depression.

Grounding ourselves in the present, only allowing ourselves short term plans in our diaries or events that we know are likely to happen such as that summer holiday we have just booked.

We can do nothing about the past, we cannot live in the future – only the present.   Another way of putting it is ‘do not worry about tomorrow because today’s troubles are enough for today’.  Concentrate on what you can do today, experience its joys, its highs and lows and tackling one problem at a time, focusing, at least for some small part of each day, on taking time out to rest.

 

Only 4 days to go!  Many of us are finishing work today but for many more the busyness will continue right up to Christmas Eve and for some they will be on duty all through the Christmas period.

Presents to buy, presents to wrap and deliver, meal planning, food shopping to endure and cooking prep to do, travelling to see relatives or preparing for visitors.  Perhaps you have excited young children breaking up from school and of course you may have already attended school carol services/nativity plays.

Sounds exhausting doesn’t it and that’s because it usually is.  Remember that the thing you have forgotten to get was probably not needed anyway and the children did not really need so many presents and so what if the meal is not perfect – will anyone really notice?

However, maybe you would give a lot to experience the above and that Christmas is not the busy family time, instead it brings a deepened sense of loneliness, anxiety or depression.  What can you do to get through this period with any sense of well-being?  Firstly lowering expectations of Christmas can help.  Indulging yourself in self-care – what do you love to do?  Doing something different perhaps such as volunteering with a charity who provide  Christmas lunches for those in need.  Maybe your neighbour would like some company and a shared meal.  Maybe it is comfortable clothing on the sofa in front of the TV.

Take care everyone whatever Christmas will mean to you!