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• Tips to help you thrive, not just strive.
• Tools to manage your stress and balance your life.
• Training in how to increase your personal power.
• Techniques to transform your pain into gain.
• Touches of inspiration to release your creative imagination
• Creative Quotes to transform your day
• Support to Craft a Life You'll LOVE to live.

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1. Take care of yourself: get enough sleep, eat healthy food at regular intervals, keep up (or start) an exercise routine, pace yourself. Take time out to relax and allow your soul to catch up with your body.
2. Make choices based on your own values. Know what your priorities are. Give up the should’s, ought’s and have-to’s. Let go of the things that aren’t important to you, and brace yourself for the flack, if need be. Find ways to honor others without having their (or our own) demands exhaust you.
3. Don’t expect things to turn out perfectly. The holidays are full of Soul, and Soul always brings the Trickster. Welcome—even anticipate–Coyote, (the Native Americans’ name for the Trickster). Remember that today’s screw-ups are often tomorrow’s fond and funny memories.
4. Emphasize people over things, events or tasks; and love over money. Gifts symbolize the love we give and receive. Focus on the love and keep the gift-giving and spending in perspective. What will be important two or six months or five years from now? What was your best holiday season of the past? Can you recreate some of it?
5. Expect some family tensions and conflicts, but don’t take them too seriously. Practice kindness at home first. Forgive the hurts and wounds that are inevitable in families and friendships. Remember that forgiveness is for you, not for them. It is the completion of a process that releases the hurt (without revenge) so YOU can heal, whether or not the other party acknowledges the need for it or even knows about it.
6. Don’t try to do all the holiday tasks yourself. You’ll end up exhausted and maybe resentful. Delegate responsibilities, or better yet, let everyone choose something to do that’s important to them, and let the rest go.
7. Lighten up! Have some fun. Do little things to bring the light and magic of the holidays into your life, and the lives of those important to you. Remember that the holidays are about love, hope and new beginnings for everyone.
8. If you’ve experienced a significant loss recently, it’s normal to feel that loss during the holidays more than at other times. Allow your emotions to surface; like ocean waves, feel them come, and then feel them go. Acknowledge your loss, together with others who also experienced that same loss if you can. You may find it helpful to NOT carry on the old traditions - do something different. You may also find it helpful to do something tangible to honor your grief and the loved one you have lost. Get support for yourself; don’t try to cope alone.
9. Reach out to people who are hurting. Helping others takes our focus off ourselves, and sometimes can do more to alleviate the pain than anything else. Tune in to the “Still, Small Voice” within, and you’ll know if and when you’re ready for this.

For more Holiday Tips, see Sharon’s Holiday Stress Blog: “Tips for staying balanced through the holidays”. She also invites you to add your own favorites. You’ll find it at Academyof CreativeLiving.com It includes posts from (my brother) Glenn Sackett, chaplain at Porter Adventist Hospital, and more than a dozen other people. All it lacks now is YOUR addition! We'd love for you to share what helps you during the holiday season.

If you find these helpful, please forward them on to a friend. And have a blessed holiday season.