The holiday season is upon us— six weeks of parties, cheer, friends, family, gifts, stress, and in some cases, insanity stretching from Thanksgiving to Hanukah to Christmas to New Year’s Day.

What are the holidays really about? Well, they’re really about high performance, going for your life, not compromising, and not settling. Yes, really! Read on.

The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of survival, harvest, and friendship. This celebration only happened because a handful of English Puritans made a huge commitment to change. They found the life and conditions in England unacceptable, so they sailed 66 days across the Atlantic on a less-than-fully-equipped ship in extremely harsh conditions, and then nearly starved and froze to death after they arrived in America. If it were not for the Native Americans, the Pilgrims would probably have perished. These first colonists were committed to going for their life. They were willing to risk their lives and navigate the unknown to make a better life for themselves.

And what about the Maccabees? Although a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish tradition, Hanukah is fundamentally about how the Maccabee Jews were unwilling to tolerate the Greeks’ taking over one of their temples. The war lasted three years before the Maccabees were finally able to gain control of that temple.

And finally, Jesus. Talk about a man on a mission. In all that he did, he left us with a few simple ideas to which he was completely committed. He delivered his most famous sermon on a mountain, and in it, he taught: love your enemies; do not judge others; trust God; don’t be anxious about tomorrow; do unto others as you would have them do unto you (the “golden rule”).

Pretty simple stuff. And yet…

How are you doing with not judging others and not being anxious about the future?

How often do you take a chance and make a change when things in your life are unacceptable? What are you tolerating? How long have you been tolerating it?

What are you willing to fight for? Are you fighting for your right to a fantastic life?

We tend to use the holidays as an excuse to avoid looking at our lives. But they're really a time to honor the people and the ideas that these celebrations commemorate. Does it honor them to use this time and the craziness of the holidaze to avoid living life, to say “I’ll get on that next year,” to sacrifice your personal development to meet holiday expectations?