Living a Guilt-free Christmas

TO GIVE GIFTS OR NOT TO GIVE GIFTS? If you enjoy it, and it makes you happy, indulge! If there's a tinge of guilt somewhere about it, consider our guest article today, "Living A Guilt-Free Christmas," by guest writer, Catherine Franz

Do you have feelings that you didn't do something as well as you would have liked this year? With the intention to solve this by the end of the year? Many of us desire to begin the new year in a new light in our relationships. The ultimate motive, however, is that we don't want to drag our emotional baggage into the coming year.

Having Thanksgiving in November and Christmas in December all leading to the beginning of new promises in the next year isn't a fluke. The emotional need for love and peace is set in our emotional DNA and expands during this period. Gift giving is normally the result of wanting to give something that relieves the guilt of something. All for the promise of starting the New Year with a clean slate.

Your motive during the holiday period depends on your beliefs. Yet, it is a time to reconnect with love. Love is the greatest need for all of us. It is the foundation for our need for respect, honor, and interaction. We need love as proven in studies on newborns -- those touched and loved during their first few weeks and those
that aren't. Our love for our family, friends, but mostly with ourselves, is a strong desire that is manipulated by retailers during this period. Yes, I honor the fact that it has made the United States a great nation because of it but have we ever thought of how life could be different if we met it in another way?

There are other ways to balance the holiday season, this season and for the rest of your life. Examine why you are purchasing gifts. Is it the need to feel more loved? Is it to relieve the guilt so you can begin the New Year with a clean slate -- or at least a cleaner slate? What is driving the guilt? Not enough time spent with who? What are you working towards shedding before the New Year enters?

I am sharing this with you because I know of other ways and their results are greater than anything a gift will ever solve. It begins with forgiveness and transfers into living a different way of life -- all year long. That's 24/7, Monday-Sunday, with everyone in your life currently, from the past, and in the future that touch your life.

The message is to live a life of love, light all year long. Imagine a life of being guilt-free and being in a state of love and peace with yourself and others. No judgment with yourself. No judgment of others. Is it possible? I say yes and I know you know it as well. There are people living it. You have already experienced parts of it. Begin with the choice today. Not tomorrow, not as a New Year resolution. But today. Now. This minute. This second. Live the next hour guilt-free. Then the next hour. Live each hour whenever you can think of this process. Let the hours merge together and eventually your life changes dramatically and whole
world that you touch shifts around you. You know its possible. It begins with a choice and shifts with awareness and the smallest of commitments.

(c) Copyright 2005, Catherine Franz. All rights reserved. Catherine Franz, business and writing coach, resides in Virginia and is a syndicated columnist, radio producer, International speaker, and author. Ezines and other articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com http://abundance.blogs.com .
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