1. Legacy: Holidays can be hard if you are missing a loved one or moving through a tough event in your life. Conversely, we all have elements of holiday celebrations from our own childhoods that stand out for us. When planning your holiday get-togethers make sure to infuse those pieces of your past right into your present. Let your kids and your spouse know, experience, and understand the traditions that are a part of your own heritage. Bring them forward, even decades later. May sound like something you are already doing…but are you? Create legacy by weaving together your most sacred and loved foods, decorations, traditions and customs from both past and present to best reflect who you are today! Play it forward with a renewed statement and a twist of nostalgic and now.

2. Leadership: Leadership starts at the head of your table! You lead not only in business, but in your personal life as well. What is your vision for your holiday meal? Where will you be sitting and where will everyone else be in relationship to you? Are you suggesting a “no politics” rule at your table? Are you allowing cell phones anywhere near the table? How do you want the meal to be paced? Essentially…are you taking ownership of a holiday plan…and are you willing to create a balance in that plan by allowing for flexibility and curiosity?

3. Love: Love and gratitude are very much entwined. Love is not only what you feel for others, it is also what you feel about your own existence. When you love, when you practice gratitude…really practice it with affirmations…it is much harder to feel fear, much harder to be angry, much harder not to find joy. When you prepare your table, your centerpieces, your meal itself—find the love—find the gratitude—find the meaning in the season itself.

4. Listening: Limiting tech and lowering that TV volume allows you to turn up the volume on conversations. The in-person kind. The ones that don’t involve typing and a send button! This year…really listen in. We all need to be heard, now more than ever before. Be that ear for someone else. While you are listening…make sure to include listening to yourself. What is your gut telling you to do next? How would it feel to make 2017 a year of progress and forward action? What would be different in your life?

Lots of L’s on this List…may they give you pause for thought and the ability to claim light and laughter in your life this holiday season and beyond!

 

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