If I’ve one best practice about how to best feel good (I’ve so many, it’s hard to narrow down) over the holidays, it is: Only do what YOU WANT to do. I know, easier said than done, but as with most habits, it gets easier the more you do it.

Why is this my number one strategy for feeling good at the holidays – and, frankly, life? When we compromise our Self -and by this I mean override our needs, wants and desires- we make our self really vulnerable. Vulnerable to illness, stress, picking up strange energies, making even more bad choices, falling into old habits, and just generally feeling badly.

Since the holidays can put us in more situations that can trigger compromising ourselves, stress, and also picking up a bug or flu, it’s worth recommitting, or setting the intention, to really hold boundaries around your personal sense of satisfaction.

Learning to be more selfish; drawing boundaries on my time, energy, and expressing my desires and needs, has been such fertile ground for my growth – I’ve worked so hard on it – that I’m proud to say that today you won’t see much evidence of this having been a difficult issue for me.

It hasn’t always been this way. It’s taken years. In thinking about this, I remembered a key moment when I knew I HAD TO change:

My husband and I were in Santiago, Chile. It was his work trip. One night we had a dinner engagement with his colleagues, something I am rarely in a “Divine Yes” with. We sat down to eat at 6 pm and by 7:30, our food still has yet to be ordered. Up until about 7:30 I had been making conversation. But somewhere around that time I began to get angry – really angry.

At this point, I excused myself to go to the restroom, and sat in the stall taking some long deep breaths. Why was I so angry? I scolded myself. What’s wrong with me? Can’t I make it through one tedious dinner? Actually, no.

I was receiving intuitive information, which I did not act upon. The dinner continued. By night’s end, the energy had totally collapsed. Everyone was tired. The next day both my husband and I got really sick, and for the rest of the trip.

In hindsight, I evaluated my mis-steps, to prevent from making the same mistakes again.

-I had judged myself for the “irrational” way I was feeling (my sudden flare of anger) –a surefire way to create disconnection from the inner listening intuition requires. Anger was a signal that a boundary had been reached… but it wasn’t only about me (and as an energy sensitive, it rarely, if ever, is just about me)… Everyone was feeling this way.

-I also know that when I’m already feeling compromised, I can only minimally tolerate certain social situations without consequences. In hindsight, I had only about an hour and a half’s worth of oxygen in this situation before it expired.

-My old conditioned habit of people-pleasing kicked in: I didn’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable. While I knew I wanted to leave, I didn’t want to deal with my husband’s negative feelings about this, which as an empath, I would feel.

-I also didn’t want to appear selfish, so I squelched my needs. Putting my needs first made me feel selfish and guilty!

In hindsight, I could clearly see a lifelong habit of appropriating sensations and feelings as evidence that there was something wrong with me instead of psychic intelligence about my needs, the environment, or people around me. I could also see how my habit of deferring to my partner was hurting me. This was a HUGE awakening. So many things were at play, for which I was feeling consequences: old conditioning; people-pleasing, deferring my needs for others, judging myself for how I felt- and criticizing myself for being overly sensitive. And, when I honestly asked myself, I had decided to go on the trip because John wanted me to…because I was mildly curious, lukewarm, about it… I had not really WANTED to go.

I was not in alignment with my DIVINE YES. That full-body feeling of “THIS, RIGHT HERE, IS WHERE I WANT TO BE.”

When you are out of alignment with your own desires and needs- your “YES”- it opens the door for many things to go awry.

Honoring your desires and needs is the ultimate form of psychic protection. I think of the astrological symbol for the Sun -a dot inside the boundary of a circle. Your only job, as a human Ego, is to stay in the bullseye of your needs, desires, wants. This means listening to yourself, really listening; not allowing distractions of conditioning to take you away from you.

When you do this, you are protected by the circle surrounding. But if you are not listening to your Self…if you are deferring to others, saying yes when you mean no, or gritting your teeth and bearing situations you don’t like… there’s no one “home” to protect you. You don’t have a boundary any longer, so anything and anyone can get into your energetic field and disrupt you.

So, we arrive at the holidays. Whether you are feeling badly over the holidays, or want to prevent yourself from feeling badly, I suggest you keep it simple for yourself: Make a vow to only do what YOU WANT. Decide to be more selfish. Stop making decisions that feel lukewarm, or flat out unwanted (and then wonder why you are feeling badly later).

If you aren’t at “home” in yourself, protecting your own interests, who is?

Stay “home” for the holidays, friends.

For more resources on how to stay healthy over the holidays…

-protect your energy with a luscious abhayanga practice.
-come back into your own energy practice.
-listen to my FREE energy reconnection MP3.