The Ghost of Christmas Present: Embracing Your Creativity

Remember those cherished holiday traditions that once brought us joy, but now seem to weigh us down? This episode is for those who find themselves longing for the past, but also craving something new. Let's shed the heavy weight of the old as we sip coffee beside the frozen lake, share our personal stories, and explore the liberating power of the mind. We dive into the heart of the holiday season, acknowledging the common feelings of disconnect and the daunting task of creating new traditions. 

Consider that Christmas could be a fascinating new journey of creativity. We share the secrets of letting go of the past and creating something new, something lighter. Join us as we delve into this intriguing topic and inspire you to tap into your innate creativity. Perhaps, together, we can find a fresh perspective on life and the holiday season. Rest assured, this episode is more than just a casual chat; it's an invitation to discover the wonders of hypnosis and the transformative impact of adjusting your state of mind.

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:10

Welcome and thank you for joining us for Coffee with Hillary and Les. Brought to you by State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Center, located in the heart of the Cawortha Lakes, this is our almost daily community podcast about the mind and how you might change it in the most simple and helpful ways. Every day, we sit staring at the lake and sipping our coffee, having a chat about hypnosis and how to make those meaningful adjustments to our state of mind, Because nothing is more important than your state of mind. Okay, we're on the line.

Speaker 1: 0:46

A little bit of snow falling doggie's outside. We'll see how long that lasts, yeah.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Her paws are so sensitive. She's a sensitive little doggie. She doesn't like getting snow on her paws or leaves or anything. Oh well.

Speaker 1: 1:11

Yeah, we've been trying to do this podcast for a few days now. I feel bad that we're sort of falling behind in podcasts. I'd like to offer something as frequently as possible, but this is one that's been, I think, really just hard to know what to say Now. Maybe that's just because we're so aware of our own. I'm going to use the word suffering in the same way. It's so common this time of year. You were telling me yesterday you've been having clients that are bringing this up.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Yeah, a lot of clients yeah, a lot of clients are coming in and then they're talking about Christmas, they're talking about gatherings, they're talking about, yeah, just how they feel, just not connected to it anymore. Just, yeah, that disconnect, these upheavals in their life over the last few years, some of them, and now they're trying to create a new kind of Christmas, but they're just not there. So we're working to get them there.

Speaker 1: 2:26

Yeah, it feels like Christmas has become a really a backward looking thing. We're looking to the past and we're looking to repeat something that we experienced at some point, and that's a really hard thing to do when you really think about it.

Speaker 1: 2:47

take any other aspect of your life, and it's when you sort of think backwards and you try to repeat something you've already done. Well, first of all, it's hard to do so, you can find yourself often not succeeding, and then that leads to a whole world of judgment and complaint. The mind is like a judgment machine. It just automatically classifies things as good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, and it just isn't a very helpful process to engage in. Having your experience sort of wash over you like water, I think, is a better approach. It comes and it goes, it flows in each moment, and I think this is where we miss out. Each moment has its own possibilities. To see yourself as not trying to create what happened in the past, but create something new and wonderful. We forget sometimes that we're just really wonderfully creative. People will tell themselves they're not creative, and that's just not true.

Speaker 2: 4:20

Yeah, and I think about these. This came to me this morning because I can't remember if I talked about it on the last podcast or Christmas. But this idea of this little village that I carry around and it brought me a lot of joy in the past and it sits in the crawl space in a few boxes I don't know how many boxes, not one, more than one box of stuff and I it's so funny this, you know, you have these thoughts just randomly pop into your head as soon as you wake up. And there was this thought and I really resonated with it and it sat well with me as this idea that we go through life and it's not just with Christmas stuff, it's with everything around us, and Sometimes it just takes on a heavy energy in our mind.

Speaker 2: 5:31

That doesn't have to be bad energy, it's just heavy. It's like, do I want to take care of that any longer? Right? Do I want to have all this stuff any longer? And some specific items are heavier than others. So when I thought about it in that respect, I thought, okay, so it's not like it brings me unhappiness, it's just sort of heavy and I want to start something new. So releasing that, letting that go and then maybe starting something new and that's lighter. That feels lighter. And again, it's not like the boxes are heavy which they are but just in my mind there's a weight to the thought of them and I'm not happy with that anymore. So I'm letting that go and bringing something new.

Speaker 1: 6:33

I think that when I think back the thing that I should think of I remember the Christmas when that little Christmas village first became part of our Christmas and it was just tons of fun. I mean, it didn't involve me a lot, you know. I got to buy a few pieces and watch how you created with it and I loved that and I loved looking at it when it was done and it was, you know, a few Saturdays of driving around and looking at stuff and thinking about Christmas decorations and and it was just a lot of fun because we had fun doing it. And I think all of that emotion is wrapped up in it too. You know that we had fun and it's great to look at that and say, boy, that was fun. I'd like to have fun again.

Speaker 1: 7:32

But if we then take that village and we bring out those boxes and yes, there's a few boxes and and we try to recreate it, it's just not going to have the same energy, it's not going to have the same joy attached to it and it's a frustrating experience. It becomes frustrating because I'm looking to it to provide me something that it can't. It can't provide me that feeling of newness and freshness and something completely creative and so and I believe you know, I know that I do it I think it's a very common thing that we look at stuff out of the past at Christmas and we try to recreate it. And what we should be doing is looking at the thing in the past and realize that the joy came from the newness and the freshness and the trying something different and engage engagement into that creativity. That will wonder what we could do, and I think that when we look back, that's the thing we should bring forward. The thing we should bring forward is that we were creative, that we had cool ideas, that the simplest things could make us happy and that, in the process of trying to create something new, we had just a lot of fun and that that was just a wonderful feeling. And so I just feel, like you know, it's important to recognize where all these ideas, these thought forms come from, and it's in understanding that it's coming from a good place. We all just want to have that feeling of joy, that feeling of wow, that was fun. And we're looking backwards at things we'd done before, and it's not the thing we did.

Speaker 1: 9:31

It was really the act of creating. It was the act of starting fresh, and I think that you know if I offered a refrain. You know the ghost of Christmas present, you know the ghost of Christmas present says I am creative, I can create a wonderful Christmas from nothing, from all new ideas. I can, this year, have fun and be creative. I am the force of Christmas present, and Christmases of the past are loved and they're appreciated and we're grateful for them, and it's time to create a new kind of Christmas. And that can be anything, absolutely anything.

Speaker 1: 10:27

You see something you like, you read about something you like, you hear about something you like, you come up with an idea. You know, like one of the things I think we limit ourselves with Christmas is that we come up with new ideas and we're afraid to bring them forward. We're afraid to say can we do it this way this year? Can we try this this year? I would really like to try this, this recipe, this decoration. I'd really like to try some new lights or some new things, or maybe some new things or maybe no lights. Let's get a candle and, you know, let's not put the tree in that same spot, let's put it somewhere else. Let's just shake this up, because really, inside you, you're so much more creative than you give yourself credit for and when you allow yourself to just be present, not in the past, but in this moment.

Speaker 2: 11:23

Yeah, yeah, I think we often forget that. We often forget that the human nature is to be creative. I mean, that's how we got this far, right. What can this stick do?

Speaker 2: 11:37

Oh, I can poke it in trees and get bugs. You know we are creative beings, and constantly. You know, I think we often think of creative as, oh, they're an artist, they paint or they draw or something. You know that's creativity in society? But it's not. It's just your mind's ability to just think of new things or want to bake some new cookies that you've never baked before. Like it's just that simple.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Yeah, I like I've become a real fan on my Spotify to just type in searches for covers, covers of these kinds of songs, and I've discovered the most amazing stuff where people have taken old, old songs and made them really new. I listened to a bluegrass version of Michael Jackson's Billy Jean and I thought this is amazing. There is no song that can't be recreated and in a lot of ways, that can be a lot of fun. Make yourself a brand new Christmas playlist. You know, we talked yesterday briefly about this and I think I feel different about it today.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Yeah, we started this podcast yesterday and we shut it down because we sort of froze up, but I want to. After we stopped the podcast, I started thinking further about this concept of perfect, trying to be perfect, right and perfect sort of implies that there's a correctness and an incorrectness, that things are the way they're supposed to be and or things aren't the way they're supposed to be, and that's such a past, you know, a past experience-based idea. This is perfect because it's exactly the same as it was when I was 10 years old right.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Perfect is a really limiting concept because I think as a concept it's dumb. It's just dumb. To evaluate something as perfect is to treat it in judgment. Right, there's a judgment there and judgment is, I think, the enemy of happiness in so many ways, and so it really doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be fun, it just needs to be joyful. You just need to feel positive. You know, when you're trying to relive the past, you get trapped. I think a lot in correctness. So judgment is that saboteur of creativity. Right, that's, the fastest way to stop somebody from creating is to start judging their ideas. In fact, you know there's a taken training years ago and I really enjoy.

Speaker 1: 14:44

There's a process put out by the University of New York State University at Buffalo, and it's a program in creativity, and one of the principal ideas in that program is that there is a time to just have ideas. They call it ideation. Just come up with ideas, and what gets in the way of the flow of ideas is that you stop and judge each idea along the way. So to just focus on ideas, not judge any of them. You know you're gonna have.

Speaker 1: 15:18

If you focus on the ideas, you get a long list of ideas and you don't have to pursue any of them. But it's a different part of your mind that is creating new things and you gotta dwell in that part of your mind for a while to really activate it and get it really excited. And the instant an idea comes to you and you immediately say no, no, I can't do that, or that would be stupid, or I don't that, you've shut that part of your mind down again. So it could be just a ton of fun to sit with your family and just say, hey, you know what are some new things we could do at Christmas. Let's just come up with ideas. We're not going to do any of them, we might do all of them. Let's just have a long list of possibilities and just don't judge, Don't get in the way of it, Just let the thing flow.

Speaker 2: 16:10

I think about yes and idea. Or you know, chocolate for every idea, Throw chocolates at them.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Positive reward.

Speaker 2: 16:25

But the yes and idea is to you know, come up with something, anything, and then, instead of saying no, but, or yeah, but or no, but it's just sort of yes, and so imagine it like a staircase. You're going up the staircase, right, every step is a new idea branched off with the other idea. I wonder if there's a game out there like that. Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1: 16:57

So I guess there it is, the ghost of Christmas present. The ghost of Christmas present isn't a ghost, it's an act of living and creativity.

Speaker 2: 17:08

All of that.

Speaker 1: 17:10

Yeah, let's do it, but we'll have to say goodbye right now so we can do it yeah, christmas is.

Speaker 2: 17:23

Start decorating, let's go to the basement.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Christmas is huge. I think we can keep talking about.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:29

And it's just remember that Christmas is for those of you who don't celebrate is just a representative idea of the things that we think have to be done right, and that rightness implies judgment and gets in the way of your creativity.

Speaker 2: 17:49

Yeah, I think you know we're talking about Christmas specifically, but it's across the board with every tradition or anything. Yeah, just incorporating creativity more into it.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Like weddings. Oh, we'll talk about that another time.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Okay, okay, we'll see you later.

Speaker 1: 18:12

We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that maybe it helped even a little. If you have any questions, we would love you to send them along in an email to info at songhypnosiscom. Thank you for being part of the state of mind community For more information about hypnosis and the various online or in person services we provide.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Please visit our website, wwwsomhypnosiscom. The link is in the notes below. While you're there, why don't you book a free one hour journey, meeting with Hillary or less to learn more about what hypnosis is and how you might use it to make your life what you want it to be? Bye for now. Talk to you tomorrow. You.