Choose The Pause: Let Light Lead Your Holidays

The holiday season doesn’t need more pressure; it needs gentler rhythms. We explore how small, steady rituals can transform a noisy month into a season of presence, offering practical ways to slow down without stepping out of real life. From lighting a single candle and breathing three intentional breaths to savoring a warm mug with full attention, we share mindful micro-moments that reset your nervous system and make joy easier to notice.

We walk through six approachable practices you can start today. Choose a candle ritual that anchors your evenings in calm, a cozy tea or coffee pause that turns a daily habit into a grounding break, and a nature walk of thanks that reconnects you to crisp air and quiet light. Capture goodness with a reflection jar that gathers one peaceful note each day, plan one slow meal where phones stay away and small joys are shared, and mark the Winter Solstice with simple questions that release what’s heavy and welcome what’s bright. Each idea is flexible, low-lift, and designed to fit full schedules.

Along the way, we keep the focus on choice and grace: pick one practice, repeat it with care, and let it reshape the feel of your days. You’ll learn why sensory attention calms the mind, how gratitude deepens memory, and where tiny rituals create outsized relief. For those craving an extra nudge, we also share our Seasonal Series Boxes made with Petal and Pink, a mental wellness boutique, featuring guided meditations and cozy items that support the theme of rest and warmth. Ready to feel the shift that small pauses bring? Follow the show, share this with a friend who needs a gentler December, and leave a review with the ritual you’ll try first.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcoming A Positive Focus
• 0:43 Framing The Season And Intent
• 1:36 Why Mindful Traditions Matter
• 2:08 Candle Ritual For Presence
• 3:01 Cozy Mug Pause Practice
• 3:50 Nature Walk Of Thanks
• 4:32 Reflection Jar For Gratitude
• 5:16 Plan One Slow, Unhurried Meal
• 6:09 Winter Solstice Reflection Night
• 7:06 Choosing Peace In Small Moments
• 8:16 Seasonal Series Boxes Invitation
• 9:28 Blessing And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast. I am so glad you're here. This is a place where we focus our energy on all of the goodness that is around us in the world, and that is how we are different. There's plenty of negative energy out there. You can find plenty of podcasts talking about negative things that are happening in the world, but we're pulling all our attention to the positive things we see each day. We're celebrating everyday joys, those little granular things in life that are special but sometimes get overlooked as we rush through our schedules. So this is episode 151, and I am your host, Sally Burlington. And on our calendar right now, if you're listening to this episode in real time, we are almost at Thanksgiving. We're in our fall season of the year, and that means that we're already sort of thinking about the holiday season. I mean, it's after Halloween now, so we can talk about the holidays. And today we're going to talk about some holiday rituals. So, first of all, let's talk about the fact that December is a special kind of month. It has a way of inviting us in to both sparkle and stillness, doesn't it? There's so much to do, there's so much energy swirling around us. And for me, that can be exciting, but it can also be exhausting. And the thing that I need, but don't always take time for is the process of slowing down and quieting my mind. So there's really a pull for me to savor the holidays and to ground myself. So I thought that for today it would be helpful to discuss a few mindful holiday traditions. That's what I'm calling them, ways that you can weave mindfulness into your holiday rhythm. These are small, meaningful ways to bring more presence and peace into your season. Now you don't need to do them all. You've already got a long enough to-do list. So you don't need to do them all. But think of this list as your toolkit. Just choose one or two that feel like a deep exhale for you. So just choose what works for you. And the first thing is we're gonna sort of want to choose from some rituals that we might create. So maybe you want to create a ritual of lighting a candle that represents presence. So maybe each evening, light one candle, and then while you're watching the flicker of the candle, just take three slow intentional breaths. And with every inhale, you feel gratitude. And with every exhale, you just release all the tension you can feel yourself holding. You might even whisper a quiet thank you for something that happened that day. And let that flame remind you you don't have to do anything to be worthy of rest. This is kind of like a rebooted version of your Advent wreath. Advent wreaths, you do that every week during Advent, but you can take the idea of focusing on light into your everyday rhythm as well. Now maybe you want to create a cozy tea or cocoa ritual or maybe coffee ritual. So what how the way this works is you choose a mug, what your favorite one, find the one that you like to drink out of the most and make a soothing drink and then drink it very slowly. So you're gonna listen to the sound of your tea kettle or your coffee maker. You're gonna notice the warmth of the mug in your hands, you're gonna breathe in the steam. Let this be your pause for peace. And that that doesn't take very long. I mean, you're probably gonna have coffee or tea anyway. So just incorporating this pause posture can be helpful. Even five minutes of mindful sipping can reset your nervous system and invite calm into your holiday season. So here's another idea. Maybe your ritual will be a nature walk of thanks. So you can get outside, even during the colder months of the year. It's really restorative to step outside, notice the crisp air, the smell of the trees, the leaves falling, the way the light changes this time of year. Let yourself feel small, but in a in a good way. Let yourself realize how big the world is and be part of the quiet rhythm of nature. You might even bring home a little nature item, maybe an acorn, a pine cone, a leaf, as a reminder of your nature walk of peace. And when you look at that, you think about how you felt when you were outside reconnecting to nature. Okay, what if you cr created a reflection jar? So this is also a gratitude ritual, so it connects to our Great Fall series. But what you're gonna do is get a jar and then each night you jot down one peaceful or grateful moment on a little slip of paper and just pop it in the jar. If you do this throughout the holiday season, by New Year's Eve, you will have a whole collection of good things that you've written down, and you can reread them all and have another happy reflection type moment. And this will help you remember to savor all the special moments that happened during the holiday season that maybe you forgot about and you just moved on. So creating a reflection jar can be a really good gratitude ritual. Maybe you want to do the this by planning a slow meal. You want to plan one unhurried meal. So the way this works is listen, you can get takeout. You do not have to make the meal. You can order takeout or maybe involve everyone in the cooking to create a family memory. But what you want to do is set the time, you're all gonna eat together, phones put away, you light a candle in the middle of the uh table before eating, or maybe while you're eating, you invite everyone to share a small joy that they've experienced this season. So instead of taking the time to write them down and put them in a jar, you're just gonna share them around the dinner table. And the nice thing about this ritual is that it can fit into your existing schedule. Just adding a few elements, reframing your hurried dinner hour can really make it a more calming experience. And our last idea is called a winter solstice reflections. This is similar to the reflection jar, but you're gonna do it at the winter solstice. So on December 21st, that's the darkest night of the year, the least amount of light in our where we live. So wherever you are, whatever's the shortest night of the year, you want to honor the return of light. So turn off all your overhead lights, light a few candles, just take a moment, right? Write some things in your journal. I mean, the end of the year is a great time to reflect and consider what you want next. What are you wanting in the coming year? Ask yourself some questions like, what am I ready to release? What light am I ready to welcome in? It's just a really simple ritual and it can be done. I mean, only you can only do this for 10 minutes and you'll get something out of it. It'll bring deep peace and deeper perspective. So just create a winter solstice ritual. And as I said at the beginning, I'm gonna circle back around to the fact that December is a full and noisy month. And I know that adding one more thing to the list is extra hard. But hopefully, if you've listened to this list of rituals, you've given yourself some you've chosen one or two to incorporate, and that gives yourself space to breathe. And as we move through December, I hope you'll give yourself permission to slow down every now and then. Just start right there. At least notice and capture the tiny moments of beauty in the small things. These are things like a candlelight or a quiet morning. It's something like the sound of laughter of someone in your family that drifts through the house. Take just a couple of seconds to notice it and savor it. And here's your reminder that peace is always available. You can always access it, but it doesn't always arrive in big ways. It doesn't have a big splash. Sometimes peace is just the pause that we choose. So I'm reminding you to take a brief pause and celebrate joy. Now, before we wrap up, I'm gonna tell you one more time, as I've been telling you all throughout the fall, I want to invite you to discover a new chance, a new way to pause. I'm gonna remind you about our seasonal series boxes. This is a collaboration with our friends at Petal and Pink, which is a mental wellness boutique. So these boxes are seasonal. You will have one for winter that's themed cozy time, and then there are four more. There's one for not four more, four total. There are three more. So there's one for spring, one for summer, and then one for next fall. And what they have in them is a card with a link to five guided meditations, and this is a way to settle your spirit, calm your soul, and really step into an immersive experience. And then there are gift items that support the theme. So in the cozy time box, I think there's a great mug and there's some um candles and just things that really make you feel warm and cozy. And listen, it's a great holiday gift. You can buy it for your loved one or for yourself as a time of self-care. So don't forget that you can go to mycreateharmony.com to find out more and to order your box for yourself. Now, may you move through this season with calm, with warmth, with harmony. And hope you'll come back next week for some more ideas on how to have a more relaxing holiday. And until next time, peace.