Claim Your Awesome
Claim Your Awesome is on a mission to inspire and support women in connecting to their truth, awakening to their own power and unapologetically claim their big dreams so they can create a life that lights up their soul and manifest a life of abundance.
Weekly topics include healing your relationship with money, letting go of limiting beliefs, upgrading your money mindset, manifestation, living with more joy, finding balance, spirituality, entrepreneurship and wellness.
Claim Your Awesome
Cultivating Intention this Holiday Season
How can we actually be less caught up in the rush of the season and slow down to invite room for intention? And how can being more intentional impact our holiday experience? Not just the joyful or exciting parts, it's about carving out space for every emotion, be it happiness, sadness, or something in between. We'll arm you with strategies to set daily intentions, release negative feelings, and make room for more love, joy, and peace. We also emphasize the profound impact of choosing love, not just for ourselves, but how it can ignite a ripple effect, inspiring others, and potentially creating a kinder world. So, come along, let's reimagine the magic of the holiday season - together, intentionally, and with an abundance of love.
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Hello and welcome back to the Claim, your Awesome podcast. I'm your host, jess Hook, and I'm so happy that you're here. I know it's such a busy time of year and it's so easy to just get completely swept up in everything that we all need to get done. And it's so important, especially this time of year, to still find those moments for yourself, right, even if you're not doing that regularly. Maybe this season, in its busyness, in all of the things that need to happen, in all of the things that need to get done, maybe it's the perfect opportunity to give the gift to yourself of space of time right, of saying yes to yourself, of prioritizing a little bit of extra intention for yourself, right? I find that when we are so caught up in everything else, when we're so busy, when we're overwhelmed, when we're stressed, it's like that's when you need that intention even more. That's when you need to prioritize yourself even more. That's when you need to find time and space and stillness for yourself for reflection even more. It's even more important. So, again, it's a beautiful opportunity, a beautiful invitation to let that be your gift to yourself this season. How can you bring more intention into your life, right? And this is exactly what I want to talk more about on this episode today.
Speaker 1:There is so much talk around the holiday season about being grateful. It starts with Thanksgiving here in the States and being grateful, being more intentional, right, just enjoying the season and being present and being in the magic of it all. But if you were to be really honest with yourself, how much do you do that right? How much are you really finding presence in the joy and the beauty and the magic of this season, or are you just again caught up in All of the things that have to get done? Right, we go from Thanksgiving, where we get to spend time with our families it's meant to reflect, you know, on all of the things that we've been blessed with, all of the things that we're thankful for, showing so much gratitude for all of the blessings in our life that we already have to Black Friday, Cyber Monday shopping, shopping, shopping, spend, spend, spend, do, do, do. Bye, bye, bye, right? It's like what happened, right? What happened to? Oh, let's slow down and embrace the season, right, and I love this month. It's, you know, the winter solstice and it's really meant to be a time for stillness, for reflection, right, but we miss it. We just zoom right over it, because we're so, you know, lost in the frenzy of everything that we have to do, and you know I could go on a whole diatribe. Lately I feel like I've been talking a lot about capitalism and I know I live in this country and I know this country thrives and runs because of capitalism. But you know, we're just so swept up in it all right, we're so swept up in needing to buy more things, and I love sharing the story about my favorite Christmas.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've shared this yet on the podcast, but one year when I was probably only five or six, but I remember this so vividly, which shows just how impactful it was on my life, right, even though I was so young. We went skiing one year for Christmas and we stayed in a condo. My dad and my uncle went into the woods and cut down a little pine tree that we put up in our condo that we had rented, and I remember I had a Christmas coloring book and I colored different ornaments and stockings there were probably images of Santa and gingerbread and coloring all those, and then I cut them out. My mom helped me hang them on the tree for the ornaments and we used our ski socks as stockings on the mantle, and it was such a homegrown Christmas, right. I don't even remember what I got that year. All I remember is the simplicity of it right, the just like, the beauty of all of us like coming together in this way. It was such a beautiful, beautiful time and such a really wonderful memory that I have and I'm so thankful to have it right.
Speaker 1:So it's like how can we get back to that right, like just the simplicity of it, right, the reason that we're coming together right, just to celebrate being with one another. And how can we infuse more of that intention into this season? Regardless of what you celebrate or don't celebrate, right, we can still choose this time of year to be more intentional. And really it's a wonderful practice to do now, because as soon as Christmas is over, you're gonna start getting fed all the ads about now, all the things that you have to do to be the best version of yourself in 2024.
Speaker 1:And again, it's just, oh my gosh, I just get so frustrated by all of it because you already are the best version of yourself, right, like when we expand the aperture, when we look at everything at a bird's eye view, right, and take in everything as it is. We're exactly where we are meant to be right, you are perfect, you are enough, you don't have to fix anything right, you're not broken. That's only the story that we're telling ourselves because of all these masks that we're wearing and the ways that we're trying to validate ourselves in the eyes of others and the way that society tells us we need to be right, you need to get into the gym January 2nd, because you're only something if you're skinny and fit right. It's just like so dumb. The real magic only happens when you stop outsourcing all of that right, when you stop outsourcing your worth and love and validation right, and you just go in right. And that can only happen when you slow down and when you start getting really intentional about who you actually wanna be, how you actually wanna feel.
Speaker 1:I don't mean just who you wanna be from an achievement standpoint. I mean who do you want to be as you go through the day, right? Do you want to be someone who is caught up in this culture of hustle and More is always better, or do you want to be someone who Just finds peace exactly where you are right now? It doesn't mean that you can't also Go start your dream business. It doesn't mean that you can't also love your job and Be so excited to show up and be the best Person at your company every single day that you can be. It doesn't mean that you can't have both, but it's like you can choose how you feel about being that person.
Speaker 1:And I will Tell you this and guarantee and promise that when you Slow down and choose to go inwards right, choose to be more intentional, intentional, choose to really reflect on what are my values, how do I actually want to show up? How do I actually want to feel what's not working for me right now? When you do that work right when you do the inner work and start waking up to, oh, these were all just thoughts that I've been telling myself for years. These were all just stories I had made up about myself, about my life for years. These are all just Masks I've been wearing for years we start waking up to that. You're like, oh, it actually gets to be so much more pleasurable to Do all the things that I want to do, to achieve the things I want to achieve right, because now you're coming at those goals from a place of Purpose and love, a place inside of you, not seeking the external validation, not feeling like you should do something.
Speaker 1:I heard a great quote the other day that said should is could, with shame attached, and I love that. That totally resonated with me and I think it can resonate with you, because we're constantly, especially this time of year, like I should be doing all these things. I should be making 50 batches of homemade cookies, my home should look like a hallmark movie. I should have the most Pinterest worthy cocktail party at my house, right, like again. These are wonderful things to do if you're doing them from a place of love, from a place that truly lights you up and how you know.
Speaker 1:The difference is when you're doing those things. Are you stressed? Are you having resentment around some of the things that you have to do? Maybe you have family coming over and your mom really keeps everything just so in her house and it's always so tidy and so perfect and you feel the need to have your house be just so right, this like epitome of perfection. You feel tense around that. You feel like the contraction in your body when you think of it right. That's when you know it's not coming from a place that really serves you, right, it's coming from a place that you feel like you need to again prove something or be some other way.
Speaker 1:But that's like the beauty of this whole thing called life is like you're only here to be yourself. And when you give yourself permission to show up in your fullness, in your wholeness, in your messiness, whatever that looks like for you, oh my gosh, it's like a breath of fresh air, because no one else is doing that and people feel that. People are like, oh my gosh, I want to be in their house. It's so cozy and loving and inviting because they're inviting me in from a place of love. Right, they are embodying that themselves. Right, they're not trying to prove anything. Right, they're not feeling stressed and anxious and overwhelmed because they're resenting the fact that all of their family is coming over and 75% of them they don't get along with and there's so much tension. But they feel like they have to do it. I should do this. Do you really have to?
Speaker 1:Right, and it's like that is where, again this season and it can be quite triggering for a lot of people at the holiday season right, a lot of things come up for a lot of people. There's no reason to judge it. Can you use this time to just let that trigger come up and sit with it? I've talked about this on the podcast before, but often negative emotions just get stored in our body and they literally just want to be released and the only way to do that is to let them be there. Can you just give yourself the opportunity to see what's coming up for me? You don't even have to go on some investigative mission to understand where the story came from or what it means, or this or that. Right, we don't need to attach ourselves to the story. We can simply just see what's coming up for us. Let it be there, give it 90 seconds, give it two minutes, just allowing whatever it is that wants to come up, and then get up and make yourself a cup of tea and go on about your day and it's amazing how much lighter you will feel. It's so much heavier and so much harder to continue to carry the weight around, to continue to carry the resentment around, to continue to carry the guilt around, the frustration, the anger, right Whatever comes up. It's such a joyful and beautiful time of year and it's met with all of these other emotions and again, when you can be more intentional and slow down and just not be caught up in the rush of it all, you actually can find that you can hold space for all of it Joy and the sadness or the frustration Again, whatever that may be for you.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was first kind of starting this personal development journey and I hadn't started coaching yet, but I was feeling really good because I had been meditating and working out and starting to build some kind of business, even though I didn't know what that looked like yet. I was just feeling really excited and really on fire and just wanted to share this with every single woman that I knew, because I had never felt just this level of joy and peace and got just like enthusiasm before. And it felt so good. And in the fall I decided that I was going to run this intentional living kind of group challenge and I was super excited about it. I got everything set up, I got some women in the group who were interested in doing this and simultaneously it's getting closer to the holidays and our church giving tree released all of the gifts that we could donate to kids in need for the holiday season and I was overcome with sadness.
Speaker 1:Overcome with sadness at the idea that there were so many kids in the world who couldn't wake up to gifts on Christmas morning and that was so hard for me, right? I really became depressed about it, quite honestly. Oh my gosh, it weighed on me so much. Even now, as I'm talking about, I can feel the tightness in my chest. And even though I got into action, I bought so many gifts that year this is the first year of the pandemic and I had reconnected with so many friends who live all over the country and we were getting together on Zoom and it was wonderful and I reached out to them and asked if anyone wanted to donate and I could buy even more gifts and my friends were Venmoing me money and I think I bought gifts for like 15 kids that year and it was so amazing.
Speaker 1:But I couldn't continue my intentional living challenge because I was so depressed. I was so overcome with this sadness and even though I, just a month prior, was on this high, wanting to share my journey with all these women, I hadn't learned how to hold space for both the joy and the sadness, and it wasn't until I really started doing more of my inner work and went through my own coaching certification program and became a coach and understood the tools of how to integrate all of this and embrace all of it right, embrace all of the emotions that I now can hold space for, both the joy and the sadness. I see that it all coexist together and again, I couldn't have done that without being very intentional, without doing some of my own inner work, my own healing, and I share that. To say it makes everything so much easier. It makes the season of whether you are stressed, trying to get things done, whether you are having a lot of anxiety around seeing family members or traveling, whatever's coming up for you.
Speaker 1:There is a place where you're able to hold space for all of it, where you're able to accept everything exactly as it is. When you can get to a place that there is no longer the judgment and the resentment and you see that you no longer have to be so attached to the story that you've created about your life, or so longer tied to what things mean about you or that things didn't work out the way you wanted them to, you can see how these are just stories that have become such a huge part of your own identity, but you can release them, and when you release them, that's where the magic happens, right when you release them. It's like that 50-pound weight just gets lifted off your shoulders and this may not happen overnight, but it's available to you. And again, that, for me, is what I really believe is the true gift of this season of being intentional. Finding the most joy in this season is being in full acceptance of everything else that already is Holding space for the not so good and the really really, really incredible. That's where you can experience the true magic of the season.
Speaker 1:And again, it starts with being really intentional. And maybe this is something where you can just see as you move through this month well, it's almost December, so as you move through the season, as December starts, just simply notice what's coming up for you as you do things, notice where maybe you're feeling tightness or tension or something's coming up that's triggering you, triggers or teachers. Let it show you something, let it teach you something, rather than just ruminating in the energy of that emotion that's coming up for you, with that triggering thought, because that is what will truly set you free, not just the season, but going into next year, and the more you practice this and the more you do this, it will just profoundly change your life in so many ways. There's so much freedom in that freedom, in just accepting everything as it is, knowing that we can't change anyone, but we have the ability to change our own thoughts, to change our own stories, to rewrite them. What is a story that you want to tell? Again, it starts with being super intentional. So this is what I want to leave you with today.
Speaker 1:Can you make it a point to find 10 minutes for yourself every morning to set an intention for the day, for the month, whatever it may be right? Maybe it's an intention of peace, maybe it's an intention of joy, maybe it's an intention of ease, whatever that is right. Just setting that intention and, throughout the day, coming back to that intention. When you feel something coming up for you that doesn't align with the intention that you've set, I invite you to not push it away, not try to just pretend that everything's fine, because you need to again release some of these other emotions and other thoughts so that you can create the space and the capacity to receive more of the joy, to receive more of the love, to receive the peace. You need to free up the space to have room for all of it.
Speaker 1:So just letting whatever is coming up for you, letting that be there, just being with it without judgment, breathing into it. Letting it be there until it feels lighter, even if it doesn't feel like it's completely past. Let it feel a little bit lighter. Just allowing it to be there and then simply getting up and almost doing something mindless Maybe it's again getting a cup of tea. I like to just sweep my kitchen floor. I just feel like it's something that always needs to be done with two kids and it's just like, okay, I'm moving on, I'm going to do something mindless and go on about my day and just see how that starts to feel for you.
Speaker 1:And again, just noticing as you're moving through this month, as you're maybe planning parties or visiting relatives, just remembering what that original intention is right, knowing that there's nothing that you truly need to do except live from a place of love, a resource, place of love inside of you.
Speaker 1:That is the best gift that you can give anyone, not just this season, but any time of year. Because when you do that, when you find the love and the peace inside of you, you no longer looking for it externally, right, you're no longer looking for the validation of anything of your worth. When you do that and you live from that place, other people feel that and that, whether it's conscious or not, will inspire other people to do the same thing and live the same way, and that's what will change the world for the better. And that's what I'm here for. I'm here for living in a world where people know just how valuable and perfect they already are, because, oh my gosh, what could we create if we all not only knew that, but felt that, embodied that with every cell of our being? I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you find time to create these intentions, and I hope you're intentional about slowing down and about really embracing just what this season is all about and experiencing the magic in all of it. Have a great day.