#47. How To Give From Fullness And Find Your Glow During The Holidays

 The holidays are meant to be a season of miracles, belief, love, and light. In this conversation, we get honest about the invisible pressure of December and choose a different path: presence over performance, fullness over fear, and a steady, sustainable glow over short bursts of forced cheer. We explore how holiday pressure collides with the season’s natural call to rest, and how shifting from performance to presence restores calm, connection and joy. We unpack the neuroscience of stress, offer a simple body check for aligned giving and remind ourselves that love never asks for proof.

You'll learn how to:

Understand holiday pressure through the nervous system

Release over-giving without losing generosity

Align with the natural inward energy of winter

Bring light with without burning yourself out

Remember that you are already enough

This episode is for anyone longing for peace, simplicity, and authentic connection during the holidays.

Thank you for giving the gift of your time by listening to this podcast I hope it alleviates pressure so that you are free to enjoy and fully experience this season of giving.
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Transcript

Welcome And Core Mission

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Welcome to Just Count Me In, a podcast designed to help you break free from your limitations and step into the life that you actually were meant to live. I'm Sari Stone and I'm a holistic coach with a background in education. For the past six years, I've been guiding people to transform their lives from the inside out. My journey, to be honest with you, was not always clear. For years, I actually felt like I was living someone else's life, checking all the right boxes, but never feeling quite truly fulfilled. That all changed when I experienced a few miracles, met some incredible teachers, and had a major wake-up call that forced me to shift my entire perspective. Wayne Dyer once said, When you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change, and that is exactly what this podcast is about. Helping you see your life in a new way so that you can start living with authenticity, purpose, and passion. Each week, I'm going to bring you 30-minute episodes filled with insights, practical strategies, and inspiring interviews to help you uncover what truly lights you up and identify what's been holding you back. Eventually, this is going to ignite your motivation and create real change. Are you ready to step into the life you were meant to live? Then just count me in. Hit subscribe and join me on this journey. If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today. Let's do this together. So we're a little bit more than 10 days away from Christmas and about a week away from Hanukkah. And I'm so excited, just so happy and so grateful this year. And I realized that I wasn't always in this place. This holiday season, I notice, is especially at Christmas. It's meant to be a season where we celebrate miracles. It's meant to be a season of light and belief and faith. And for so many people, and I used to be one of them, this is also the season where deep feelings of not enough might come rushing in. Like not enough time, not enough money, not enough energy, not enough joy, not enough thought put into the gift, not enough you. And today I want to talk about that, not to try to fix you or to tell you to do more, but to lift off some of that invisible pressure that we can carry during this season and get you back to just who you are. The darkest time of the year is December, and nature knows what we forgot. We are literally in the darkest time of the year. Nature isn't blooming in a lot of places. Some places it is. Trees aren't producing as much. Seeds can be a little bit more dormant, they're getting energy underground, and yet culturally we are asked to be doing just the opposite. We're asked to be more social, we're asked to be more generous, dig deep, we're asked to be more joyful, best year ever. We're asked to be more present. We are asked to be more everything. It's completely counter to the season. Alan Watts spoke about how suffering arises when we work against the natural flow of life instead of with it. Like resistance, like going upstream instead of going with the flow. One of the biggest steps I took in order to get myself right and reconnected during this season was to start saying no to some of the parties or gatherings. A lot of these places, it just feels like everybody was acting like the version of themselves that they wanted the world to see, and they were hoping other people would like. And valuing performance over presence, which we will definitely explore in a whole episode, actually. Performance over presence sounds like a good one. When life life is moving in cycles, light and dark, expansion and contraction, and we have cycles every day. We have circadian rhythms and we have cycles every month. And problems arise when we insist on permanent brightness. The noise of the world is not where genius is born. You're not missing it, you're tuning in. This season is not meant for constant outward expression, it's meant for quiet light. So give yourself a permission slip. I give myself permission to stay home if it feels more aligned. I give myself permission to not give if I feel like I'm giving from a place of emptiness or obligation. So let's talk about what is going on, the neuroscience of holiday pressure and why this feels so real. During the darker months, serotonin levels naturally dip because there's less sunlight, melatonin levels increase, so your body really does want more rest. You're not just hibernating because you're depressed, your body actually wants more rest, and when you don't do it, that can cause depression. Your nervous system is actually more sensitive to stress in the winter. And also, we can't we counter into that that when we're expecting something, we have anticipatory pleasure, and that causes the rise in the happy brain chemicals. Like anticipation is often more joyful than the actual event. We've all had that experience of planning a vacation, and the planning and the time and the countdown leading up to it was actually better than the vacation itself. Sometimes that happens with holidays. If we don't stay aligned with ourselves throughout the season, it can cause depression because there's a dip after Christmas. And then when you add this layer of social gatherings, gift exchanges, expectations, unspoken rules that activate the brain's threat system, specifically the amygdala, your brain does not distinguish between physical danger. It doesn't distinguish that from emotional risk or social rejection. When you think, what if this isn't good enough? What if I disappoint somebody? What if I get it wrong? What if this isn't the perfect Christmas? Your nervous system hears threat detected, and then that's why people overgive. They try to override that response and make make themselves feel better. That's also why we overexplain. That's why we sometimes push ourselves past exhaustion. This isn't weakness, it's actually your biology, and awareness is power. There are cycles also that happen during this time of powerful triggers because holidays can trigger us back into childhood roles. Holidays can pull us back into family expectations that don't fit our needs, old stories about love and worthiness. So suddenly, without realizing it, we're not just giving gifts, we're panicking, trying to prove something. I'm enough, I belong, I'm loved, I'm worthy. But here's the truth: love never required proof. Love doesn't ask for evidence or worthiness. Love is love. Alan Watts talked about effort and the loss of magic, and he warned us about this exact thing. He said that when we try too hard to make life meaningful, we actually end up draining it of its magic. When Christmas becomes a performance, when generosity becomes obligation, when joy becomes something that we must manufacture and plaster on our faces, the miracle disappears. Because miracles don't come from effort, they come from allowance. They're always present in our natural state. Another obstacle that we encounter is feeling uncomfortable when we receive something. We can look at that as an opportunity with discomfort not meaning that we did something wrong. It's a growth opportunity. It means we're letting go of an old pattern and learning how to receive. Or if somebody else gets uncomfortable, also it doesn't mean anything. You just kind of let them do that. When we give from alignment and connection and not obligation and guilt, it feels so good. I can think of few things that I love more than getting things for people I love. I get so excited. I do. The miracle isn't the perfect gift. It's being connected with them and thinking of them and thinking, oh, this might bring them some joy, or oh I bet they're gonna look so cute in that, or oh, I hope they really enjoy this. The miracle is not getting everything right. It's not. The miracle is light appearing in darkness, quietly, gently, without force. It's the sunrise every day. It's the way the earth spins so perfectly on its axis. It's the way I can put seeds in the ground and magic happens and then they grow. It's the way women can grow babies inside of their bodies and give birth. There is exactly the right combination of elements in the air we breathe. Life is a miracle. Think about it. A single cha candle can change a dark room. A small kindness can shift an entire moment. Presence calms your nervous system more than any gift ever could. Belief isn't about doing more, it's about trusting that who you are is already enough. So here's a little nervous system check because I do believe in getting in touch with the body. We have our bodies, we need to stay in touch. So before you give anything, ask your body does this feel calm or pressured? Our brain releases a mix of dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin and sometimes even endorphins, activating reward centers to create a big pleasure boost. And that makes us feel more connected and reduces our stress. This does not apply strictly to material things. Acts of service, giving your presence, offering your help, making eye contact and smiling, giving your support. It all works the same way. Healthy giving feels grounded, it feels peaceful, it feels like you could do it forever. It feels joyful. There is no resentment in there at all. When giving feels like pressure, it's a completely different story. You feel like this awful sense of urgency, almost anxiety, it feels like a draining experience. And it's fear-based about not being enough if you don't get this right. This is where the miracles return. When giving comes from fullness, not fear. So you can use this checklist gently, not as a rule book, but just more like a guide and think Am I giving to express love or avoid discomfort? Would I still give this gift if no one noticed it? Does this respect my energy, my finances, my well-being? Can I give this without expecting anything in return? Does my heart feel joy while I'm giving this? Do I feel expansive? Do I feel calm? Do I feel genuine? Do I feel connected? Do I feel aligned? When we give, it also gives the opportunity for the recipient to practice receiving. And when we receive, we can also practice accepting. I go back to the old Charlie Brown, and I love that Charlie Brown Christmas special. Maybe because it was the first one I ever watched, or maybe not, but I think that he really hit a truth there. I totally feel like Charlie Brown during the holiday seasons, or I did. And I thought, you know, this season isn't asking you to shine brighter. It's actually asking you to shine truer and find your glow. I remember Linus took Charlie Brown aside and explained to him what the real meaning of Christmas was and got away from the commercialism. And it's about a steadier light. It's about a steady flame, not one that burns out after the 12 days of Christmas. And the flame doesn't consume itself. We are not here to exhaust ourselves in the name of love. We are here to embody it. In this podcast, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm reminding you of what you are. And that quietly and gently celebrates the miracle of you. Thank you so much for being here. I know that this is a busier than usual time of year, and I so appreciate that you're giving me the gift of your listening during this season. Thank you for choosing belief over pressure. I hope that this helps to alleviate some of the invisible pressure that we might take on from those around us or from ourselves during this year. And thank you for bringing your light just as you are. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like this episode, please let me know. Stop by at social media on Instagram or my Facebook page, just count me in and please leave a comment. If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them. And I look forward to seeing you next time. We're all in this together.