If you’re dealing with loss, sickness, or loneliness, this time of year can serve to magnify whatever you’re going through. 

So in this weekend’s new video, I wanted to do something a little different . . .

While this message is for anyone who needs a boost during the holidays, it’s especially for those in the middle of a “complicated Christmas.”

And today I want you to know that you’re not alone.

Listen to this message and please do drop me a comment after you watch. I’d love for us all to feel more connected and help people know that others understand what they’re going through right now.

Happy holidays,
Matthew

Christmas and the holidays in general are a great magnifier. They’re a magnifier for joy if you’re feeling a lot of joy in your life right now, if you’re in an amazing relationship and you’re excited about sharing the holidays with that person, or if you have incredible family around you that you’ve been looking forward to seeing. So if you’re already excited about that, the holidays become a wonderful magnifier for all of those wonderful experiences.

But they can also be a magnifier for pain. If there’s someone in particular you’re missing this Christmas, if there are people who have left your life either through death or through breakups, then it can be an incredibly painful time and one that reminds us of what we don’t have right now. 

And that extends to family and friendships. If you feel particularly lonely right now in your life, the holidays are a time when you feel even more lonely, especially when you go online and it looks like everyone else is having this Hallmark Christmas or you’re watching the actual Hallmark holiday movies and you’re seeing all of these quintessential, beautiful happy-ending versions of the holidays. It can be this really stark contrast with what we find ourselves experiencing today.

I wanted to reach out and say, if you are having a complicated Christmas, that you are not alone. That despite what people are putting on social media about what an incredible time they’re having over the holidays, the reality is that so many people are having a very complicated version of the holidays. For some people, it just feels dark and sad and scary and lonely. 

For other people, it feels like it’s this weird mixture of things—you know, they’re having a lot of joy in their lives right now with some people, but maybe there’s someone really important missing. Maybe there’s something going on internally that you feel like even though everyone is having a wonderful time around you, and even though you may not be voicing it to the people around you, there’s something for you internally that feels broken.

And if that’s the case, I want to reassure you that you are in good company—that there is a wonderful club of people who are all themselves experiencing their version of a complicated Christmas. And they may not be posting it online and it may even be the very same people who are posting the most positive things online about the day they’re having. But I assure you, you’re in wonderful company.

This is an invitation to not feel alone, but instead feel in that company like, “Wow, there are so many people in life who must be experiencing their version of this right now. And if that’s true, then I get to decide what kind of energy I want to represent in that club of people who are all having their version of a complicated Christmas.”

This isn’t a message of gratitude, of saying, “Even though you’ve got it hard right now, look at how much you have!” And it’s not even a message of hope, of saying, “Even though this is where you are right now, think of how much better it will be in the future!” Some things will be better and some things will never be the same.

There will be some aspects of our life that may never change back to the way we want them, or there might be someone you lost in your life that you can’t get back. There may be a message of hope in that you’ll feel better one day, but life to an extent is always going to be complicated. And rather than live in a place of hope for the future, one of the things we can do is lean into a radical acceptance of the way things are right now, and that life is the way it is: 

“There is something that in my ideal world would be different, but what I get to do today is I get to decide whether I am going to be the author of magic or a seeker of magic.”

Seekers of magic wait for things to change. They wait for the conditions of their life to be right/perfect before they decide to bring a certain energy.

Authors of magic decide to create magic wherever they are, without that family member present, without that relationship in their life anymore, or with whatever problems they’re facing in their life right now. Authors of magic decide to create magic where they are.

And there are so many ways to create magic. If we’re completely on our own this Christmas, maybe we use it as a time to create something that brings a little joy into our own lives, or to treat ourselves a different way than we were going to treat ourselves today. Instead of beating ourselves up, we are as compassionate as possible to ourselves today. 

Or maybe we create magic by giving that compassion to somebody else. Maybe the pain you’re in could be an invitation to connect with somebody else who’s experiencing a similar pain but doesn’t have the strength you do in being able to reach out. So even though you’re experiencing the same pain, you’re the person who’s got the courage or the strength to actually reach out and connect—to make someone’s day a little better.

I want you to know that whatever kind of Christmas you’re having, whatever kind of holidays you’re having, you’re not alone. There are people out there who are having the same experience. There are people out there who need your light and need your energy and need your magic, because they’re not strong enough to be able to give it to themselves or to find it in life right now. And I hope that instead of wishing for it to be a different way today, you just make a decision to say, “With whatever situation I’m in right now, what’s my own modest little work of art that I could create today? What’s my own modest way of injecting magic into my day?”

I wish you a very Merry Christmas, a beautiful time over the holidays, and a Happy New Year. But this is me just reaching out and making sure that you know I see you and that we’ll be all right. And we’re going to start the year beautifully next year together.