We all have our holidays traditions, but are yours giving you joy and filling your heart? Following holiday traditions doesn’t mean driving ourselves into the ground with so many to-dos just to check off the boxes of all the things that should get done during the holiday season. I think it’s time to rethink all the extra things we do just for the sake of doing them… Uplevel your holidays with enriching traditions.
But can we even tell the difference between just holidays to-dos and meaningful traditions we value?
If the task or plan feels heavy, burdensome, tedious, or overwhelming, that’s a pretty good sign that it no longer resonates with you, or possibly never did. It can also mean you might be going about it an outdated way, or that there are wounds and patterns that are getting triggered…
Traditions and rituals promote the identity of the couple and the family and serve to transfer values and meaning to the next generation.
If your holidays typically leave you feeling spent, triggered and all out of sorts, that’s a good indication that the way you go about the holidays is not serving you.
Here are some examples of thing I’ve come across that you might relate to:
Spending hours hunting deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and thereafter
Buying things just because they are a good deal
Getting distracted or triggered by all the hoopla of the sales and deals
Going beyond means to buy gifts and putting spending on credit cards that already carry balances
Going to a multitude of parties, outings, and other gatherings spreading ourselves thin
Overindulging in food and drink and other substances
Letting go of self-care and mindfulness practices because the daily routine changed
Decorating and gifting with candy and other overly processed consumables
Doing holiday cards, albums, calendars, mugs, pillows, and the like with photos of the children
Giving chotskies for the sake of giving something
Participating in multiple drives and volunteer opportunities
Cooking and baking, or catering, as if for an army and having most of it go to waste
Staying up till hours of the night cooking or wrapping presents
Having the holidays revolve around gift giving
Having celebrations revolve around alcohol/substances consumption and monitoring
Having the ritual of going back to the stores to do returns the day after Christmas
The theme here is in overdoing, overindulging, and overall excess- all usually at our, others, and the planet’s expense in one form or another…
I challenge you to review all your holiday to-dos, traditions, and rituals for what is enriching, meaningful and joyful about them. How are they encouraging and promoting your values? And, to identify if they are just a bunch of checkmarks on your list or excessive.
Decide now how you’d like the rest of the holiday season to go. What do you need to tweak in your approach to have truly replenishing and rejoicing holidays.
APPLICATION: Invite your partner and family members to do a Holidays Review…
~ Review your to-dos, traditions and rituals for their tediousness and heaviness or enrichment and joyfulness quotient ~ Identify if your approach is capturing and reflecting your true values (not what you value because of a pattern or defense mechanism and as a form of compensation…) ~ Decide what you will no longer do and take an action toward eliminating that as necessary ~ Decide what might be missing to add spark, meaning and joy and take an action toward integrating more richness flowing from your values ~ You’ll know you are on the right track as you feel delighted and joyful as you make progress towards designing and planning your holiday celebrations
Let the focus these holidays be on genuine and generous giving, not on checkmark giving…
Let the season be truly magical by entwining the essence of the holidays with the essence of you and yours.
Enjoy (be) the holidays, don’t do the holidays…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Although you might appreciate your partner, do you really appreciate them? Or do you appreciate them when they do things for you and when they conform to expectations… Is your appreciation based on their doing and superficial qualities, or their personal characteristics and essence… How much do you appreciate your partner?
Depending on the length, status, and quality of your relationship, you might have varying degrees of appreciation on conditions and appreciation for its own sake…
There is nothing wrong with appreciations on conditions, we do want to appreciate everything our partner contributes to our life.
It’s interesting that some partners refuse to appreciate or acknowledge their partner’s contributions. They believe what is being contributed are things that should be contributed as being part of a relationship…
These are the same partners that don’t appreciate their partner’s complementary characteristics, preferences, tastes and the like…
And these are the partners that always have complaints about their partner and their relationship. They focus on what didn’t get done, on what went wrong, on how their partner didn’t meet their needs, on how their partner wasn’t their best self…
It is a lot of work to be in this kind of relationship. There is little grace for imperfections, mistakes, limited bandwidth, wobbly moods, low energy, etc.
The interactions are very ego and fear based. The partners are focused primarily on their side of the equation and what they get… By the way, this is the second stage of relationships, the power struggle…
But imagine that you feel strong enough within yourself, consistently take care of yourself, and consistently address the scripts and programs that come up…
And imagine that as a result, you don’t filter your experiences with your partner through your fear lens, your scripts, and your needs… That you are able to see your partner for who they are and not what they do for you…
Then, what would you see? Wouldn’t you see an amazing human being, who is choosing to share their journey with you, and share themselves the best they can…
Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum, the main question still remains- How much do you appreciate your partner? Whether you tend to have appreciation on conditions or appreciations for their own sake, how much do you let your partner in on this?
Does your partner know what you appreciate they do and who they are? How do they know? Do you tell them? Do you tell them in real time? Do you make special time to share this with them, to do appreciations?
We start all our sessions with Appreciations, and we encourage our couples to do appreciations on their own- to have Appreciation Time. These never get old and it’s a wonderful way to nurture your relationship.
An appreciative heart is an abundant and expanded heart…
APPLICATION: Share the concept of Appreciation Time with your partner
~ If you don’t already have Appreciation Time in your relationship, discuss creating space for this to relish each other
~ If you already have Appreciation Time in your relationship, discuss what you love about this practice and ways of enhancing it…
Our Partner is one of the most important people in our life, wouldn’t it stand to reason to fully understand why and to let them know why we appreciate them so…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Stop withholding when you have an issue with your partner. You can still be nice… Unfortunately, when we are upset with our partner, we tend to closedown shop. We are no longer open for business. And this is not just about being intimate.
We take this to the next level. We lose our courtesy, we can’t appreciate, we get mean, and we can even become uncaring, underhanded, and spiteful. When the opposite is required to sustain a radiant and successful relationship… Being super generous…
I’m sure you can identify with the above. There is actually a spectrum of this experience. Sometimes when we are upset, we might even want to ditch the relationship…
I want to make a distinction about being upset and annoyed with our partner and being triggered.
Things might bother us, we might not agree with something, we might be disappointed, we might be put out or inconvenienced, and the like – such is being in relationship.
But when we get triggered, different filters come on… We forget who we are, we forget who our partner is, we forget the moment and we are thrown into an abyss of pain…
~ It’s like we got kicked in the chest and we can’t breathe… ~ It’s like we are thrown off a cliff and are free falling…
Our very survival feels threatened at some level…
When we are triggered we forget the current year, we forget we are not interacting with our caretakers from growing up, we forget we are radiant energetic beings, that we are awesome, that we have everything we need inside ourselves, and that everything is OK…
We get thrown into our little story of our little/lower self with our little life where everything is scary…
So, it makes complete sense that it would be very challenging to care about our partner’s feelings and their needs when our survival feels threatened… We can’t possible concern ourselves with being nice when we are in that state…
This requires lots of self-love, compassion, understanding and grace…
But this is not what I’m talking about here…
~ I’m talking about our regular upset and annoyance that we can easily address. ~ I’m talking about arguing for argument’s sake. ~ I’m talking about making points out of principle. ~ I’m talking about proving yourself right and your partner wrong… ~ I’m talking about trying to win over your partner. ~ I’m talking about doing relationship math, keeping score cards and doing tit-for-tats… ~ I’m talking about holding our ground just because we think it’s our boundary. ~ I’m talking about operating from our lower self because we are too lazy to clean up the moment!
This is not way to create our amazing relationship. What’s the point in all that?
How about we embrace the higher road, align with our higher self, and operate from generosity instead? When we are triggered, we are not ourselves – this requires special attention. But when we are just upset or annoyed, we can do a lot better!
And please know that I know that even this request might be too much for you. If you are finding that you are struggling, and it feels impossible to be generous because you are too depleted, then that’s the place to address. Focus on repleting yourself first.
Have a hooky day, a self-care day, a slower day. Be gentle, be compassionate. Give yourself lots of love…
Be super generous with yourself, and then with your partner….
APPLICATION: Maybe it’s time to rethink generosity… Maybe it’s time to reconsider the Law of Reciprocity…
~ How about we give just to give ~ How about we give with gusto ~ How about we concern ourselves with giving vs what we get ~ How about we actually receive what we are giving… ~ How about we appreciate what we get…
Gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation, giving and receiving are not as simple as they seem. Some have to be more intentional about these to enrich their relationship, and their lives…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Things are changing rapidly nowadays in this almost Covid-19 post pandemic, or near endemic, world. We are entering a new phase where we are creating the Next Normal… I still prefer the term Better Normal over New Normal and now the Next Normal… Regardless, this is the time to move beyond what was into what could be…
We’ve experienced a lot of upheaval in the past 2 plus years, and as we choose where we go from here we have to let go of the old to fully embrace the new possibilities. Who we were pre-pandemic is at this point beyond outdated. For us to thrive we need to let go of the old first… Here is to embracing a letting go practice…
As most institutions are getting deconstructed, and we’ll see a lot more of this as we go, the key is to let go with ease, not to fight it…
And this applies to everything… The old ways of doing things are just going away… The hustle and the grind, the rules, the structures, the systems, the forcing and the white-knuckling… We are becoming a much more fluid society and world, to be embraced with more ease and grace. The more we resist this the more we’ll suffer, completely unnecessarily. The more we resist it, the more the suffering will persist…
The letting go has to happen at every level… From the way we think, to our beliefs, to our emotions, to our behaviors, habits and tactics. We are amid a big old deconstruction… And the more we hang on to wanting things like the used to be, or try to apply the old rules to the new world, the more we’ll feel out of sync, uncomfortable, and unhappy…
It’s exhausting to go against the grain, and if we are not aware of the new grain and keep going against it, we are in for a rude awakening…
Just last week I wrote about reparenting yourself, self-fathering yourself, by giving yourself more structure and systems to provide the security you need… The key is not to pursue this with a heavy hand and a suffocating approach – structure and systems don’t have to be rigid… I think that this is where we are going as a society and what better place to start than at home…
So, what does this mean on the practical and for our daily lives? This means getting rid of and letting go of anything that no longer serves you. Letting go of anything that doesn’t feel good, give you joy, and support you, your relationship, and the life you want to create.
This means clearing, cleaning and cleansing…
This includes:
What we do first thing when we get up in the morning, letting go of jumping into the day without connecting to ourselves first (energy/spiritual)
Deciding how we want to feel and embracing those feelings, letting go of anger, resentment, shame, guilt, blame, anxiety, worry, sadness and grief (feelings/emotional)
How we choose to look at our life, the world and those in it, letting go of judgement, separatism and polarization (thinking/intellectual)
Choosing what we’ll focus on and setting up the day to flow, letting go of numbing, controlling and forcing (habits/behavioral)
Simplifying everything and going with the flow, letting go of complexity and elaborateness (plans/strategic)
This is applicable to everything! From your daily routine, to your approach to food, to your health and wellness, to your connection with your partner, to your intimacy with your partner, to your parenting, to your finances, to your home décor, to your career plans, to the services you provide, to what kind of life you want…
Once you put on this lens and see the new reality, the possibilities, you can’t unsee it. Once you taste of it, you can’t untaste it. Once you wake up, you can’t unawake…
You can get super creative with where you apply this in your life… You can literally apply this to everything… You can apply this to how you exercise, to how you work, and even to how you deal with an affair or infidelity in your relationship…
We make life too difficult. We make our relationship too difficult. We make feeling well and happy too difficult. How about we start letting go of the old ways, of working super hard for everything, of making everything so challenging, of white-knuckling our life?
How about we start letting go of forcing things and embrace the beauty that our experience can actually be if only we get out of our own way? How about we start letting go of all the superfluous and all the noise and all the shame and pain?
How about we just embrace life at every moment with whatever shows up and go from there…
How about taking on a 30-Day Challenge to help you clear, to let go, to deconstruct, to reprogram, to change your egoic patterns, get out of your own way…
1 ~ Choose your approach – A morning letting go meditation, a 30-Day Challenge, clearing your commitments and calendar, decluttering your home, etc.
2 ~ Implement your approach – Embrace your tactic with gusto, play full out with acceptance, compassion and ease…
Enjoy!!!
A Letting Go Practice can easily be woven into you lifestyle and daily routine… Embrace this for creating more spaciousness, opportunities, flow and joy in your relationship and your life…
Here is to the best Summer Upleveling™ yet!
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life – Designing and implementing your personalized self-love practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat –Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply and creating the relationship you desire
~ Feeling Stuck and Spring Cleaning is NOT Cutting it – Deconstructing and reconstructing yourself to unleash the radiance within
~ Create an Epic Love Affair with Your Partner –Addressing the struggle and upleveling your relationship to create your epic love affair
~ Get Unstuck with Self ReParenting –Addressing inner child work to transmute your recurring patterns
~ Thriving After Infidelity™ – Stop the torture that comes from discovery, get your new footing, and transform your relationship so that’s better than ever before…
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
We are working on changing patterns… We can tackle this from many different angles as it’s obvious from the topics of our blog posts this year… I love making Summer a time for concentrated focus on personal growth, as we have a little more leisure time to utilize for this endeavor.
As Father’s Day is this weekend, let’s play a bit more with the concept of reparenting ourselves for reprogramming and changing patterns… Why not? Do less and make more changes with self-fathering… Here is wishing all Fathers a terrific weekend, and thank you for being our rock star.
The male and fathering components of our caregiving and parenting was meant to have given us security, safety, dependability, stability, consistency, strength, discipline, motivation… But because we were raised with imperfect caretaking, we didn’t get everything we needed… This shows up in our lives today, when we have a difficult time trusting, letting go, allowing, and such.
We might show up as controlling, rigid, micromanaging to make sure we get what we need or want. By the same token, we might have a challenging time being disciplined, motivated, productive…
When we struggle with these defenses and integrating these male energy characteristics, it is challenging to create the relationship and life we want…
This is a tricky topic because as we live in a world of doing, which is more male energy, it is difficult to differentiate between the regular doing and cultivating the male energy that will serve us in creating what we want.
Therefore, I invite you to an integrative approach to self-fathering, to embracing this male energy and male characteristics without all the doing that’s not doing much in our lives.
Today, I’d like to us to cultivate and integrate this male energy for the self-fathering by shifting from focusing on our external structuring and doing, to an internal version… Instead of creating by doing, managing our time and the like, I’m offering to create security and dependability from within ourselves.
I’m offering to bypass the usual self-disciplining through our external environment to go inwards and connect with ourselves for that trust, stability, and strength… By shifting from the doing to being, this becomes an integrative process as we are drawing on the female energy as well… This makes for a more powerful approach in that we are fully tapping into all of ourselves.
In that connection, we ground ourselves providing the stability and security… In connection we also feel safe and therefore trust… So, in approaching this self-fathering not by setting schedules and other self-discipline tactics but by getting grounded we create the foundation that provides all the benefits of being fathered…
This different integrative approach helps us in our self-reparenting in a more wholistic form that reverberates through our being… As we are grounded, stable, secure, and safe we feel strong, empowered, and motivated to attempt the changes we want. We don’t have to white-knuckle or force anything- we don’t have to muscle it to the ground.
We can have a deeper trust that things flow and work out for us better than we can ever imagine. A deeper trust is born that has our back. From here anything is possible. We can now pursue our desires with gusto as we won’t be stifling them with our control and strong hold.
APPLICATION: Create a very simple self-fathering practice that integrates and cultivates your male energy characteristics to generate security, stability, safety, and trust…
1 ~ Do a mindfulness practice for visioning, purposing, contributing and such
2 ~ Take an inspired action
Let’s embrace self-connection as an approach to self-fathering, for generating security, safety, and trust. Let’s embrace less but more inspired doing for creating the relationship and life we desire…
Here is to the best Summer Upleveling™ yet!
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life – Designing and implementing your personalized self-love practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply and creating the relationship you desire
~ Feeling Stuck and Spring Cleaning is NOT Cutting it – Deconstructing and reconstructing yourself to unleash the radiance within
~ Create an Epic Love Affair with Your Partner – Addressing the struggle and upleveling your relationship to create your epic love affair
~ Get Unstuck with Self ReParenting – Addressing inner child work to transmute your recurring patterns
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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