Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Creativity and Joy Unleashed
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Have you ever considered that Christmas, in all its festive glory, is actually a mental construction? Let's unwrap this thought together in a cozy session of Coffee with Hilary and Les. We discuss how this season of joy can inadvertently become a time of stress and how we can redesign our celebrations with a sprinkle of creativity and a generous dash of joy. We challenge you to step outside the box of traditional celebrations and create your very own festive experience that elevates Christmas into a daily celebration of creativity and joy.
In the spirit of the season, we share our personal journey of reimagining Christmas ornaments - those little nuggets of joy that adorn our homes during the holidays. We invite you to break free from past expectations and welcome inspiration into your holiday. Whether it's the family Christmas tree or a festive centerpiece, we encourage you to find joy in the very act of creation. So, pour yourself a cup of coffee, get cozy with us as we discuss the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and let's make this Christmas a global celebration of creativity and joy, regardless of where you are in the world.
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Welcome and thank you for joining us for Coffee with Hillary and Les. Brought to you by the State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Center, located in the heart of the core of the lakes, this is our almost daily community podcast about the mind and how we all might change it in the most simple and helpful ways. Every day we sit staring at the lake and sipping our coffee, chatting about hypnosis and how to make those meaningful adjustments to our state of mind, Because nothing's more important than your state of mind.
Speaker 1:We are on the line on this beautiful morning it is beautiful, it is beautiful, it's.
Speaker 2:It is winter wonderland, fun. It is so cold that it's frozen right across the lake. There is this puzzling, intriguing streak that runs straight across in front of our waterfront that basically has pushed the snow off the ice in a perfectly straight line, going from right to left and left to right. So I'm going out there to check out what that is, because I can't figure it out from here. Maybe a beaver with a fat belly or something I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw the beaver on the shoreline the other day, so I feel like that might be what it is.
Speaker 2:But as I was getting my coffee, this incredible muskrat would run three or four steps and then slide on its belly. And then run three or four steps and slide on its belly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's super cute.
Speaker 2:And that's just like that's just winter fun that is. That's somebody who knows how to have fun no matter what the weather is. Yeah, so it's beautiful here. It's just days before Christmas, now what is it?
Speaker 1:December 14. Yes, my god.
Speaker 2:11 days before Christmas. We've held off on doing our third Christmas, our third Christmas podcast, ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It's all sort of part of a theme I guess you know, and that is that we and it's sometimes hard to say but we say it anyway you know, we sort of create our own suffering a lot of the time in the way we think of things and the way things appear to us, and I guess what we're about is just doing everything we can to help ourselves and help others try to overcome that tendency, that normal human way of looking at things. It just comes to us because so many people talk to us about, you know, the stresses and the concerns they have as Christmas approaches.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we just thought it was, you know, good to talk about Christmas as a mental construction, how it's a search to recreate peak experiences from the past that you know we have the ability to engage in the moment and create now and, I guess, for the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I think it's about embracing your creativity into the future, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Les asked me this morning what do you have in mind for this? And I said embracing creativity. And he's like oh, that's what I have written down. I swear I didn't steal it, I did not look.
Speaker 2:Those are these few moments where we feel okay, we're inspired by the right forces, we have the same kinds of ideas on the topic. Anyway, why don't you expand on what you mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think embracing creativity is just really realizing that I don't know if it's the right phrase or terminology, but the human condition is to be creative. You know, we didn't get this far in human history by not being creative and coming up with new things and moving forward with all kinds of things like farming and technology and all the things that make up life really.
Speaker 2:We are natural problem solvers.
Speaker 1:We are tool makers.
Speaker 2:We are these incredibly ingenious beings that live in this incredible technologically advanced society, and that's just a testament to who we really are. It's not just on high levels, with engineers and designers and scientists. It's really on a human level. I don't think anybody has been left out of the ability to come up with a new idea or a new scheme or something wonderful. It's probably the most important characteristic that we carry in this relatively difficult world, where the snow will fall and things will get cold and we got to figure out what to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah and I think the first thing to embrace is that there is nothing. Look around you. There is absolutely nothing on this planet. That didn't start out as an idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, there is a human creativity. There is nothing in the human sphere that didn't start as an idea, and that's the place to cultivate, that's the garden to take really good care of.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah. So when it comes to thinking about the future, you know the ghost of Christmas to come. Just imagining that in a creative sense. What might you do that's new or different, and looking at it in a new light for yourself.
Speaker 2:Might be as simple as new music or new foods or new schedules or new ways of gathering together, but can also be way out there. Christmas can be whatever you want it to be, and again I mean Christmas to me any kind of human celebration that has a lot of traditional elements to it. Tradition has its value, but maybe sometimes it's overvalued because we are constantly changing beasts, we are constantly growing and evolving. I mean, it's really all we are. So choices come from our ability to imagine new possibilities, and although Christmas tends to be a time where we look backwards and we try to repeat, you know Christmas is. You know I think of the. I used to watch the Scrooge movie all the time and then I stopped.
Speaker 1:The scary one, or the yeah the scary one, because I liked it.
Speaker 2:But anyway, you know it was At the end. You know Scrooge the words are something to the effect of you know Scrooge made Christmas every day from now on. You know, not just Christmas season was it celebrated, it was for him every day. And that's, I think, where your creativity should go. If Christmas starts to become a symbol of creativity, you know, then I think that that can be every day, that can be every event, that can be every kind of thing that you might otherwise feel trapped within tradition, trapped within old ways. You can break out of that. It's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think of these social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram and the offerings of creativity that they have around this time of year especially right. I just saw something where you bake cinnamon rolls, but they're not rolls, it's in like the form of a star and they break it down and show you how to make it, and I just think that's fun and it's new and it's something that you can embrace if you want to.
Speaker 2:And I'm sitting hoping and waiting for you to do it.
Speaker 1:I send it to your sister Moon.
Speaker 2:I thought you sent it to me because you were going to make it for me. I'll try, oh boy see the power of a podcast gets people to step up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I guess if I wanted to offer a reframe for today, you know, I think it's important to understand that your power, your ability to feel joy and happiness, does not depend on anything outside you.
Speaker 2:It does not depend on what you do or what you have or even who is there. Right, it is completely within your power to be creative from that deep sense of joy. Right, the power to create joy is inside you and you don't need something or someone else to do that for you. And if that was something you take into every day, if that idea can be something you can embrace every day, or even just once in a while when you think of it, because I know it's hard to break out of all of our routines Every routine is hard, every habit is a hard thing to break out of, not the least of which is sort of the thinking that goes behind all of that. But if you were to just embrace the idea that you are a creative, creative spirit and you have the power to create joy and happiness from within you, moment by moment, day by day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And what would that look like? You know, for each and every one of you listening, that might be something new, it might be something old, that there's a new twist on it, you know, discovering somebody else's old things, Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:You know we were doing the Christmas decorations and we're now trying to embrace these ideas. So there's a lot of Christmas decorations we have. That remained in the box.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because they don't represent current joy and happiness. But there's some really good ones in there and ones I've really liked over the time. And my son just got himself a new home. He and his wife have just moved into a new home and they put up their first Christmas tree and I found some of these ornaments that I really love that don't fit into what we're doing now and I took them down to them and my new daughter-in-law is thrilled she's having just a blast Sentence pictures and everything. Love what she's creating. And the new ornaments on the tree, which are really old ornaments that were new ornaments at one point. I remember getting them some of them as a gift from my sister when I moved, and embracing newness and Christmas then.
Speaker 2:So, maybe some of your old stuff can be passed along to somebody else who can make it new for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think about that. I've actually taken a couple clients through this very thing, where, because clients come to me at this time of year and we work on Christmas stuff, that's the thing that they want to work on, which is really interesting and normal. I guess you know, and a few of them, and myself included, have gotten attached to these ornaments that represent a time in their life. Maybe they've been boxed away for a while and they just think about passing them on. They have a hard time with that.
Speaker 1:There's a bit of anxiety about that, and if you struggle with that, what I've been helping people through is reframing the idea of a Christmas ornament. As you know, imagine a Christmas ornament having its own life, right, imagine it as a I know it's kind of weird, but like its own, being its own life cycle, and that Christmas ornament has many, let's say, memories with you and you have memories with it and passing it on to a family member, passing it on to a mission or, you know, a salient, so someone who maybe would like a Christmas ornament and can't afford a Christmas ornament and now has the ability to carry on your Christmas ornament's life cycle and create new memories with it, and that seems to be working really well for people because they start to imagine it as that, you know that giving that gratitude and giving at the same time and letting that ornament go in a non-anxiety way, where they can imagine that ornament giving life and happiness to other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of neat to think about what's possible, and that's really the core of this creativity. So I think one of the most important things to do this Christmas is to pause and just enjoy. I mean, while we're anticipating the next thing, while we're worried about making the next thing right, if we're worried about what's in the oven and you know how we're going to get those last items from the store and make sure we have the right kind of brown sugar for this kind of thing that we make, and making sure we have this right bottle of wine because it's the one that we liked so much three years ago. And you know, while we're stressing about those things, trying to pull everything together, you know, in those processes, just try to remember those feelings of love that you're doing it from a place of love, a place of giving, a place of caring of others. And then, when you're done all that, just sit down and appreciate for a moment.
Speaker 2:I think the present moment gets lost a lot at Christmas. The present moment and I don't mean presents as in gifts, but I hope Hillary remembers I mean present as in the present moment, being in that moment. You know, if you put all that time into putting up Christmas decorations, sit back and appreciate them and enjoy them, and maybe ideas for future Christmas decorations will come to you. I mean, this is a when we think of the ghost of Christmas present. We're just being creative, we're just trying new things and when new things come to you, write them down, take pictures of things you like, make lists of things for next year. But mostly remember that the power of creativity never goes away. It's inside you. It's always there waiting for you, and that creativity is what will create your joy. And that's inside you, it's not outside you, it's not for somebody else, it's not for about something. Enjoy that. You are limitlessly filled with love and creativity and you can spread that around all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Well, that's all I had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:Such a big idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel like you know, when we come up with these big ideas, the details seem to be kind of secondary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how to get started being creative? Maybe just be open to new things, right. When you're going about your day, allow things into your mind that you know you might look at something and be inspired. You might go looking for something and be inspired. You might be out shopping and something inspires you. Right, just be open to inspiration and not, you know, soul focused on expecting the same from last year and the year before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, you know.
Speaker 1:Merry.
Speaker 2:Christmas to our friends and places all around the world. We're really enjoying seeing all the places where people are listening to us, from, yeah, asia and all around North America and through Europe. There's a place in.
Speaker 1:Iowa.
Speaker 2:Iowa. What's the name of that place? Can you remember?
Speaker 1:I'm racking my brain right now. I really want to shout out to them because they've listened to every single podcast, almost yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I pulled up the list. So, to our friends in Council Bluffs, iowa, merry Christmas. To our friends in Stevenage, hurtfurshire, over there in the UK, merry Christmas. To our friends in Las Vegas, nevada, merry Christmas in Townsend, georgia. In Gatineau, thunder Bay, minneapolis, over in Munster, north Rhine Westphalia, germany. Merry Christmas, dublin. Merry Christmas. Our friends in Phoenix, arizona, merry Christmas In Kennesaw, georgia, merry Christmas. And Selwyn, ontario, merry Christmas In Prague. Merry Christmas In Pontepool, merry Christmas and I can't even pronounce this one Recau Recavoresal In Antwerp, merry Christmas. Yeah, it feels wonderful to be able to speak to you all and for those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, happy New Year. There's a whole new, fresh year coming ahead. It's a nice time to turn the page and give up some things that aren't serving us and try to create things that might serve us and do new things, and maybe you can take your creativity into the new year.
Speaker 1:Mmm-hmm. Alright, that was a lovely one. We'll see you later. We'll be in the notes below. While you are there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey, meeting with Hillary or Les, to learn more about what hypnosis is and how you might use it to make your life what you want it to be? Bye for now. Talk to you tomorrow.
