CULTIVATING A JOYOUS CHRISTMAS SEASON

3 tips for making your Christmas season joyous: 1. Relax your expectations 2. Focus on the ones you love 3. Remember to be grateful

CULTIVATING A JOYOUS CHRISTMAS SEASON

My Word of the Year for 2021 was "Cultivate" and it feels good to come full circle with some tips for cultivating a joyous Christmas/New Year. This is my last post for 2021 and to be honest, I'm pretty okay with that. I'm ready to have a break and focus my attention on Christmas and family - because family is what makes Christmas even more special. 

For those of us who celebrate Christmas as a reminder of the birth of Jesus, it's a time to reflect and to be grateful, and it's also a time to celebrate and to enjoy each other's company while we eat, listen to Christmas carols, share gifts, and generally bask in some Christmas joy.

I thought today I'd share three suggestions for helping to make it a joyous Christmas season...

WHAT DOES SLOW AND UNBUSY LIVING REALLY LOOK LIKE?

Slow living isn't about lying around contemplating your navel all day, it's about finding balance and living life at a pace that flows.

WHAT IS SLOW / UNBUSY LIVING?

Some of my most popular posts have been about choosing to be Unbusy now that I'm in the second half of life. Retirement gave me even more opportunities to slow down the pace of how I was living each day and to be more intentional about how I use my time. I've become a huge advocate of the Slow Living and Unbusy movements, but what does it really look like in my actual day to day living?

WHOLEHEARTED LIVING - CULTIVATING AN EXPAT LIFE IN EUROPE

One woman's story of leaving the USA to settle in Ecuador and then moving further to settle in Europe where she is buying and renovating an apartment.

INTRO

Today I have the last guest in my series on Cultivating Wholehearted Living - thriving in the second half of life. Christina is an American expat living in Europe. Today she's sharing her story about how this came about and the lessons she learned along the way. Christina has a youtube channel where she posts updates on the renovation of her lovely unit in Chiatura, Georgia and it's fascinating watching the process. 

I'll hand it over to Christina from here....