The Forgotten Opportunity of Christmas

Forget 2025, Be Here First

“Wherever you are, be all there.” — Jim Elliot

Dear friends,

For the last weeks, I’ve been bombarded by 2025 motivational videos.

• “It’s Now or Never!”

• “10 Rules to Transform Your Life in 2025”

• “Focus Only on Yourself in 2025”

I can’t remember seeing one video about Christmas. It isn’t even an afterthought; it’s a hindrance.

It exemplifies the modern.

We live only in our potential future.

It incapacitates our capacity to be in the present and nullifies how to build a deeper relationship with the moment.

If we never allow the past to catch up with us, we never arrive.

Beyond religion, this is what Christmas means for me:

Stopping.

Today I share 5 ways I unplug from our loopy culture — and ready myself to give over to what matters.

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Let Your Year Catch Up

You need to arrive where you are before you can travel to where you want to be.
There’s a story in each moment.
What’s this one saying?
Before you dive into new goals; make a space.
In it, digest where you’ve been.
Let the future wait.
It’s coming anyway.
Rush into it and you will rush into the wrong future.
See the future — by first forgetting about it.
That takes a special type of courage.
To let go.
To allow yourself what life was asking of you in the first place:
To live.
Take a moment to feel gratitude for how far you’ve come.
Dam, ain’t that some road behind you?
Let this year settle.
There will be a time to move on.

Make a Vow

Before committing to any resolutions for 2025, make a deeper vow to yourself.
One that can underpin any resolutions you make.
Make it deeper than any outcome.
What is so important to you that you will seek to live it, irrespective of the vagaries of the world?
When I was at my most broken a friend said to me:
"Jimbo, all you can do is try to become your best self.”
For me that aspiration is so much more important than my successes or failures.
By trying to do that, gently, you learn what living is.
Vow to become your best self.
Do not tie it to any resolution yet, just sit within the promise.

There is Great Peace in Forgiveness

Each of us has a unique family.
Even within the same family, we can have utterly different experiences of it.
That’s one reason we fight on festive occasions.
Why can’t you see what you experienced was so different to my own?
Sometimes, there is a gulf between us.
But we can bridge it with understanding.
Holy shit, that’s how it was for you?
Many of us carry old experiences like albatrosses.
How can you move on from things that were never acknowledged — even by yourself.
There is no quick fix with our lives, or with our families.
That challenge is our unique adventure.
But many years ago, an older man said something which helped me so much:
"There is a great peace that comes with forgiveness”.
As you meet the challenge of your own life, try to find something to forgive in yourself and in others.
Great peace comes with it.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”
Lewis B. Smedes

Love is Presence

If there is one thing I’ve learnt in my life, it is that love is presence.
I advised against rushing to 2025 because focusing too far ahead keeps you from being present.
If you really want to give a gift this Christmas, give someone the gift of being present. Listen to them.
And in doing so, you may find that they begin to listen too.
There’s something about giving attention that not only invites the other person in, but also helps the relationship grow.
You won’t always be as present as you would like —
But you can aim for it.
In doing so, it will develop.
Relationships too.

“The relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.”
— Robert Holden

One Gentle Preparation for the Year Ahead

When it comes to the subject of the year ahead:
Give yourself a little space just to listen to your gentle dreaming.
The reason not to obsess over the future is not just to be present —
But to find out your purpose.
The paradox with lists, plans and resolutions is that they busy us.
The are the defence that stops us listening.
Why not see where you mind takes you of its own accord?
What happens in the space itself?
You very well may find that it lands on one thing.
What is it?
The biggest gift you can give yourself for the year ahead is to let it surface, acknowledge it, and then plant the seed.
After Christmas, come back, set goals, plan, and help it germinate.
But for now, allow your purpose to find you, rather than chasing it.

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Happy Christmas dear friends.
Your support means more than you can possibly know.
Love, Jim

p.s below a bit of fun!

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Musician Takes a Stand for Christmas 🎅

New YouTube Video!

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