2023–2024 Holiday Blues Busters Series Overview & Registration
How to survive the holidays with less stress.
Every year from November through February, Soul University offers a program called Holiday Blues Busters. It’s designed to help you navigate the holidays with far less stress, not only during the holidays but every day. Each week we have a different topic and we dive deep into that topic.
Each class starts with listening to a recorded lecture. Registered members dive deep into content on Monday evenings at 8 p.m. Eastern. This class is designed to help you:
- discover a little bit more about who you are
- how to navigate the holidays with far less doubt, guilt, shame, and worry, as well as every day after that.
We look forward to seeing you in class.
November is the perfect time to start preparing ourselves for the upcoming holidays. Why? Starting in November people begin to recognize that — “Oh! — Here comes the holidays!”
During the holiday season, people commonly do way too much with often way too little. And when it comes to our personal sense of worth, we have a tendency to jeopardize our worth on many different levels. For example? Overspending during the holidays. Then there’s the other common issue: overeating. Studies show that people often gain 10 pounds over the holiday season. Ten pounds is not that big of a deal providing you shed those pounds as soon as possible.
Now it’s time to consider how you’re going to navigate the holiday season. What might you do to ensure that you enjoy yourself, but not at the cost of regret. Or guilt. Or doubt. Or shame. Or worry throughout the holidays. That’s really our goal for the Holiday Blues Buster Series. Learn tools to reduce, potentially end doubt, guilt, shame or worry. Check out what we have in store for you over this upcoming holiday season.
What we cover will last you for a lifetime. We’ll start this overview with a question. During the holidays, what do you do — that you really honestly wish you didn’t have to do? For example, do you end up spending way too much on things you wish you wouldn’t have spent your time? Spent your energy. Your money. Think about this question for the next few minutes as we run through our series overview.
Week one we tackle Calendar Games! We start with updating, upgrading your time management skills. Explore some really concrete, easy ways for you to do a better job at managing your time so that you get enough rest. Get the things you need to get done — done. As we begin to look at improving how you use your time you’ll learn some very important things about yourself. Use what you learn to upgrade your relationship with time.
Next? Week two! Time to look at traditions, old and new. We’ll explore the difference between what is a ritual or a habit, and a tradition. As we update our awareness on these differences we’ll discover how traditions help or hinder us in many ways. Time to really grapple with something that you don’t normally deal with all that often, and that is a conscious decision on what is it that you do as a ritual, a tradition or a habit. Three different creatures here. Make sure you listen to week two’s content to see more clearly than ever before how ritual, tradition and habits, how those things are all different.
Week number three? Take a look at how to better balance your giving with receiving. How’s that balance working for you? Do you love giving yet shy away from receiving? Why is this balance so important? Can you give more than you can receive? No. Why? Can you give away something you don’t have?
How do we practice balance? Take a breath. You breathe in. You breath out. Can you breathe out more than you breathe in? No.
Next in line? Week four. Calls, cards, emails OH My! Time to explore ways to bump up your communication skills. During the chaos of the holidays what do you do to hear correctly the first time? What happens when we misinterpret things? In the fourth week we look at how to juggle keeping in touch and staying sane at the same time. How? Discover ways to learn how to set some clear boundaries and avoid expectations. Use what you learn in this segment for a lifetime.
As you might tell this series is designed to help you experience some real-life usable skills. We use the holiday time frame to anchor new lessons with solid support. Speaking of support! Week Five takes a crack at building a healthy support team. How? We look at reflections, resolutions, and respect.
Reflections, resolutions, and respect. Week five aligns with the mindset of the end of the year. Get ready to explore S.M.A.R.T goals. SMART goals. The whole concept of reflections and resolutions helps us set the stage to be more realistic by being more specific with setting intentions. Be more accountable. Allow things to happen, not make things happen. This week we sort out how resolutions are helpful providing they’re real. Stop biting off more than you can chew. The art of healthy reflection is key. Do you know the guidelines for healthy reflection? Healthy reflection skills prepare us for week six.
Week six we kick off with the benefits of being more proactive versus reactive when it comes to self-care. We explore ways to put yourself first without being selfish. You may take care of yourself free of doubt, guilt, shame and worry.
With January’s arrival we’re in week seven of our series. Time for some extreme self care. Breathe a post holiday sigh of relief now that the holidays are winding down. Ponder some of the tips we offer in this segment — such as learning or upgrading your skills in the fine art of saying “NO.” Explore FUN, healthy ways to reward yourself. Update your capacity to use the gift of perspective.
In week eight of our series we dive into ethical relationship building. Relationships that people genuinely enjoy. Relationships that people really find fascinating, supportive, and they want to do the same for you. Is it time you allow in people who love you, who care for you, who really want to see you thrive and grow? Need help with receiving support? Be sure to catch this week’s segment.
In week number nine we review time-tested stress management skills. We’ll help you to discern the difference between good stress and bad stress. We take a realistic look at what is good stress. There is such a thing as good stress. For an example of good stress think of your muscles. You stress your muscles to keep you upright when you walk. What kinds of stress makes you immobile. Bad stress creates harmful chemical toxic reactions. Those toxic chemicals diminish our immune system. Who needs a poor immune system these days?
In week nine we’ll look at how we define stress. How is stress self imposed when we allow our internal perfectionist run loose. And how do we dissolve unhealthy stress? We have a powerful tool to prepare you and those you love to release unhealthy stress.
During week ten we prepare for the end of the Series. Time to look at dusting off your romance skills. How are you doing on the romance front? When it all comes down to the end of the day, who do you love and who loves you for who you are, not what you are. Once more. Who do you love and who loves you? And do they love you for who you are, not what you are.
For example do they love you because you’ve got a big, fat bank account? What happens if your money goes. Will they’ll still love you? We also invite you to explore what romance mean to you? What does romance actually mean to you? Is it time to freshen-up ways to foster romance, even just with yourself? Romance makes life magical.
With February’s arrival we find ourselves in week number 11. To spice life up, we invite you to consider Random Acts of Kindness. What are random acts of kindness? Random acts of kindness is doing something for someone out of the kindness of your heart. We’ll look at the rules of the road behind really fun ways to do random acts of kindness. We’ll explore the fun factor behind it. We also take a look at how to keep acts of kindness — stress and strings free.
You’re going to be challenged to do one random act of kindness a month. For example, a random act of kindness might be? This is something I love doing. I’ll go out to a local card shop or drugstore and I’ll get those Valentine’s cards that kids normally give out during class time. I don’t know if you’ll recall those cute little cartoon type Valentine’s. I hand ’em out to people just at random. And what a smile that brings to people’s faces.
Week 12 — just one week left to go. Time to dive into your health on a physical level and on an emotional level. Yes, you guessed it. After all the parties. After all the late late nights. After all the running around it’s time to review what’s happening with your physical and emotional well being. Join us this week to receive support to take care of yourself.
Finally, we come to the end of the series in week 13. This week includes Valentines day. It’s time to make a date with yourself. When you look in that mirror and you look back into those eyes of yours, can you look into your own eyes and say, I love you?
Time to make a date with yourself and that date is going to ask you to consider living life absolutely to the fullest. And by doing so, you become a magnet, an absolute magnet to attracting other people to live life to the fullest with you! So with that in mind, we now get ready for our grand finale for Valentine’s Day. We have something really special lined up. We do it every year and it’s an absolute blast. During this last week together, we offer a special call on Valentine’s Day. Participating in this series guarantees you a spot on our members only Valentine’s Day call.
Okay! That’s it! Now you know what we have cooked-up for the holidays. Join us in this series to enjoy the holidays with much less stress and a lot more fun.
Ready to join us? Register right here! See you in class . . .
