you better not pout

i'll tell you why.

*Photo: throwback to one of my first holidays. To quote Buddy the elf: I love smiling, smiling's my favorite!

Simply put: pouting = stress = aging quicker [wrinkles]. Holidays are notorious for stress-case scenarios, otherwise the lyrics "you better not pout" in the popular Christmas jingle would not have been necessary, right?

We start to worry about giving or receiving gifts, being around certain friends or family we might rarely see, eating too many cookies, what the coming year has in store for us... I am guilty of it all myself, and recognize that these patterns are 100% useless.

The more we worry about something, the more of a problem we create for ourselves, when it might not even exist had we not stressed about it in the first place. As the directors of the movies of our own lives: that which we perceive, we receive [inspiration from Jeanmarie Paolillo's book Vibe-A-Thon].

But if worrying is familiar to us, we subconsciously grip on to it because it's all we know how to do. It becomes like a childhood teddybear - we don't want to let go of it because we've had it since we can remember, even though it's accumulated dirt and junk over the years that is no longer beneficial for us in the ways it used to be. It's time to set it free.

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How do you refrain from pouting when Santa Claus comes to town?

Read the rest of December's newsletter for an amazing new seasonal breakfast recipe, my new favorite song to dance to, and more.