It’s the holiday season, that tender time of year marked by Thanksgiving feasts, Christmas lights, and New Year’s promises.

It’s also the time of year when many of us silently vow to ourselves that we’ll treat the people around us with greater tenderness. No more passing people by as if they’re props on a stage or obstacles to swerve around.

We tell ourselves that, for at least this one shimmering month, we’ll see people as they truly are: kindred souls in the shared adventure of being human, each one carrying stories etched in lines across their face.

But consumer culture hasn’t shown us how. Instead, it sweeps us through December in a whirlwind of gathering, purchasing, decorating, and distracting. So let’s learn together, discovering how to take a new stance, a new way of being with people, so our holidays shine their brightest, glowing from the inside out.

The stance we hope to bring to others, calm, warm, grounded, and kind, starts inside of us. Whenever we’re about to greet someone—approaching an old friend, settling into a meeting with a long-time coworker, walking toward a neighbor—we take a gentle turn inward.

We take a few quiet moments to pause, creating a small clearing in the busyness of our day. In that space, we offer ourselves a simple, steadying phrase, spoken silently, slowly, softly: May I be safe. May I be free. May I be at peace. Stillness arrives at our side, and we help it settle there by easing into 4-7-8 breathing: inhaling for four, holding for seven, and exhaling to the count of eight (L. Alderman, 2016).

Now, we call for compassion. We lay a hand over our heart, or picture it there in our mind, and gently meet the gaze of the person we’re approaching. We send them the same soft blessing, again slowly and silently: May you be safe. May........

© Psychology Today