 Hello holiday love bugs coming to you from my camera so feeling lonely for the holidays like you just want to wrap yourself up in a blanket curl up with some wine and just shut the world out I totally feel you and in today's video I'm going to give you two really great ways to not feel so lonely during this holiday season if you're new here I'm Sarah and I help teach people how to find inner happiness through fitness and spirituality and today we're gonna toast to loneliness being a good thing holidays are supposed to be and they're marketed as the happiest time of year the best time of year so when you're already feeling lost or sad or lonely a lot of times all of this holiday spirit and Christmas joy can make us feel worse it can make us feel more lonely or more sad or more depressed maybe you're going through a divorce maybe you're going through a breakup maybe maybe you lost someone very close to you maybe you lost a job that you really depended on and when the holidays and family get together's and and romantic partnerships and spending money on gifts is something that is so routinely thrown in our faces this time of year it can often deepen our pain and it can make us feel even worse and then because we know we're supposed to be happy and it's supposed to be the happiest time of the year we feel even worse and it just compounds and gets and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper inside of us and I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way because I love you because I love you and I love you every time of the year and not just during the holidays and if you love you like like my video and subscribe so we can like hang on again next week you know you know okay so let's start with the first thing that can help make your holiday season feel not so lonely okay it sounds simple but there's so much to it and that is doing something for someone else and before you say well sir I love the money or whatever you're gonna say this doesn't have to be something cute do if you want to go sponsor a family for Christmas or donate money like absolutely go do that but there are so many other ways that you can help other people whether they're people you know or people you don't know and this could go all around I mean you could go and and surprise your parents and clean their house for them you could teach your little brother or sister how to drive you can go help out at a homeless shelter you know there are so many things that you can do and it's so wonderful and it's really the best way to get out of your holiday loneliness because not only does that change the chemicals in your brain when you help someone else but you're helping someone else I mean there's no lose here it's a win-win situation on top of that it's going to give you a little more perspective of your own life where whatever it is that you're going through there are people out there that would kill to trade places with you and that's not me standing here and and demeaning what you're going through that's not what I'm saying at all you know there's there's no comparison to the level of pain and loneliness that we can all feel but just like there's always someone that's going to have something to have it better than you do there's always someone that's going to have it worse and I think that there are so many different ways that helping other people can put that into perspective of like oh like I actually have a lot to be thankful for and I have a lot to be grateful for and on top of that you can build connections with people you can build connections with different people in the community or people you see on the street you know it's something that I do and I do this year round is I carry what I call my homeless bags in my car and basically what I do is I get all these like little glittery fun bags that you know you can get a Target or Walmart or the dollar store or wherever and I fill them with a bunch of things that people that I see that are you know without homes or that are struggling they need so I put little snacks in there and toiletries and toothbrushes and I even put a positive note in there something saying like no you can do this or you are worthy and and then I also carry a bunch of $5 bills around with me so whenever I see someone that's on a street corner and they need something I can just pop out one of my bags from the pack back seat grab a $5 bill out of my wallet and give it to them and not only is it helping this person in need but it helps me too it makes me feel good to be able to help with someone and I get to stand there sometimes and talk to them and see what their story is and just connect with your neighbors connect with the people in your community and you know if there's just such a beautiful thing about that so I encourage you not only to do this during the holidays but do it all the time you know people need love all the time and the more love that you give you're gonna get it back tenfold okay and I don't mean that and agree to like oh I'm only helping this person so that you know I feel good like the more you love the more you give the more love more love you're going to feel inside of your heart I can promise you that okay and the second thing I want to talk about especially because the holidays are obviously at the end of the year so this is a good time to sit back and reflect on things that are going on in your life and that have gone on through the past year and I mean specifically the things that are making you feel sad and the things that are making you feel down and lonely what happens is if we don't if we try to push these things down they are energetically going to get stuck in our bodies and we're never going to be able to feel better but if we can sit there and reflect about these things that happen and find just a sliver of gratitude for it could be the littlest thing it will start to help you see your problems and your struggles in not as crazy as a negative light but a little bit in a positive one as well so for example I had some friends giving last weekend with so many of my friends my families were there I had just a fantastic time and I'm going through I wouldn't necessarily call it a breakup but kinda I guess right now and a bunch of my friends have gotten engaged and I'm pretty much one of my only friends now that doesn't have a partner a significant other and don't get me wrong it gets to me sometimes but instead of focusing on that when I was with all of my friends I just allow myself to feel the love and the connections that I had with my actual friends it's like it's kind of all about perception it's like I could have spent those few hours in that time focusing on the fact that I didn't have you know a significant other there or the person that I love there with me or I could have spent those few hours connecting and having a good time with friends that I don't get to see very often so you see a lot of times and we're feeling lonely or sad as much as we really don't want to admit this and I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the heart truth right now we're choosing it a lot of times we're choosing the loneliness and we're choosing the sadness and that doesn't mean it's easy to just flip a light and say oh you know I'm gonna be so happy right now and I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna be you know I'm gonna throw flowers through the air or whatever hey guys so I thought this was important to put in this video it's Wednesday night so this video is going up in less than two days and basically I go to church on Wednesday night at my local church because there's so many people that go on Sundays I get anxious and so it's just it just stresses me out going Sundays so I go Wednesdays so I just went tonight and it turns out that they actually weren't having a service tonight and they were having a Christmas tree like lighting ceremony and there were food trucks and like little baby goats there and stuff and I go to church alone and I tried to do a lab I was there for the actual like tree lighting ceremony which was really pretty and I just looked around and all these people what your families and couples and friends were all you know hanging out together and they you know having a great time and I was just like surrounded by you know probably 150 200 people and I felt so alone and I love goats and so I went over to the goats but then all these kids were in there playing with them normally I'd go in and like see them but I just want didn't want to like impede on like the kids you know hanging out with them and so I left and as I'm walking through the parking lot to my car this happened and the reason I'm inserting this in this video was because super relevant and I feel like on social media people often will say they're going through things and it's hard to believe them because you know when you're feeling upset and you're feeling down or angry or whatever negative emotion you're feeling like the last thing you want to do is pull out your camera like I'm doing right now but I think I just the message I want to get out there to you guys is that it's okay to feel your feelings and it's okay to allow them to pass through you because if you hold your feelings in you and you you don't allow yourself to cry it's gonna get pushed down it's gonna get stuck inside you so when you're feeling lonely or depressed or whatever during the holidays or anytime if you feel like you need to cry let yourself allow yourself to cry I mean would you go to your best friend or your mom or whoever and say stop crying like you shouldn't be crying I hope not and so I'm just on here to tell you like don't do that to yourself and even I know so many people tell me how positive I am and how happy I am all the time and I am I am a positive and happy person but that doesn't mean that I am positive and happy 24-7 and it's very hard for me to get on here and be this vulnerable and like I purposely like saw myself in the mirror and I was like whoa I was about to like take this off before I started recording this my mascara and then I was like you know what no like I want to be so real with you guys and I want to be vulnerable and put myself out there and understand that we're all just people you know no matter who it is that you look up to whether it's social media influencers or actors or or probably not politicians but you know anything like that like we're all just human beings and we all feel emotions and have hard times in our lives and I just want to tell you that it's okay and one of the tips that I use and I just recently started doing this and it's actually very helpful is that you don't want to define yourself by the emotion that you're feeling so on my car ride home I was kind of you know crying and I heard I like started saying to myself like in my head like I'm so lonely like I'm so sad I'm so whatever and I stopped myself and I said no I just feel lonely right now I just felt upset in that moment and that allows you to realize and not define yourself by that emotion because if you start defining yourself you will start acting in that way and it will just kind of compound so just allow yourself to feel these emotions we're all the same and you know it's it's gonna be okay things change seasons pass and yeah I'm kind of rambling now but I just wanted to get on here and tell you guys that like I love you and it's okay and be easy on yourself and I'm here for you and I get it love you but just take yourself back in that moment reflect on those things that have happened in the past year because I can pretty much guarantee you everything that you've gone through this past year wasn't a bad thing if say you got in a car accident you know you've gotten a really bad car accident and your car was totaled and you had to spend a lot of money and you didn't have a car for a while or maybe you still don't and maybe you were even a little bit injured from that car accident but you're here watching this video and you're alive and you're breathing and you're okay all right maybe you're going through a divorce or you're going through a breakup and you feel kind of lost and sad but now you have all of this freedom and you can literally do whatever you want to do like there's always a little bit of a positivity it's kind of like we're not gonna go so far into this but it's a little bit like yin and yang you know there's good and bad and there's bad and good so all I'm asking for you to do is when you're feeling lonely in this holiday season and you're looking around and you're seeing all these families together and all these couples together and you know maybe you're having fertility issues and you see children like all I'm asking you to do is find that little bit that little bit of goodness in the bad and I promise if you continue to do this and you train yourself to do this every day or as often as you possibly can this happen every day I have my bad days I'm not positive and happy every day I was going to film this video two days ago and I was like I was not in the mood to do it and guess what that's okay so not every day is going to be good but there's good every day at least something comment that down below there's good in every day there's good in every day I love you guys so much I know that this can be a tough time of year but I promise just hang in there it's worth it you're growing love yourself love the people around you no matter if they have more things that yet that you want are they more things than you have go help out someone down the street go help out a neighbor you know rake their leaves or go help out at a homeless shelter go do something that's going to benefit not only you but other people too I'd love you guys so much don't forget to like and subscribe to this video if you want to come hang out with me again next week and I love you guys so much and don't forget be limitlessly yourself