Strategic Discipline Blog

How can you feel elevated emotions before what you deeply desire arrives?

A friend and I were talking about Christmas last week and how differently people experience this season. For some, it’s joyful and grounding. For others, it’s stressful, emotionally charged, or even painful.

Much of that difference comes down to expectations—and expectations, especially during the holidays, often create stress.

Nearly 9 in 10 adults report experiencing holiday-related stress. It typically stems from a combination of financial pressure, packed schedules, emotional expectations, and unresolved grief.

Common, measurable sources of holiday stress include:

• Financial strain: 58% of adults feel stressed by the cost of gifts, travel, decorations, and hosting. American Psychological Association (APA)
• Grief and loneliness: 38% report stress from missing loved ones or being separated from family. American Psychological Association (APA)

There’s also a form of stress that’s harder to measure but just as powerful:
High expectations.
The pressure to create a “perfect” or picture-perfect holiday often leads to disappointment, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion.

What Happens When We’re Stressed?

Most of us know what causes stress this time of year. Far fewer of us know how to regulate it.

The stress response is driven by primitive survival chemistry—designed for short-term self-preservation, not long-term happiness. When activated repeatedly, it produces a cascade of familiar emotions:

Anger, fear, frustration, anxiety, worry, guilt, shame, resentment, insecurity, depression, envy, jealousy, judgment, hopelessness, impatience, and aggression.

At their root, these emotions stem from three primary survival states:

• Fear → anxiety, worry, vigilance, insecurity
• Pain → guilt, shame, suffering, hopelessness, depression
• Anger → frustration, control, competition, resentment, aggression

Psychology often calls these normal states of consciousness.
But in reality, they are altered states—altered by chronic stress.

And during a season meant to be loving, generous, and selfless, stress produces the opposite.

How Do We Relieve Stress?

Stress doesn’t just affect how we feel—it shapes how we think, behave, and relate to others.

In Change Your Mind. Create New Results training, we teach four practical exercises designed to interrupt the stress response and cultivate calmness, clarity, confidence, trust, and emotional balance.

One of the most powerful of these is meditation.

You may wonder how some people seem genuinely happy, generous, and grounded during the holidays. Think of Santa as a simple metaphor—you never see him stressed. Why?

Because he’s giving.
Because he’s generous.
Because he’s experiencing elevated emotions.

The Easiest Elevated Emotion: Gratitude

The most accessible elevated emotion is gratitude—and Christmas may be the easiest time of year to feel it.

But what if you could sustain gratitude year-round?

Some people appear “blessed” with that ability. But gratitude isn’t a gift—it’s a discipline. It’s the result of intentionally rewiring the brain to focus on appreciation, contentment, and meaning.

People aren’t happy because they are grateful.
They are grateful because they have learned how to be happy.

In meditation, we often recommend acting as if you’ve already received what you desire—because that’s how you would feel if it had already arrived.

Those you see walking around joyful during this season are often either content with what they have—or emotionally living as if what they desire is already on its way.

A Simple Reflection for This Season

This time of year offers a powerful opportunity for self-awareness—the first step to real change.

Ask yourself:

• How do I truly feel during this season of “joy”?
• Am I stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed?
• Or am I experiencing elevated emotions—gratitude, love, joy, peace?

My Christmas Wish for You

My holiday and Christmas wish for you is simple:
May you feel elevated emotions—gratitude, joy, love, and possibility.

And if you or your business need support creating a culture of calm focus, aligned accountability, and inspired performance in 2026, I invite you to reach out.

At Positioning Systems, we help leaders and teams break free from the familiar past and intentionally build envisioned futures—personally and professionally.

Ready to Create Your Future?

Now is the time to choose YOU.

If you’re ready to rewire your thinking, elevate your emotions, and create new results for yourself and your organization, explore our NCS – Change Your Mind. Create New Results. training.

Challenge yourself.
Challenge your team.
Challenge your business.

👉 Contact us today for a free exploratory meeting—and begin becoming the hero of your own story.

Let’s create your envisioned future—together.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

When you look into the mirror each morning, do you apply your makeup or shaving cream to your reflection in the glass?

Then how about when it comes to “beautifying your life,” or “making your dreams come true,” you skip trying to change the illusions and tweak their source—your thoughts, beliefs, and expectations.

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – The Source of Change - Your Thoughts, Beliefs, And Expectations