The Stance: How to Bring Your Best Self This Holiday Season

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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.

Taking a Stance

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 you be free. May you be at peace. We imagine the words rising and gliding toward them, like a feather carried by a gentle breeze (H.Y. Went et al., 2013).

Together, stillness and compassion arrive and work their gentle magic. Our eyes fill with tenderness, then our voice follows suit, carrying a soft warmth. Our posture relaxes, open and welcoming, and even our small movements, our lean forward, begin to offer comfort.

Our new stance has arrived. So, what happens now?

The Joy and the Ache

We start talking, lounging in conversation, and bit by bit, the stance we’ve taken draws out the person we’re with. They share small fragments of their life story, glimpses of what life has offered and what it has cost.

Rooted in our stance, we listen with our whole selves, and we don’t just hear the sentences they speak. We hear the emotional currents flowing beneath them.

We notice their voice soften and sweeten when they speak about their children, their tenderness and delight rising. And we meet their joy with the joy that springs up inside us.

We see their eyes glow when they tell us about creating: a painting unfolding, a garden taking shape, a plan finding its wings. And we meet their excitement with the aliveness it awakens in us, warm and bright.

There are moments when we feel the ache press in as the person we’re with speaks of an aging parent and the long farewell already on the horizon. Or we feel sorrow rise as they share news of a cancer that barged into their life and stole the future they thought they could count on.

We see their pain in the small tightening around their mouth, in how their body folds inward, and in the dimming light of their eyes.

More often than not, they pause mid-sentence, steadying themselves, pulling themselves back together. We sense they’re on the verge of turning away from the story they just stepped into, retreating from the feelings rising beneath it.

The Gift of a Question

When we sense this happening, we’re ready to lean in. Because our stance was made for moments like these.

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Instead of letting the moment slip away, instead of watching as feelings get stuffed back down, we ask gently: I see a lot is coming up for you… Do you want to share what you’re feeling inside?

It’s a simple question, but it asks for a brave response. It nudges the person we’re with to turn toward their pain instead of tightening against it, to reach for words that name it, and to trust us enough to share it (McBride, 2025).

And more often than we think, our stance soothes them. The gentle tone in our voice threads its way through their inner turmoil. The kindness in our eyes tells them, without a single word, that they don’t have to carry this by themselves.

And they answer our question.

Often it’s only a few words, I’m feeling sad or I feel alone, but those few words are enough. They give their feeling a voice, let it be witnessed with compassion, and that softens the sting their story brought to the surface.

Another Brave Step

Sometimes, the people we’re with find the courage to go deeper still. Held by the kindness in our stance, they dare to share more of the story that hurts.

As they speak, we feel it, unmistakably: They’re aching for someone to truly see what they’ve endured, someone who’ll stay with them, understand them, and care.

And we’re right there. We welcome their story with the stillness and compassion woven into our stance. We offer the very thing their heart has been waiting for.

Their painful story is no longer exiled to the dark. It is witnessed and gently held. And the wounded parts of them, the ones that have been tucked away inside that story, stir awake. Seeing the safety of our open stance, these wounded parts journey homeward, crossing the distance from the freeze of memory to the warmth of the heart (Rogers, 1980).

Here for each other

This is why we’re here with one another, in this season of lights and in every season beyond. We’re here to be fellow villagers, standing close, walking side by side, grounded in a still, compassionate stance. From this place, the holiday spirit finds its true glow. From this place, life gathers its warmth, the kind that’s only possible when we walk the road together.