Gift giving during the holiday season can sometimes feel like a daunting task. For many, it can be a task filled with stress, worry, and absolutely no fun. So why, on a yearly basis, so many come together to give gifts to one another? Why even bother to give a gift this year? In the midst of heavy panic, I have to remind myself that I’m not giving a gift because I should, but because this is a moment in which I get to show a person in my life just how much they mean to me.

Now, it’s important I preface this by saying, I do not believe in breaking your bank account for the purpose of giving a gift. Actually, I feel like that only creates room for resentment and greater frustration towards yourself and the other person.

Giving a gift for the purpose of showing someone your love and appreciation for them is really not so much for the other person; it’s for yourself.

You see, gift giving, or anything for that matter, when it’s done for someone or something else, it takes out the magic of it. It ruins the fun and the excitement because, at this point, you’re giving a gift to satisfy an outer need or desire. But, when you give from within, and for the purpose of uplifting yourself, it brings about a completely different meaning.

Aung San Suu Kyi says “When you’re feeling helpless, help someone.”

This quote applies to the loving of humanity so that in turn, we may love ourselves or allow love to flow through us. I believe that this philosophy can be applied to the definition of gift giving. If lately, you’ve lost magic or love for life, you can bring magic to someone else. In doing so, you’ll have reactivated it within yourself.

Using gift giving as a means of reminding yourself why this person means so much to you allows one to see gift-giving, as well as the person you are giving the gift to, through the eyes of love. You have the opportunity to reflect on how much this person means to you, what they have allowed you to feel throughout the past year and what wonderful memories you have created together. Giving for the purpose of feeling love causes us to not only feel good from within, but it also allows us to be nicer and kinder to our neighbors and our friends.

Abraham Hicks, one of my favorite teachers, says: “it feels good to feel good.” And that much is true. When you give a gift and feel good while giving it, because you've just devoted an entire process to remind yourself of why this person means so much to you, you’ve allowed the loving energy of kindness and appreciation to move through your being. And when you allow that energy to move through you, it feels good and the reason that it feels GOOD is that innately, that is who we are as human beings. We are innately loving, kind and caring beings.

So this holiday season, rather than look at gift giving as a stressful task, take a moment to shift your perception and look at it as a means of feeling appreciation.

It is an opportunity to get back to a good feeling and jovial place. While its wonderful to receive love from others, it is also wonderful to allow it to move through the body and towards those that stand outside of you. Gifts can be as simple as a hand made card (one of my favorites, and usually a tear jerker), a letter or list including all of the wonderful things this person makes you feel, a hand crafted bracelet, a beaded necklace, or even, a collection of photos you’ve taken together with comedic captions. The best gifts are those that come from the heart, and what better way to present emotions from the heart than to allow the energy of love to move through you.

This year, allow yourself to come back to the center that is you, by allowing yourself the opportunity and the exhilarating feeling of love to move through you. In healing others, one heals themselves. In loving others, one loves themselves. A close friend of mine once said to me, “You are a wave, and I am a wave, but at the end of the day, we are all one body of water.” Such is true of humanity. When we love others, we love ourselves. When we care for others we care for ourselves, when we inspire others we re-inspire ourselves and when we gift others, we thus, gift ourselves.