Let’s talk about something most of us need right now—permission to slow down. Did you know animals don’t actually sleep all winter when they hibernate? They just conserve energy for what really matters. Well, guess what? You can do the same during the holiday chaos. It’s okay to scale back, prioritize a few must-dos, and keep a backup list for those spontaneous holiday feels. Trust me, this is your survival guide to staying festive without fizzling out.

Now, let’s sprinkle in some love—micro moments of love, that is! These tiny but mighty actions, like a quick hug, a sweet text, or even singing together in the car, pack an emotional punch. Think of them as little holiday lights that keep your connection glowing. Plus, they trigger feel-good hormones that zap stress and boost your mood. So, whether you’re holding hands while binging holiday movies or sneaking a kiss under the mistletoe, remember: it’s the small, intentional moments that make the season magical!

About the Host:

Meet Crystal, your relationship and social health coach. Crystal is the founder of Sparked Forever Relationship & Singles coaching. She started her journey supporting the neurodiverse community in navigating this, sometimes frustrating, neurotypical social world. Lessons and inspiration from her earlier work drives Crystal’s passion for bringing couples and singles together through acceptance, understanding and big picture thinking to grow vibrant relationships. Crystal understands that the foundation for our social health and well-being starts with making connections to others. When Crystal is not working with couples, she loves to be out on adventures with her partner and bonus kids or spending time connecting with friends over good food and fun music.

Links:

https://sparkedforever.com/

https://www.instagram.com/sparkedforever/

https://www.instagram.com/sparkitsocial/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sparked_forever

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Welcome to part two of our merry manifesting episode, where we are exploring ways to keep you and the love of your life connected and stress reduced during the busy holiday season. Hope you enjoy and welcome to our love space today.

The next piece, my third little thing for you all is that hibernating is okay, right? Okay. So I actually always thought growing up, and this is probably from like cartoons that we all used to watch in the 90s, but I always thought that animals actually just slept for three or four months straight, right and then, and that's actually not true. And I think I was, you know, I must have been reading like I like a kid's worksheet at some point in my in my early work days when I was working with kids, and it explained on that that hibernating doesn't actually mean to sleep for three or four months at a time and just never wake up. No? It actually means, right? It's not funny about love you. Other thought that too. You know, they don't just crawl in the cave and go to sleep straight for four months, but it's actually a lot of what happens to a lot of mammals and some and some other reptiles and birds, so the Internet has told me, and I thought was just mammals, but anywho, um, that a lot of their bodily functions actually slow down. So just kind of like how we see out in our natural world things slowing down, right? The like plants and trees and grass and things stop growing, or they grow at a very minimal, minimal rate. Right where we live in our little rainforest out here on the West Coast is our days get shorter and shorter, if you're but if you're near the equator, if you're listening in near the equator, you don't really experience that as much. But our days get shorter and our nights get longer, and so it does feel like there's more sleepy time slow down energy, right? And for animals, it's the same thing. For a lot of these animals, like bears and bunnies and squirrels and things, what happens is their metabolism goes down, slows down a bit, their heart rate slows down, their body temperature decreases. And this is all to conserve energy so that they don't have to be munching away when things are not growing, right? Fantastic, amazing science. And so, you know what? It's okay for us to do the same. It's okay for us to save some energy. It's okay for us to take some extra moments during this time of year and slow ourselves down. We don't have to do those 121 things. How many was on your brainstorm? Right? Maybe you only have 10 on your brainstorm, and you might be like, Whoa, 10 in 25 to 30 days. That's still a lot of extra things to add to my pipe. Do you know what? We're going to pick five, we're going to pick seven, we're going to pick five 100% we're doing, and then we're going to have a backup list. And if we happen to be sitting around on a Friday, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, whatever day, and we're like, hey, it would be actually nice to get out of the house. Actually nice to not be in our pajamas at five o'clock in the evening and just wanting to snuggle in for the night. Then you will have, you will have some ideas that are already there, and you can just go for it. Slow down and protect your energy. Prioritize, right, especially if you know, if you're an introvert, right? If you're an introvert, you're going to need recharge time when people are asking you to do so many extra social connection pieces, right? And that is fine. Take that extra recharge time. Do it okay if you're like, planning a holiday activity, you know, if I'm planning a holiday activity that gives me energy and puts me in the mood for other holiday events, then that holiday activity is really important. So that would be like my mega moment of love with the love of my life, right? That does actually puts me in the holiday mood. We usually try to do it earlier in the month, if we can, earlier in the month of December, because it puts us in the holiday mood. It gives us that energy of like, Yay, hooray. This isn't drudgery. And like, a big checklist of, like, all this shopping and things we have to do and people we have to see. It's like, Yes, I am feeling festive. I'm feeling like, I want to get 29 ingredients to make this Christmas Snow Globe cocktail. You know, it puts me in the mood to host. It gets me excited about things. And I do love hosting. But sometimes, when we're I'm not good at deadlines. So there being a day where there's a deadline like we in my in my love space, in my house, we celebrate Christmas. And so there being like a hard deadline of when I need to get everything done by is, you know, does that weighs on me? So, not necessarily the social connection piece. Because you all know, I never need a moment by myself. I'm a definite, like, hyper extrovert, but not everyone is, and so make sure you're picking and. Doing the activities that are going to give you energy. If you need permission, if you need permission, to take time, to slow down, to take to have to be able to say no, to recharge yourself during this time of year, you have it. There it is. This is your permission. It is okay to hibernate. You do not have to do everything that society or friends or whoever. Martha Stewart, whoever is out there telling you you need to do these 199 things you don't Okay. I'm giving you permission. And if your partner is an introvert, and I'm glad mine is not, but if my partner was an introvert, it would definitely be a challenge for me to understand that he would need time to recharge, and maybe time without me, time by himself. Now I'm sure probably, if you are in love with an introvert, then you have already probably figured this out. But if you haven't, okay, if you are early in the relationship, and this becomes a tug of war of I've planned 20 Hangouts for us to do social connection Hangouts, right? Connecting with people and friends and being out in the world and you are just, uh, so prickly and, like, downtrodden about it, and it's this tug of war between, you know, like, come participate, and like, uh, I don't want to then this is your opportunity to let that go, to give your person permission that it's okay for them to do a certain amount of energy, protecting and hibernating. And this again, doing this brainstorm, prioritizing together, thinking of your wish list together. These are all great conversations, thinking of what you both need to hibernate. If you want to hibernate, how much hibernation is needed for you to guys to protect your energy so that you can still make your relationship and your love for each other a priority. This is fantastic. This opens up these conversations that maybe because we haven't thought about it beforehand, we're just rushing through everything, that these arguments keep popping up, right? These disagreements about what we should do for the holidays, or whether this is important, or, like, how much I hate this thing and you love this thing, right? This is the time to have those conversations and work as a team, to know what we're going to do with life, to get through life is going to be amazing. Okay? You are going to love it, I promise. So we're going to prioritize what's going to boost you, what's going to create times that that produce memories? Because remember, you know, there's a, I can't remember what episode it is, but it's early on. I want to say it's like around Episode 10, nine, eight, something in there. On reminiscing. Okay, and so. So one of the great things about having, in our culture, a time of year that is festive, where we all come together and celebrate, or there's lights up, or there's lots of things to do, is those are fantastic times to be working on creating our memories. And when we're creating our memories, right? That gives us things to reminisce about it, right? So we want to think, we want to prioritize the things that we're gonna be like, Wow, I think that would be fun. Energy, filling, fulfilling, meaningful, exciting novel. Remember, putting new things into your relationship is a great way to reconnect, to shake things up, right? Sometimes we get too stuck in the the ritual, and it becomes mundane, it becomes played out, and we just keep going doing it and going through the motions. And there's actually no reason to do that, right? So pick the things that you are going to be able to reminisce about as a couple, as a family, that you're going to look back on fondly, right? I know that we all have some holiday musts that we might, we might have to do, but really like, let's try to add in some yeses, some joyful, delightful yeses. Okay, we're not going to let the outside pressures of society, friends, whoever make us, force us to do these things. Right? This is your holiday love space. Make it your holiday love space. Make it your own. That's what we want. Okay, the last little thing I have for you for manifesting a magical holiday season, okay, is that micro moments? This is we've already I know we talk about this all the time, but that's okay, because it's so important that it's our micro moments of love, our micro moments of love that fill up our emotional cup. Okay, so remember, our micro moments are those tiny little things, right, those tiny pieces of using our five love languages or using our top love languages for each other, right? So, using our affection, using our physical touch, using our connection, taking time to stop and chat with each other, and even though I love a good cup of Rum Punch and some gingerbread cookies, that's really just only filling up my tummy, right? Filling up my taste buds, and it's not really filling up my emotional cup, right? So it does Delight me. And do we all know? We all know me and snacks and eating, I do find delight enjoying them as relate, that makes them dopamine. But in order to keep going with as a team with each other, we have to remember that each other exists.

And you might say crystalline. I know that person exists, but what can happen when we get to these busy seasons in the year, or busy seasons of our life? Right? If we're starting a new work project or like a new like a new job, maybe we're starting our own company, things like that. Maybe we've just had a baby, maybe we're planning a big wedding, maybe whatever, when we get to busy seasons of our life. What can happen is that we just start rushing through, and we start almost treating our love of life, our LOL, like a stranger, right in our house, like we're just passing roommates rather than, wow, that's my lol. That's actually my support person, that's my connection person, that is the person that's going to fill up my emotional cup. And when my emotional cup is full, then my positive energy, right, is going to overflow. And that's the energy that I want to be bringing out to people. I don't want to be lowering the bucket down, down my positive emotion well, and being like, oh my gosh, it's there's a drought in here, and scraping the bottom, and we get a little bit of positive emotion and a lot of dirt and grime from the bottom of that well, because it's empty. No, no, we want our emotional cup to be overflowing or topped up as much as possible. And I know that sounds like a big ask, but actually, if we're practicing these little micro moments, and we start to make them habit in ritual, then it's not a big ask, then it's just normal, then it's just normal, and we feel in a more energized, positive place just on a regular basis. Whoa, right? Just think about that. We can do tiny, little, simple things, right? Add one or two at a time. We make them habit, okay? Or they become habit, and then we can add a few more. And then eventually, in a in for some people, it might be a few months, depending how good you are at making habits. For some people, be like, in a few years, but you'll just turn around, you'll be like, Oh, I can't even remember that person that used to feel drained. And I can't even remember the person that thought holding hands with the love of their life was like a burden, right? I can't even remember that person I just now I'm in we're living in a love space, right? I'm living in a love space. My positive energy is overflowing, and I have more to give. I've more support, love, affection to give to everyone in my life that I want to give it to. So that's, you know, that's the big picture angle. And, like, I would say it's kind of like happiness never 100% get there. You're never like, Well, dude, I'm too, too full of positivity and love. Let's just stop for a bit. No, because it just keeps growing and it just keeps getting better. It's really a fantastic place to be. I'm doing an online course, just because there's not, you know, there's not always enough time for me to get to coach and work with everyone one on one. But those are some of the things that we're going to focus in on. That is how to add these tiny, micro moments. So for example, we can do things. We just have to remember to be intentional when we're going through these, these busy seasons in our life. So one of those, right, whether it's an actual season, like the holidays or a busy season, like I said, like a changing life event, we just have to remember to be a bit more intentional, like remember to hug and kiss each other goodbye, and if someone forgets, run to that front door, or run over to their car and tell them to roll down their window just before you both pull out the driveway, right? Or text them and be like, Oh my gosh, I forgot to kiss you this morning. Here's a virtual kiss anything, right? It's those tiny moments. It's those tiny, intentional, thoughtful moments, right? Don't forget to hold hands while you're watching TV at night and veggie and zoning out snuggle while you're Doom scrolling right? There's all these tiny places where we can add physical touch that helps release, not only oxytocin in our body, which is that kettle hormone, but also actually helps us release serotonin, right, which helps reduce stress, helps with our sleep, right? It helps us so many things, helps us with our problem solving skills and and and collaborating, right? There's all these hormones that when we act like little mammals, like, when you look at mammals like, look at all the cats, and I'm thinking of cats because they're right. My cats are right by me right now. But you know, they like to sleep in a little snuggle pile, right? Well, that's filling up their emotional cup, and they're not even having to do anything, right? So it's being intentional. Remember, right? Watch your holiday movies in a snuggle in a handhold, inviting You are the love of your life to do some of the holiday baking with you, right? Asking them or, or maybe they do holiday baking, and it, maybe it's not 100% your thing, but you. Go in that kitchen, go in that kitchen, roll out some dough, cut some cookies, throw some sprinkles on something, right? You can do. It doesn't have to be your favorite thing to do, but it gives you an extra moment, right? It gives them a little extra support, you know, and if they're a person now, depends if they're baking out of, out of, you know, the they feel the need like, oh, I always bring these cookies, and if I don't, people will be disappointed, right? It depends if they're baking out of people pleasing necessity or out of joy. If they're, if they're baking out of joy, How fantastic is it to join into that joyful moment with your LOL, and if they are baking out of people pleasing necessity, but this has put and put on your in your brainstorm. I was like, must bake 700 cookies for office, Cookie exchange, if that was put on there, pop in there. Give some support, right, get through this tough moment together. So yeah, because that's going to and, oh, do you know what else actually, just thinking about it, of the oxytocin and serotonin. When I was looking up some extra research for thinking about this, for the course that I'm putting together, we were it's actually the research has shown that singing together, choral singing, choral responding of any kind, which is like, oh, remember when? You know, 100 years ago, people used to sing in pubs and bars and things like that, and we don't really do that. We do if there's a band and maybe there's a song we know, and then, like Sweet Caroline, for example, then we all sing along. But actually it releases choral singing, releases oxytocin. It releases the love cuddle hormone. So when you're driving to that work Christmas party, sing some Christmas girls together. It doesn't have to be Christmas kills. Sing whatever you want. Have a music moment together? Because that actually brings connection between you two. It makes that same cuddle hormone as a holding hands and snuggling does. Isn't that crazy. I find that our human little bodies are so programmed to actually help us out in so many ways, doing in life, and connect us and help us to feel fulfilled. And there's so many times that we're just not tapping into those, or that we've, like, That's lame. We've eschewed those things that humans were actually started doing naturally, and now we're like, oh, that's lame. Or we don't do that, or, like, how embarrassing to sing together in a pub, right? And actually, if we did that, maybe we'd all just be like, 5% happier every day, I don't know. So Oh, and another thing you can do, actually, in this holiday rush that provides lots of time for all of these things that I'm talking about, is to have one meal together. Now I know sometimes we get busy. Maybe people have different morning schedules, maybe people have different evening schedules. If you can have one meal a day together, even if it's like breakfast and it's like 10 minutes, right? We're just having a coffee and a piece of toast before we run out the door that's sitting down across from each other. That 10 minutes, that making eye contact with the love of your life, that having a time to check in and be like, just like, hey, what's going on for you today? Um, you know, it gives us, it gives you not only time to check in on how everyone's doing with all of these holiday priorities and things like that. But it gives you just that time, that time to not be strangers with each other, that time to connect with each other, I don't know, put the radio on while you both are in the bathroom and have a little morning sing along while you brush your teeth. Right? Any of these things, any of these things are going to support those, those micro moments, in filling up your cup, right and bringing just that more everyday Joy where you're just feeling more energized but you but it's almost like you don't know why, but you will know why, because we've been talking about it, we will know why. But right again, it's going to seem magical. It's going to seem like you've just manifested it, and that's what we want. So it's like these moments and these interactions that are, you know, fizz a lot, physiologically, yes, physiologically, going to help us together, right? It's not just necessarily a straight up mindset thing, we're actually releasing the hormones that bring us more love and connection, right? That are going to make us more sparked. Okay? So just to recap, we're not right to in order to manifest the magical holiday season of our of our dreams this year, right? We're not just going to sit on our butts and think about it, but we're going to prioritize. We're going to make that brainstorm, and like Marie Kondo says, we're going to really decide what's going to spark joy right out of that list. We're going to prioritize the things that are going to spark joy for us this season. We are going to make a wish list of what we need as a couple to both feel supported and loved. What we need to enjoy this time of year, right? And how we're going to make all these wonderful memories together, all these new memories for to wrap up 2024 we are also going to remember that we are mammals, that we are in. Not robots, that we are not right, just mechanical things where we can add some oil or some gas or, you know, give it a good cleaning, and

we're good to go. We are mammals, and our energy levels differ at different times, and they differ from different people. And we're going to hibernate if we need to. Okay, we're going to slow things down if we need to. It's okay for us to have that downtime, right? And especially, like I said, if you're an introvert or extrovert, that's going to look different to you, right? Like my downtime looks like going on a mega moment of love other people's downtime looks like I need to go for a spa date by myself, or I need to just spend time reading a book in my room with no interruptions, right? Or going for a hike by myself. Whatever it is, it's okay to hibernate. It's okay to recharge your energy. And lastly, it's going to be about being intentional, to not let our micro moments of love fall by the wayside, right, to not let our micro moments of love just disappear because we're being strangers and rushing by each other. Right? Filling up our emotional cup is going to let our energy overflow. It's going to let our merriness overflow so that we can pass on that gift to others this season, right? This is how we are going to manifest our magical holiday season together, and how we're going to stay sparked.