At some point amidst the hubbub of the next few weeks, muffled by the cacophony of marketing messages, social pressures, and self-imposed constrictions, limitations, pressures, and anxieties: reclaim a few minutes to stop, take a few long, slow, deep breaths, and just sit with the moment.

Reflect on where you are, how you got there, and the many massive and minuscule positive aspects of the life you’re living. Think about the tiny pleasures and the wonderful people you’ve known.

Consider that everything we know is finite, and that most of what we worry about day-to-day matters very little in the larger scheme of things; we’ll all die eventually, the universe is probably shuffling toward heat death, and that’s okay—that’s the reality in which we live, and it’s somewhat liberating that there’s probably nothing to be done about it.

Within that context, then, think about how you’d like to spend this time you have; however much time that might be, whatever the circumstances you’ve been born into, whatever the nature of the path you’re walking.

What might you change to make things better, according to your standards for “better”?

What might you learn, what might you do, what elements of your life might you tweak to get more out of what you’ve already got, what might you add to increase your sense of fulfillment and happiness?

What might you subtract to accomplish the same? Which aspects of your life are draining you, holding you back, making you feel lessened or incapable, and how might you ameliorate that impact on your well-being?

Remember that while external milestones like holidays can serve as convenient moments to make such changes, we don’t require them to assess our current situations, to consider where we might like to go next, or to act upon that understanding.

There are a great many not-evil, but not necessarily universally beneficent forces at play when it comes to holidays and similar milestones, due to the business opportunities that emerge when a lot of people simultaneously take stock and imagine how their lives and the world might be improved upon in some way.

This doesn’t mean we can’t use these milestones for our own purposes, but it does mean that it’s worth being extra careful at such times, to ensure we’re not being fed prefabricated concepts of success, and pre-packaged solutions to problems that either aren’t truly problems, aren’t the problems we would most benefit from focusing on, or aren’t optimally solved via the method or means we’re being sold.