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Thanksgiving to the New Year is not a normal time of year. Your routine changes. Change is normally stressful. You also have more to do than at other times of the year. That can be stressful.
As extra tasks mount you can come to a breaking point. Rather than feel happy, you feel stressed, and perhaps overwhelmed. That doesn’t have to be. Having more to do does not mean that you have to feel overloaded and overwhelmed. Here are seven tips for making your holiday season a joyful time of the year.
1 Make Change Part of Your Holiday Plan
When you make changes in your usual routine, at first you may feel uncomfortable. This is a normal discomfort. How you handle this discomfort of change makes a difference. Look at your regular schedule. Plan where you’ll make adjustments. If you watch a TV series that you can record, record it. Use that time to get the extra holiday things done. Instead of putting things off until tomorrow because you con yourself into thinking that tomorrow is a better day, make tomorrow a better day by what you do today. (When you look at the things that you do in life that you can cut out without missing, you may feel surprised to find that you have a lot of spare time for other purposes.)
2 Maintain Healthy Routines
When you make changes in your routine, you may drop some of the healthy things that you do. You normally make a point to sleep at regular times. You exercise daily. You eat healthfully. As the shades of holiday stress descend, and you have many other things to do, you may drop these healthy routines. You don’t have time for the health club. You grab fast food on the run. You change your sleep patterns. By maintaining the healthy parts of your life, you buffer yourself against stress. You’ll also get more done when you experience less stress.
3 Keep Perspective
I know it is easy to feel swamped by details where everything feels important. A big joy killer is sweating the small stuff. You worry about all that you need to do over the holidays. You can try a different way. The phrase, know your priorities, reminds you to do what is most important first. Make a note about keeping to priorities, and put it where you can see it. Decide on the ten most important things you need to do between now and the New Year. Those are your priorities. The extra time you spend doing what’s most important, saves time and reduces stress.
4 Decide What You Value Most
Holidays are times where family, friends, and acquaintances gather. Who cares that your home is neat as a pin? Who cares if you have a giant TV screen for watching sports events? The people you love, and who care for you, are likely to appreciate you for who you are, not for what you have. Thirty years from now, your important memories are likely to be about the people and not the salad dressing.
5 Avoid the Crowd
We are like herd animals. Most people and organizations follow routines which are governed by the calendar and clock. You can predict the patterns of crowds. Popular restaurants are crowded around the same time each day. Black Friday (a big day for sales and shopping) will have huge crowds jamming into tight spaces. To save time and avoid stress, break from the crowd. With advance planning, you can change routines to make life easier for you. For example, driving around shopping mall parking lots looking for a space can be frustrating. You could become short-tempered. This can spill over to your primary relationships. Is it possible to avoid this frustration?
6 Manage Your Expectations
Managing your expectations is useful to do at any time of the year. For example, expect that others will act as you think they "should" and you’ll feel disappointed. Here is a different view. You are living in an imperfect world. Imperfect people live in this world. Like others, you have room for self-improvement. Accept imperfection in yourself and in others. Then you are on a path of psychological clarity and of opportunities to experience peace of mind. You’ll also get along better with people if they view you as not judging them; instead you judge what they do.
7Avoid Blame Games
We live in a blame culture where blame, like the air, is everywhere. Part of blame is holding others accountable. For example, your neighbor’s child breaks your picture window.Your neighbor and you agree that the neighbor is accounable for the broken window and the neighbor pays for a new
Relax in Yellow
window. However, as most know, blame often goes well beyond holding others accountable. Making federal cases and shaming others over minor matters is a blame game example. Making a lot over a little can spark a dynamite feud. Why do you do this? Whatever the cause, blame is an automatic habit for far too many people. Sadly, you may see an increase in blame games because of holiday stress. When you see others tangled in blame games, if you can avoid taking their blame problem personally, you’ll have a happier holiday.
Sometimes what you omit doing is as important as what you do. Omit unreasonable expectations. Omit blame. Omit feeling overwhelmed. Can you think of other things to omit? Can you think of positive substitutions for these omissions?
If you think the seven steps are useful to take, and then procrastinate on taking them, control click on seven steps to combat holiday procrastination
For dozens of helpful techniques to conquer your anxieties and stresses at any time of the year, control click on the new and completely revised The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety (Second Edition). As a bonus, you’ll find 35 special tips that top anxiety experts contributed to this book.
Relax in Yellow photo by Dale Jarvis, AreaOne Art and Design, Fayetteville NC
Copy edited by Susan Whalen, Quincy MA
© Dr. Bill Knaus
