Bless Your Holiday Stress, Part One

Here it comes again –the season of giving AND receiving. You know how you’ll be “receiving” some family and friend obligations you never receive except during the two months ahead? Once you CHOOSE to receive, you now get to choose your attitude and behavior. In my book, Bless Your Stress: It Means You’re Still Alive! I define “bless”: to redirect the force of your energy so that you affirm your existence and embrace the whole of your life. This establishes the foundations of your own happiness. Yeah…but NOW, in THIS economy? And with THAT family coming over? Well here are the first 2 out of 4 tips (next month you get the other 2) to improve your ability to focus on what matters:

1. Check your mental baggage.

We all have memories from past holidays. A lot of us haul around a hefty load of stress connected to the holidays of the past. According to Mental Health America, “memories” account for close to 50% of all the sources of holiday stress. The problem is we don’t realize it. Remember after that one run-in with your mother-in-law, you vowed to never cook a green bean casserole dish again for the family dinner, yet here you are en route to another one…with yet another covered dish and a sour mood. And some of our New Year’s Eve memories aren’t as magical and joyous as the ‘40s movies portray. Imagine having a mandatory Stress Security Check Points Mental Detector (I don’t mean “metal”). Imagine being scanned with an Attitude Wand (like the ones they use in airports), only these wands would check for what’s weighing down your mind.

2. Know what you can and what you can’t control.

While we pride ourselves on being in control, it’s actually a short list of things we can control. It includes what you think, what you say, what you feel and do, the food you put into your mouth, and what you do to your body. That’s where we need to focus our energy. Revise your outlook and revamp your reactions so you can rebound from life’s annoyances.  Here are some things we can’t control during the holiday season:

• You can’t invite your uncle without your aunt (if they are still married).
• You can’t invite the sister-in-law without THAT banana pudding.
• The relatives you visit have no guest room, and you have to sleep on the pullout bed with the saggy mattress in the direct path of the only bathroom.
• The ungrateful reactions people have to the gift you oh-so-carefully picked out!

So we need to tap into our “Personal Control Panel” which controls what happens in our mind. Remember to push “Play” but skip the “Fast Forward” because, as Gandhi famously said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Also, “Fast Forward” can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy scenarios in your head, “Oh I know what’s going to happen: I’ll buy too much food; I’ll buy too little food; the store will run out of food.” Take a deep breath and take stock before letting a stress trigger make you go nuts.