Holiday Stress – How to Beat It
SUMMARY
The one thing that is most likely to ruin or put a damper on your “happy holidays” is stress. It is the party-pooper of the holiday spirit, but it doesn’t have to be that for you this year.
The major stressors of the holidays are typically things like family pressures, money pressures, and often just the sheer busy-ness that many people feel. Remember to “Stop and smell the roses” this holiday season by doing the following three things to slow down your pulse and lower your stress for the holidays..
- Take control of yourself and decisions of what’s best for you and your family and don’t get caught up in trying to please everyone else.
- Reflect. Choose to be present in the special moments. Just notice…the blessings, the abundance, the wins of 2016. Reflecting on the things that are important to you.
- Enjoy. There’s so much to enjoy during the holidays. Choose joy, not stress. Choose inner peace.
Tell yourself, “I will allow no one to ruin this holiday.” It’s up to you. Choose joy, choose peace, and have a happy holidays!
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hi, there. It’s Kevin Ward and happy holidays from all of us at YESMasters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life.
Today, I want to talk about the one thing that is most likely to ruin or complicate your holidays and to really infect and interfere and mess up your happy holidays and it’s one word. “STRESS.”. It gets people. It gets us because the holiday, you know, it’s supposed to be a time of giving and a time of joy and a time of peace on earth, and it’s supposed to be all this cool stuff. Used to, it was a time when the holidays came, everything slow down. Everythingkind of shutdown. Nowadays, it just seems like there’s more going on than ever before or any other time of the year for some of us and it’s like, “Oh, my goodness! How do I enjoy the holidays and peace on earth when I’m so stressed out?” I want to talk about how to deal with the stress of the holidays. I believe that stress is the number one party pooper for the end of the year holidays because there are just so much going on.
Let’s talk about first where does the stress come from. I think it comes from three primary areas:
#1. FAMILY.
First, it comes from family. It comes from relationships. It comes from the fact that over the holidays, we’ve got to decide who are we going to spend time with? Who are we going to visit? Who we’re going to see?Who’s coming to our house? Are we going to their house? Arranging all that. People that can’t make a decision put everything off to a last minute and go like, “Oh, we haven’t decided yet,” and that can cause a lot of stress.
Also, the time that you spend together with family, a lot of times for a lot of people is the conflicts. The conflicts that are going on in relationships, they show up now because you got to go spend time with some of those people. With that sibling that you’ve not gotten along well with.You had a fight a couple years ago or last year or last month and you’ve never resolved it.
It can also be a time of grief. It can be a time where you’re having to deal with the fact that some people that, someone or some people that used to be a part of the holidays are no longer with you anymore because of death or because of divorce or because of whatever kind of changes that have happened, that there is sometimes a sense of emptiness. A sense of loss that you’ve got to deal with during the holidays and that can be stressful.
#2. MONEY AND BILLS.
Money can be hugely stressful for a lot of reasons. One, for a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of real estate agents, these are the slower months of the year, so you tend to have less money. Yet, it tends to be the months where we spend the most money with Christmas, Christmas shopping and all of that kind of stuff can be a stress and the bills that come after the holidays and all of that can be a stress.
#3. BUSY-NESS
I think another thing that can be stressful is just the sheer busy-ness of the time. Whereas before, it used to not be so busy. It used to be a time we slowed down, but now, it’s not like that. Because you’ve got parties, you’ve got holiday Christmas shopping, you’ve got travel. You, a lot of times, still have business going on. You still have clients. They have demands and you’re having to schedule everything and figure all the stuff out.Time off and days off. When are you going to work and you’re having to coordinate where other family members are going to be in all of that stuff. There are shows that you want to watch on television. Whatever it is, there’s just so much stuff going on that we get super busy.
How do I fit everything in? Which again, is a shift from the way I think it probably used to be back in 1900s when things slowed down during the holidays.We took time off and we took time to spend with family. Now, we’re trying to still do all that while cramming a whole lot of other stuff in and it just goes like crazy.
What do you do to deal with? Lower the holiday stress. I want to just frame it with a simple phrase from years ago, a popular song, “You got to stop and smell the roses along the way.” That is, you have to take some time during the holidays to slow down and figure out how to release all the stress.
I’m going to give you three steps today on how you can release the stress. How you can lower the stress and enjoy your holiday season more.
#1 TAKE CONTROL.
The first step and this is really, really important no matter what it is. If you’re feeling stressed in the holidays, the first thing you have to do is you have to take control.
You have to take control of your own peace of mind, of your own happiness. You have to take control of the situation. What I mean by that is a couple things. One, is the things that cause stress during the holidays, you can control a lot of it. You can control the money part to a large extent. In other words, you just have to set a budget if that’s going to be an issue for you. Overspending, you got to take control of that. If you’ve already spend it, now, you’re going like, “I’m stressing out.”Deal with what you can deal with now and the rest of it, you got to figure out a plan later but the one thing NOT to do is fret about it, to worry about it, to let it ruin your holidays. It’s done. Let it go. Deal with it. When the time comes you got to deal with it, you’re going to have to work your tail off to make the money or whatever. To pay the bills and so forth but don’t allow it to control every moment of the holidays..
Take control of it here (in your mindset), and take control of it here in your pocketbook. Take control of your finances.
Take control of your family decisions. One of the things that you can do that’s really, really helpful is sit down with your household. I believe that your household is where you’re most responsible to bring in peace and create peace and here’s how you do it. Sit down with everybody in your household. Your family, your husband, your wife, significant other, your kids. Whoever is involved that lives in your house with you and say, “Here’s the plan. Let’s sit down and let’s figure out the plan.” Then, we’re going to let everybody else … We’ll adapt as we need to to their plans but we’re going to make our decision of this based on what is best for us and not spend all of my time trying to wait on whatever other people are going to do and trying to please everyone else.
One of the biggest stressors of the holidays is trying to please everyone. Trying to fit into and mold yourself and your family into the expectations of what everybody else wants to do. If you will take mix of decision that if you got a family where nobody can decide what they’re going to do or they’re pulling you at different directions. Then, make an agreement within your household and say, “Okay. Here’s how we’re going to do it this year. Here’s how we’re going to it is every other year, we’re going to do it this way.” Figure out your plan for your family and stop trying to please everyone. Then, you let people know, “Here’s what we’re doing. If you guys want to fit in with it, great.” Now, if somebody’s made plans, they’ve invited you and you said, “Yes,” you honor your commitments and all of that. The key is, that you take control of your decisions. Take control of the situation, so that you can channel and you can relieve the stress on yourself.
#2 TAKE TIME TO REFLECT.
I want to encourage you to just spend some time reflecting in the holidays. This is where you have to consciously slow down. Stop and smell the roses. You’ve got to spend some time over this holidays just reflecting. Thinking about the year, thinking about your abundance. Thinking about your blessings. Thinking about all the great things that are going on in your life and reflecting on the things that really matter to you just to enjoy. It’s the time of the year where we’re winding down at the end of the year and getting ready for the new year. Reflect on the wins that you have this year. On the things, the goals, and the dreams, the things you’re excited about for next year. Just literally spend some time stopping and enjoying.
Spend some quiet time. Things get really hectic. Spend a little time in the morning. Maybe do a little meditation. Just stop, breath, enjoy being present in the moment.
#3 ENJOY.
The third thing is simply to enjoy. Just choose joy. Don’t choose to live in reaction and being frantic. Choose to stop and say, “I’m just going to enjoy this.” Somebody’s coming in late for the holidays, they’re getting here late for Christmas dinner, they got us all messed up and everything. “I’m going to just enjoy it.” If you’re traveling, you hate the airports and you hate the crowds and all that. Just say, “You know what? I’m just going to enjoy … I’m going to enjoy people watching. I’m going to enjoy just sitting there and doing whatever.” Figuring out some way to find joy in the moment and say, “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy letting people go ahead of me in traffic. I’m going to enjoy letting people cut in line.”
Just look at everything and say, “I’m going to choose inner peace. I’m going to choose abundance. I’m going to choose to be happy in the moment by reflecting.” Just taking control of me and saying, “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to love it. I’m going to have a great time.”
Here is a great statement to make for yourself and that is to say, “I’m going to have an amazing holiday, and I will allow no one to ruin my holidays. I will allow no one to ruin my holidays. I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to choose joy. I’m going to choose peace. I’m going to choose relaxation.” Rather than allowing the stress to take you. If you’ll do that, it’s going to be a happy holiday, and that’s what I wish for you. Happy Holidays!
– Kevin Ward