For many of us, the holiday season is the busiest, most stressful time of year. It’s important that you find ways to reduce your stress during the holidays.
Life can be pretty busy in general. However, during the holidays, you’re adding on gift shopping, holiday parties, travel plans, decorating, wrapping up those end of the year projects, planning for the new year, and more.
During this time of year, you must find ways to simplify. To do this, you have to be open to change. You also have to be willing to adjust your priorities, routines, and projects.
A method I enjoy using when it comes to simplifying is asking myself a series of five questions. It only takes 5-10 minutes, and it’s definitely worth the time investment because of how much it simplifies my life, reduces stress, and make me an overall happier and calmer person.
Here is a rundown of the questions I find to be the most helpful.
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Reduce Your Stress During the Holidays
1. What Is It You’re Striving For?
We’re always striving for something. Whether it’s to be number one at work, buying a new house, achieving financial independence, etc. The thing is, we aren’t always aware of it.
I recommend taking a minute to reflect on what you’re striving for right now. You can usually tell what this is because it’s probably making you feel stressed out and filling your life with things to do.
Try to loosen your grip on what it is you’re striving for. If you can do this, you can simplify your life. You may even realize that this thing that you are aiming for is only a fantasy. It’s not important, and you can be happier right now, without the burden of this thing you’re striving for.
Accept that what you have is good enough and that where you are is already perfect.
2. What Are You Holding On To?
We all hold on to things in our lives: our love for junk food, our Christmas traditions, internet distractions, and more.
We’re not usually aware that we’re holding on to these things, but in the background, it feels like stress, and an unwillingness to let go of how things are or how you want them to be.
Take some time to reflect on the things that you don’t want to let go of…the things that cause you stress.
3. What Can You Limit Yourself To?
If you have 50 responsibilities, will you even have time to accomplish them all? You’d have more focus, more space, and more enjoyment if you reduced the number of responsibilities you have.
Take a minute to look at your responsibilities and see if you can limit each of them. Place a limit on parties, requests you can say yes to, meetings, how much time you spend on social media, etc. After you set these limits for yourself, stick to them.
Tools to help you reduce your stress:
4. Can You Limit Who You Spend Time With?
During this time of year, we often find ourselves overwhelmed with the number of people we’re supposed to interact with. There are holiday parties, and other social functions we feel obligated to attend.
Spending time with your friends and family is the best way to spend your time during the holidays. Take a minute to think about who you can cut out. Anyone that you can’t cut out, those are the only people you should be making time for.
5. What Can You Let Go Of?
Think of the things you’re striving for or clinging to. Can you let go of them? Before you say no, consider how it might be possible. And when you limit things in your life, see if you can let go of certain thing altogether.
I know that letting go isn’t easy. A lot of times, when we’re holding on to something, we’ve already decided that it’s important enough to be in our lives. However, if you don’t let some of these things go, your life will remain complicated. Trying to say yes to everything leads to stress, unhappiness, and can even affect your health.
I hope that answering these five questions will help you reduce your stress during the holidays.
Simplicity requires asking these tough questions and then learning to let go. That isn’t easy work, but the alternative is much harder.