Holiday Stress?
Good Morning and Happy Thanksgiving!
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” — John Fitzgerald Kennedy
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to express my loving gratitude to my wife Mary, our kids, our highly supportive family and to all of you who are helping to build the dream of Soul Canyon. Thank you all for being part of my life.
Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday season. The fact that the holiday season is officially upon us sadly means that lots of people start experiencing lots of stress. It’s always seemed very strange to me that the holiday season should be so stressful. When I was a little kid, I was so jazzed when the house starting filling up with the smells of turkey and other yummy food I could hardly contain myself — and I often didn’t. I loved the lights and the singing and the presents — but mostly I liked the feelings of the season — family spending time together in a spirit of giving and love. As I became an adult, though, some of that magic starting turning into obligation, drudgery, pressure, guilt and STRESS. I don’t have the numbers to prove this – but I bet that some of you are in the same boat. My email this week is dedicated to giving you tools to deal tactically with this stress — and even some ideas for possibly preventing it during what should be a magical time of the year.
There are always two major steps to handling stress as you are experiencing it: First, when you recognize that stress is happening — elevated heartrate, getting edgy, etc., DISENGAGE. Do something to take yourself away from the situation. Ask for a timeout, go for a walk, take a nap, whatever…. just chill. While you are chilling, BREATHE — take several deep breaths — this will bring oxygen into your system and help you think more clearly. Once you have “cycled down”, try to understand what caused you to be stressed out. Was it a personality conflict? Not getting things done according to the schedule (red stressor) ? Not having enough fun (yellow stressor)? Not doing things correctly (blue stressor)? Hurt feelings (green stressor)? Whatever it is, try to identify the root cause and then, once you’ve found it, work on understanding how you can avoid it or handle it differently in the future.
Not enough time to go through these steps you say? You need to convince yourself that there is ALWAYS enough time to handle stress this way. Why? Two reasons: First — your ability to perform effectively, even in the short term, always degrades under stress. ALWAYS. You may think you can accomplish more under pressure, but quality usually suffers or some type of damage is done along the way. Second — the long term health effects of chronic and acute stress will eventually take you down. Stress makes you fat, degrades cardio-vascular health, increases your risk of stroke and causes a myriad of mental and emotional disorders. Believe me — you have time to process your stress.
During this time of year, as you gain a deeper understanding of your stressors you may stop and reconsider what I like to call your “Holiday Paradigm”. Try to understand why you do the things you do. Where did they come from? Have you noticed that the consumer frenzy around the holidays seems to start a little earlier each year? If you’ve noticed the same thing, how does this impact you? What types of values do you have in your family and how does your holiday routine stack up, really stack up, to those values? This is the perfect time to examine ALL of this — individually and with your family.
Be brave. If holiday stress is an issue for you, take the time to examine the causes of the stress and then work with those you love to re-design your holidays to be the way they were in the olden days — happy, fun and full of love. As you connect, or reconnect, with the loving, unstressful feelings of the holidays turn this wonderful energy outward in the form of smiles and hugs and watch the magic of the holidays return.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Your friends at Soul Canyon Training & Development
www.soulcanyon.com
For more information respond to this email or contact us by phone at (541) 218-7601