Blogmas Day 17 – How To De-Stress During The Holiday Season

Christmas is the most wonderful time of year, so there’s no way you could ever be stressed, right? Wrong! Everything about the holidays is an opportunity to get stressed, but there is a lot of pressure that we could take off of ourselves if we just step back and assess the situation before the Christmas rush. Here are some tips that I find helpful with de-stressing during the holidays. 

• Plan ahead – Before December hits, perhaps from mid November onwards, set the plan in motion by writing a list of your Christmas essentials. Take into account your budget, write dates for Christmas shopping, who to buy presents for, what cards for and so on. Planning ahead and being organised is key for de-stressing the holiday season. 

• Stick to your day to day routine – Don’t let the madness creep in too early by sticking to your own daily routine. Just because Christmas is approaching it doesn’t mean daily life ceases to continue so get your daily tasks out of the way first and then make time for the holiday activities. It normalises life during the time of parties, celebration and extra family outings and you should be less out of sync when the holidays are over and it’s time to go back to work/school or college. 

• Take a few minutes out for yourself – If you can make time for one break a day throughout the holidays before getting your time off, then grab it! Sit down, grab a cup of tea/coffee or even a hot chocolate and relax. Focus on nothing else but this moment of you and your warm cup of something! 

• Get more rest – Go to bed as early as you can, when you can. Our bodies get put through the mill over Christmas with all the running and racing, outings and indulgent food and drink choices so it needs the extra time to recover. Just be aware of that over the holidays and sleep on the nights there isn’t any festive activity happening. Christmas time is the perfect time for a cozy night in too! 

• Get out of the house – For a five minute walk, to a cafe for a cup of coffee or a look around the shops on a day you don’t have to Christmas shop. Do something, anything, that’s unrelated to the festive ongoings and you will thank yourself later! 

• Let go of perfection – How ever you spend your holiday is good enough. There’s so much emphasis put on having the most perfect Christmas, by going to the most lavish parties, over indulging, surrounding yourself with so many family members or friends but everyone’s idea of how to spend Christmas is different. It can be as loud or quiet as you want, but it will be perfect to you by spending it the way YOU want to and that’s all the matters. 

• Don’t loose sight of what matters – Getting stuck in traffic, having to join that ever growing grocery shop queue and wrapping gifts that turn out to be awkwardly shaped are all things that can easily make us loose our cool but just breathe and know that, in the grand scheme of things, all of that can be easily resolved and the feeling won’t last forever. Come Christmas evening when the dinner is over and done with it, all of that will become a distant memory, or memories you can look back at and laugh over with company. It’s once a year, so don’t stress it too much.  

I hope you find these tips helpful, they are just a few things I’ve learned as I grew up over time and with Christmas past. Here’s to a peaceful, less stressful Christmas to all!