Doctor Zest's Traveling Medicine Show

The 3 BEST Tips for Dealing with Holiday Stress

These "tips" can not only help you deal with stress now, but can change your life forever. If you use them.

1. Expectations

How often do you feel that the holidays are the time, especially, when you MUST do everything "right"? There is so much pressure in your job, career, as well as in your family doings. To meet all the heavy expectations that go with the Season, we choose the strategy of enduring it because it is "just for a little while." Stop kidding yourself. Postponing life is a seriously bad habit. If you do this during the holidays, you probably also use this ploy on yourself in periods other than the holidays. The holidays are a pressure cooker that makes the beast of expectations not only raise its head, but raises the whole thing out of the water of that thing we call normality. Let's give yourself a different kind of gift this Season.

REMEMBER: Things do not have to be perfect in order for me to enjoy them or find them useful.

2. Limits & Boundaries

Limits are how far I will let myself go. Boundaries are how far I will let others go. The best title for a book on having a great life could be titled "Limits & Boundaries." Within this concept rests inside the arena of daily life and again, during the Season, it just gets more dramatic.

Both limits and boundaries are set by the words, yes and no. All day long we say yes and no to ourselves and others.

Even while alone, we are doing this with our internal dialogue about our limits:

Examples...

...Should I turn right here? YES.
...Or should I turn left? NO.
...Shall I break my diet and eat this cheesecake? NO.
...Or should I just have another cup of tea? YES.
...Shall I say what is on my mind? YES.
...Or just eat my feelings on this topic? NO.

Limits are a constant internal dialogue. They don't need company to be active. We become our own company constantly talking to ourselves, setting limits — good, bad and otherwise.

Boundaries have to do with how much we are going to let others enter our lives. Parents, ministers and teachers, especially, CONSTANTLY deal with boundary-setting with others, e.g., NO you may not go to the bathroom; Listen to my sermon; Open your tests when I say so; Go to bed now!; and You can do [that] for only 15 minutes.

Other general examples...

...Shall I loan my friend, Bill, $5? (YES)
...Or not, because he has not paid me back for the other $5? (NO)
...Do I have to let my spouse pressure me into going to Harvey's house for yet another Holiday party? (NO)
...(YES) I better go with him or he will be upset.
...My children's are insisting on staying up until 11pm? (NO)
...Or say (YES)

REMEMBER: I am the person who sets limits and boundaries that impact MY life. No one can make me do otherwise — unless I let them.

3. Focus

You control what you focus on (a limit issue). Or you can allow others to tell you what to pay attention to (a boundary issue). If you are looking for misbehavior in your friends, neighbors or family THAT is what you will see mostly. If you are looking to find things to celebrate in your associates and companions, those opportunities show up more often.

It is a simple law of human physics that we can make anything bigger or smaller by just choosing to focus or not focus on something. Think on how many examples there are in your life constantly. Are you shrinking them, or enlarging them, by your focus?

Examples...

...Feel poverty grow in your life by saying over and over: I have no money. I have no money.
...Allow a toothache to diminish until your appointment by deliberately paying attention to something on television saying "Wow, this is interesting!"
...Allow gratitude to fill your consciousness by deliberately choosing to list all the things you have to be grateful for: I am not sick. People love me. I have a great hobby. Etc.

REMEMBER: What I focus on expands. What shall I expand in my life right now?

So there you have it: The 3 most powerful strategies I know.

Things do not have to be perfect in order for me to enjoy them or find them useful.
I am the person who sets limits and boundaries that impact MY life. No one can make me do otherwise — unless I let them.
What I focus on expands. What shall I expand in my life right now?

The more you use these three strategies the more your distress will be reduced. Hint: It helps to at least write yourself a sticky note you can see daily or, better still, keep a journal to get these ingrained into your consciousness. If you chronically have stress issues, I strongly advise you to begin a journal of your campaign to reduce stress: divide your journal into three columns or areas, one for Expectations, one for Limits & Boundaries, and one for Focus. At the end of the day, enter as many examples of how you employed these during the day.

Doctor Zest's Traveling Medicine Show