With the holiday season closing in, the air should only be filled with cheer and laughter. But it’s easier said than done!
If you ask the grown-ups, they’ll tell you it comes with a pack of stress. However, to make your special days joyful and perfect, you’ve got to take the load of stress on your shoulders.
Leaves, festivals, anniversaries, etc., entail lots of stuff that needs to be done within short periods. Cooking mouthwatering dishes, wrapping up gifts, cleaning the house, and a few more last-minute tasks— all render stress and anxiety.
However, if you don’t want to crumple so easily under stress during the holidays, follow these nine practical tips we’re sharing in this article. Implementing these tips will make sure you can party hard with your loved ones during the holidays.
1. Plan and Prepare
One of the key aspects of keeping your holidays free from stress is to plan ahead. Make sure no appointments or meetup plans override your party day. If there’s an emergency meeting, do it online or request to postpone.
Besides, you may need to be somewhere or people might invite you to their places. However, make a schedule according to where you need to be. Don’t forget to explain to the inviters politely if you can’t make it or plan to meet another day.
Apart from meetings and invitations, plan what arrangements you’re going to make, including attire, grocery, guest list, tour plan (if any), pending work at the office, and so on. Getting these things done in time will make you feel light during the holidays.
2. Share Your Responsibilities
It feels awesome to think that you can do it all by yourself. Bad thinking. Neither can you get everything done alone, nor will you be able to finish the last-moment stuff perfectly if you take it all on yourself.
The best way to solve this issue is by sharing your responsibilities. Let your family members, friends, or relatives join hands. Share the workload of cooking, shopping, cleaning, invitation calls, and so on, among them to keep your head free from stress.
Sharing these tasks among people will help you arrange the holiday more accurately. But make sure you’re delegating the tasks as per priority.
For instance, don’t let your sibling manage groceries if they’re bad at picking up the right spice from the store. This will only add to your stress eventually.
3. Get Some De-stressing Supplements
If you are on the edge during the holiday season, opt for some relaxing supplements. One is camomile, in case you are suffering from insomnia due to all the excitement. The other one, an ultimate game player, can be cannabis.
Our green friend is often the best one to help us remove stress. What makes it special is that it can be whatever you want, a relaxant, a hallucinogen, and even something to make you active.
You need to relax, but you don’t want to get high; that’s where THCa can come in. This is a strain of cannabis that gives you all the benefits of cannabis, without making you high. Buy Bulk THCa flower, and throw some of it into your green smoothies to make a relaxing heath drink whenever you feel the need to take the burden off.
4. Have a Realistic Holiday Expectation
Having high expectations of your holidays is normal. But eventually, a high expectation can increase your stress. On the other hand, you can’t have the lowest of expectations as well. That, too, may make you not prepare anything at all.
You must be somewhere in the middle so you don’t get too excited or too frustrated. For instance, you should expect that a few of your desired guests may not make it this holiday to come to your place for hectic schedules.
Besides, it may happen that your own workload at the office may interrupt you from giving enough time to your family. Some urgent calls from your client may even compel you to cancel your holiday trips.
Keeping these scenarios at the back of your head will help you a great deal. You can at least make a realistic plan for your holidays with each plus and minus note, relieving yourself from extra panic or stress.
5. Music Can Be a Stress-Buster
Music is a nectar to the stressed mind. Try out various vibes or ambient music if you’re busying yourself with the holiday chores. Listening to music or your favorite songs will lighten your anxiety and uplift your mood.
Jazz, pop, country song, or whichever genre you love, just pop one up on your cell phone or pod player while cleaning the kitchen or while putting up decorations. See how effectively but lightly you can get things done.
Turning to music during hectic work doesn’t cost you anything, but its effect is magical. An ambient or classical music (whatever you prefer) can drain the stress from your body and mind.
6. Laugh Away the Stress
They don’t say that laughing is an effective medicine for nothing. And laughing undoubtedly steers away the stress from your mind.
So, if you plan to keep yourself occupied with holidays on the horizon, you must laugh occasionally. Or at least smile whenever possible.
Laughter with your family members or loved ones will stimulate your organs, and increase blood flow through the body while flowing more fresh oxygen to the heart. This will make you resilient to the stress that comes along with work.
As we’ve tipped you off about sharing your work responsibilities earlier, this can be an effective way to work and laugh together while making your tasks a lot easier and stress-free.
7. Check on Your Diet
Eating gives a lot of folks happiness. They find it as a resort to relieve stress or frustration. But if you consider the other side of the coin, you’ll see a different case. Overeating or an unbalanced diet may lead you to more stress.
First of all, grabbing something that is delicious to the tastebud whenever you’re stressed is a temporary solution. It’s only as good as you’re having it. After a while, the frustration may return, and you may opt for something else to eat.
That’s only going to add some extra pounds to your body just when the holidays are knocking on the door. Too bad. The same goes for drinking. You can’t consume too much alcohol or caffeine before holidays as it may dry your skin, making you look pale or harsh.
While eating while hungry or snacking between work is okay, you should practice resting or napping to release stress. You may also practice breathing to cool down and prepare yourself for the next chore.
8. Resting Can Be Helpful
While swamped with too much to do for the holidays, tending to rest is normal. And you can’t blame yourself for that. Trust us, it’s the only most inexpensive yet effective method to destress yourself amid a bucketload of work.
After all, resting isn’t a crime. You’ve earned yourself that privilege after planning, working, and stressing yourself for the holidays you’ve longed for. You’ve tensed your muscles and your mind. So, now, steal some time to rest or nap.
Even if you’re planning to keep up the decoration, cooking, cleaning, and whatnot with the stress ticking, you may enter the stage of chronic stress, which is in no way good for your health.
You may try booking a home for holidays where you’ll enjoy historic house tours. This may help you to separate yourself from the world for a while to sip into your inner self.
9. Pay Attention to Yourself
One of the biggest lies we ever tell ourselves is that we’re okay even when we aren’t. We do this to shun the overwhelming stress and anxiety while continuing with our responsibilities. But that’s not how it should be done.
You must practice self-compassion to become stress-free. And with the holidays on the card, it’s the best opportunity to find some quality me-time. This is the time when you can utilize the moments to reconnect with yourself.
You may explore yourself, find new hobbies, do more creative stuff, or reinvent a long-forgotten passion. Do whatever makes you happy.
Moreover, make your holiday a holding space for togetherness where you may give more time to your loved ones, the ones you care for, and vice versa. This not only helps you destress but also makes the holidays wholesome.
Why Do You Feel Stressed During Holidays?
To make things simple, you must understand one thing. That is, we put the stress on ourselves in an attempt to make ourselves too happy during holidays. Isn’t that so true?
You’ll understand more if you check out the following reasons to get overwhelmed during holidays:
1. Cooking Spree
As the holidays are on the horizon, you beat yourself up with a list of dishes you want to cook for your family and guests. This keeps you on your toes for not wanting to miss out on any item that you want to bring to the table.
2. Sending Cards
You don’t know exactly how many people to send holiday cards to when you sit with a handful of cards. The end result- getting lost amid the sea of cards while scratching your head whether anyone’s left yet.
3. Excessive Cost
Holidays come with more gifts, more delicious dishes, decorations, and so on. Being worried abput meeting all these aspects may prove costly, and constantly thinking of it may get you overwhelmed.
4. Making All Perfect
The perfectionism haunts you during holidays to give your loved ones the best of everything; food, gifts, interior, trips— whichever. While it’s never 100% possible, the mere idea of it keeps nagging.
Final Words
Enjoying the holidays with your loved ones is one of the most precious things you may ask for. But getting stressed with its arrangements isn’t done.
Reasons behind holiday stress may vary from person to person. So, find out which aspects of the holiday preparation bug you more, and make sure to implement the tips we have shared to make your upcoming holiday a happy one.
