Seven Suggestions To Help You Survive Holiday Stress
I woke up in the morning with indigestion. As I switched on the lamp on the bedside table with one hand, I popped two anti-acids into my mouth with the other. Here we go again. This is no doubt the most stressful holiday season I have ever experienced. As if the holiday stress that usually accompanies this time of year is not enough, this year I will also technically be “homeless.”
Nine months ago we decided that it was time to downsize. We optimistically put our authentically renovated farmhouse here in the south of France, with 22 acres of meadows and woods, on the market. It was time to find somewhere to live where the maintenance was less physically challenging with our four horses and four cats. Two months later, the house was sold, but it took our buyer until now to secure his mortgage. It was an unbearably stressful time because we could not buy the house we wanted until we had sold our home. The owner of our dream house finally decided earlier this month that he was going to sell to someone else.
We have sold our house, and we shall have to move out. Now the two of us, our four horses and our four cats, have nowhere to go. Finding somewhere to rent with enough land for four horses here in deepest rural France, at this time of the year, is going to be extremely difficult. Same goes for buying another house. People here take their properties off the market during the winter. Also, it legally takes at least two to three months for a house sale to go through here, so even if we did find another house to buy, the first months of 2020 are going to be unimaginably stressful.
Something similar happened to us 5 years ago. By trial and error, I developed a coping strategy during those suffocatingly stressful months and even wrote a book about it. It might well be a simple strategy, but it is not easy to implement. A certain amount of effort is required, as well as persistence, determination, focus and commitment.
As a medical doctor, I often saw patients suffering from stress-induced conditions during the holidays. I advised them to:
- Eat a healthy and well-balanced diet
- Get enough sleep every night
- Exercise regularly
- Limit their use of coffee, alcohol and recreational drugs
- Spend time in nature
Easy to say, but not so easy to do, as I know from personal experience. The first five suggestions are particularly challenging for most of us this time of the year. Most of us end up eating and drinking much more than we planned to do and then make desperate New Year’s resolutions in an attempt to get back on the straight and narrow. Our sleeping patterns are disturbed because of all the late-night parties we (have to) attend. As for exercise, who has either the time or the will? Spending time in nature is not very appealing either when it has rained non-stop for weeks and going outside means slipping-and-sliding through ever-deepening mud.
Nevertheless, these six suggestions remain the cornerstones of my own holiday stress management strategy. I do my best to follow my own recommendations, sometimes with more success than other times. What never fails me is to practice mindful gratitude and generosity.
The easiest way to get all the benefits associated with a daily gratitude practice is to keep a gratitude journal. The idea is to cultivate a gratitude habit. It usually takes six weeks to adopt a new habit. If you start today you will still be well on your way to a habit of gratitude by Valentine’s Day. All you have to do is to write down what you are thankful for in your diary, every day.
Maybe you already tried to keep a gratitude journal but did not feel noticeably less stressed. You are not the only one who had that experience. The same thing happened to me. So I did further research and discovered that the full stress-busting benefits of daily expressing your gratitude depend on:
- Going for quality rather than quantity. Writing about one or two things in great detail is much more effective than making a bullet point list of ten things.
- Writing about the people you appreciate is more effective than making a list of possessions you value.
- Taking your time to ponder what you are grateful for is essential. Gratitude journaling is much less effective when you rush to make your list.
- Putting gratitude into action by being generous. Sharing your blessings with others is a habit that you can cultivate at the same time as you develop a gratitude habit. Simply choose a few random acts of kindness that you commit to do each day.
- Adding mindfulness to the mix: to notice what you are grateful for, and to be generous, you have to be mindfully aware of what is going on around you.
The end-of-year holidays can be extremely stressful. But it is also a time when developing a gratitude and generosity habit can be easier than any other time of the year. Even in the most stressful circumstances, we can always find something to be grateful for. Even if it is only that we are still breathing. When I can’t think of anything that I am thankful for, I do a mindfulness meditation focusing on my breathing. It never fails to calm me down. It helps me to see my situation from a different perspective and to find solutions to my problems.
Wishing you the very best for the New Year!
What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet. Anne Frank
Dr Margaretha Montagu is a recycled medical doctor, a rogue writer of self-help books and passable presenter of mindfulness and meditation retreats with horses. She lives on a small farm in the not-always sun-blessed south of France with four opinionated horses and two battle-scarred dragons. All her books are horse-inspired, subtly French- flavoured and hopefully life-enriching. To connect with Margaretha, her horses and her dragons, follow her here on Medium or subscribe to her blog.
