The Holiday Season can be a wonderful time of the year with the lovely decorations, exchanging of gifts, visiting with friends and family as well as the lovely meals. For many of us, the Holiday Season can also be quite overwhelming with all the added activities of this time of year such as decorating our homes, selecting, buying, wrapping and exchanging gifts with those in our lives and hosting our friends and family while we prepare multi-course elaborate meals! The question is, What can we do to Overcome Overwhelm during the Holidays?

1. Simplify Your Life
Holidays that are full of complexity sounds neither fun nor comfortable. It can easily contribute to feeling overwhelmed. We can be invited to numerous events and want to host others ourselves. Although these activities can be very wonderful experiences, there can be too many for us to prepare for and attend to in a short period of time. There is also the gifts selecting, wrapping and delivery. And then there is the house decorating and potentially traveling to visit with friends and family across the country. Keeping the holidays simple with a manageable number of events to attend and/or host, can greatly contribute to Overcoming Overwhelm during the Holidays.

2. Practice Extreme Self Care
In our fast paced world, many times our physical bodies are the very last consideration in terms of priority. We drag our bodies around nonstop and we can be indifferent to signs of exhaustion. When we practice extreme self care, our mind, body and spirit are much more likely to assist us in our other efforts by providing strong support including energy, enthusiasm and presence. With extreme self care our energy is up, our confidence is up and we feel much more positive. Some examples of self-care activities include sufficient sleep, quiet time, exercise, healthy food, joyful recreation etc. Often during the holidays, some of our self-care activities can be put on hold with all the hustle and bustle of the season. Taking the best care of ourselves during the Holiday Season can contribute greatly to Overcoming Overwhelm during the Holidays.

3. Celebrate The Unique You
Sometimes there can be things on our to-do list that we feel that we should or must do that we really dont enjoy doing or does not leverage our best skills. These things can end up being delayed or undone, or if taken on, can contribute to frustration or overwhelm. Instead, we can consider whether there is someone else who can take care of the item for us or determine if the activity really needs to be done at this time.

There are many events and activities that we can participate in during the holidays on top of regular life activities. If we don't know what we really want during the Holiday Season, then it will be much harder to say no to invitations that are not in alignment with our desires. Defining clearly our preferences in writing is a great place to start. By sharing our desired Holiday Season with our life partner, asking them what their desired Holiday Season is and integrating these two collaboratively, you have a plan the two of you can action and support together for the Holiday Season. Celebrating the Unique You, by respecting and celebrating your desired Holiday Season, can greatly contribute to Overcoming Overwhelm and experiencing more power, serenity and joy during the Holiday Season.

(c) 2003 Donna P. Lendzyk