3 Tips To Manage Pre-Christmas Stress

And here we are – coming to the end of the year. If you are feeling a bit stressed and overwhelmed, you’re not alone.

After having been in lockdown for months once more this year, it can all seem a bit much to get back into the normal life and prepare for the end of the year and Christmas. There is all the excitement of meeting friends and family again, squeezing it all into the diary and for lot of us it also means preparing for a well-deserved Christmas celebration as well. But instead of feeling joy, we start to feel stress creeping up on us.

Here are 3 tips and tricks that I found to be helpful myself:

Take time to Breathe

A few times per day stop for a 3-4 cycles of conscious breathing. Breathing in through your nose and slowly breathing out through your mouth with pursed lips, making the exhalation a bit longer than the inhalation.

This puts our body into the calmer part of the nervous system and allows us to slow down. I tend to do that 3-4 times throughout the day. You can even set a reminder alarm on your phone to help you to remember to do it.

Appreciate Nature

Paying attention to nature outside. Whenever I am outside, either for a walk, or when being on an errand I make a point of noticing any trees or flowers. Right now with all the rain we had everything is so lush and green and I noticed a lot of purple flowers around. Appreciating the beauty of nature helps me every time to calm down and become more grounded again

Practice Gratitude

Every night when I go to bed I make a point of thinking of three things I have been grateful for that day. That could be something beautiful I’ve seen, something I achieved or finished, a friend I met with. It allows me to take stock of the day and really appreciate the day for what it was, instead of getting a sense that it just passed by in a blur of activity.

In Summary

The time around Christmas and the New Year is such a special time of the year and it doesn’t matter if you are religious or not. It’s just a sense that the year does come to an end and most of us are going to have a break. It’s a time to take stock of the year that has been and making plans for the year to come. So it is sad if in the weeks leading up to it we get stressed out to make it all as perfect as possible. Maybe, it’s time to embrace imperfection, allow ourselves to just be and let go of stress.

For more information on stress, you can also read this post http://infinitehealth.net.au/the-secret-life-of-stress/