Beat the pre-Christmas stress
Christmas is fast approaching, and although it should be a time of peace and quiet, do you rather curl up in a ball and wake up in January? Pre-Christmas stress can affect you even though you don’t experience Christmas itself that much – you feel like you have to buy presents, clean, cook, bake, and still manage to finish everything at work. How to best manage this stress?
Write down your priorities
If you have some activities left to complete and you think they are really necessary, write them down on a list and decide what needs to be done sooner rather than later, what will be quick and what will take more time. Check off the completed items one by one to see how you’re doing. You will see that it will not be such a horror. If you still have the last gifts to buy, make a shopping list so that you go shopping on the safe side and don’t waste time choosing from stores. It’s busy everywhere before Christmas and if you don’t want to queue, see if you can order something online and just pick it up somewhere.
Set aside time to relax and do nothing
Christmas is mainly about enjoying it with our loved ones, putting our feet up for a while and finally doing nothing. That’s why you should add rest and well-deserved idleness to your list of priorities. Put on a Christmas movie, read a nice book or go for a walk through the decorated town. Whatever form of relaxation you choose, mainly try to turn off your head for a while and do nothing, it will do you good.
Don’t forget about health
Although Christmas is a holiday of peace, don’t forget to stretch a little between all the food. Sport is beneficial not only for the body, but also for the mind. Therefore, if you feel that you are stressed, do yoga, go for a walk or go to the pool. Movement will help you flush out endorphins, which are turned upside down by stress. Use your free time to go on a trip with your family or friends, which will help you forget the stress better.
Help each other
We should help each other all year round, but this applies twice at Christmas. Help your partner or an older family member with baking cookies or pre-Christmas cleaning, it will give you a good feeling that will relieve your stress for a while. Don’t deal with expensive gifts that stress many of us, don’t panic and buy nonsense at the last minute just to give someone a lavish gift. Instead, try to give something that really makes the person happy and don’t forget that the best gift is your time and a nice smile.
Make no mistake about it
Forget about the fact that your gingerbread has hardened, you didn’t have time to finish baking the rolls and wash the windows. Do you really think the world is going to fall apart just because you didn’t get the most beautiful Christmas tree? In the end, it doesn’t matter that you only bought 6 presents instead of 10, or that you don’t have every window in the house decorated. The most important thing is that you are together, that you can meet again in good health, without arguments and without stress. After all, that’s what Christmas is really about.
If you would like to read more tips on how to manage stress, our MBA studies lecturer, Radka Loja, she published a great article on this topic.
