{"id":479,"date":"2022-12-12T11:24:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T11:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2023-01-18T18:46:57","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T18:46:57","slug":"saying-no-to-holiday-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/saying-no-to-holiday-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying No to Holiday Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter working full-time and raising two young children as a single mother, I went to see my doctor.&nbsp; I was tired and achy, and couldn\u2019t seem to shake my flu-like symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Woodward looked over my chart and said, \u201cDo you know that you have been to see me for the last five years &#8211; always at this time of year?\u201d&nbsp; (It was mid-December.)&nbsp; \u201cYou probably need to lessen your stress at holiday time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ha, I thought!&nbsp; Easier said than done.&nbsp; But, of course, he was right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One might be a state legislator, or a company CEO, or a waitress, or a full-time mother working at home. &nbsp; It doesn\u2019t matter. It seems that most women feel driven to provide the \u201cperfect\u201d holiday season for our families.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps because our mothers did that, we daughters take up the Yuletide mantle.&nbsp; Interestingly, most men do not.&nbsp; Are men ever asked, \u201cAre you ready for Christmas?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My children are grown now, and they have given me lovely grandchildren.&nbsp; But a niggle of anxiety still pops up each year after Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is on the horizon.&nbsp; Or, as the English playwright Noel Coward famously said, \u201cChristmas is at our throats again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;I was interested, therefore, in an article published recently in <em>Her Money<\/em> that was titled \u201c19 Female Leaders on Saying No to Holiday Stress.\u201d&nbsp; Some of their advice was quite useful, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Use Your Hands for Something Besides Typing on a Keyboard or Tapping a Screen<\/strong>.&nbsp; Bake some family recipes, perhaps, or start a home renovation project, or just play with your pet.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Outsource What You Can<\/strong>.&nbsp; Have your holiday dinner catered or buy the side dishes at the grocery store.&nbsp; You could even hire professionals to decorate the outside of your house.&nbsp; Even better, skip the decorating and enjoy touring your neighborhood to view &nbsp; others\u2019 lights and tinsel.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Don\u2019t Be Afraid to Say \u2018No\u2019<\/strong>.&nbsp; Parties and other Yule events are back this year after more than two years of Covid cancellations. Still, if you don\u2019t <em>really<\/em>, <em>really <\/em>want to attend, just say no.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Set <\/strong>\u2013 <strong>and Stick to \u2013 Strong Boundaries<\/strong>. Put your holiday working hours in your email signature so it\u2019s very clear when you will \u2013 and won\u2019t \u2013 be available.&nbsp; Also, take some time off. It\u2019s OK.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Find Your Non<\/strong>&#8211;<strong>Negotiables.&nbsp; <\/strong>It<strong> <\/strong>might be meditating, or walking every morning, or journaling, or taking an hour each week to catch up with a loved one. Don\u2019t let these go by the boards.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Set Working-from-Home Boundaries.&nbsp; <\/strong>If you work from home, keep your work confined to a home office or a separate space.&nbsp; And don\u2019t multitask between meetings, such as throwing in a load of laundry.&nbsp; This \u201ccontext shifting\u201d takes your focus away from work, thereby taking longer to get back in the zone.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Leave Town.&nbsp; <\/strong>One of the best holidays I ever had was taking my son to Costa Rica, where his sister was studying at the time.&nbsp; No holiday cards, no cooking, no shopping that year. The trip was our Christmas, and it was a wonderful, stress-free holiday.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Make the Holidays What You Want, Not What\u2019s Expected.&nbsp; <\/strong>If you love going all-out decorating and cooking and gift-buying, have at it.&nbsp; But if that stresses you, do minimal decorating or none at all.&nbsp; Ditto for holiday cooking.&nbsp; And, do some of your shopping online, something we\u2019ve all gotten expert at since Covid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, I\u2019ll add one of my own.&nbsp; <strong>Skip the Christmas Cards<\/strong> (mostly).&nbsp; This year, instead of my usual 25 or 30, I\u2019m sending three:&nbsp; to two friends in New Zealand and to my daughter\u2019s in-laws in Ireland.&nbsp; International only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter working full-time and raising two young children as a single mother, I went to see my doctor.&nbsp; I was tired and achy, and couldn\u2019t seem to shake my flu-like symptoms. Dr. Woodward looked over my chart and said, \u201cDo you know that you have been to see&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}