It’s that time of year when the world falls in love. You’d like to enjoy every holiday jingle you hear, but the only message you’re getting is. . . Yikes! I have so much to do to get ready for the season! I am making a list and yes, I am checking it twice. How will I get everything done?
If you can relate, your goal this holiday season might be similar to mine: to stay healthy without sacrificing my love for the season, my family and the work with my clients. I’m going to share how I plan to accomplish my goal and inspire you do the same.
Take care of your body. We all know how important is to eat right, sleep, and exercise, but too often we think we can forgo the rules in favor of fitting everything in. This might work for a few weeks before these sacrifices in the health category catch up with us, finding us run down or sick over the holiday season you worked so hard to enjoy.
Most of us think that a great way to accomplish it all is to stay up late and forgo the full 8 to 9 hours of sleep experts tell us are needed to keep our mind and body healthy. Jeff Iliff, Neuroscientist in his Ted talk on sleep, tells us that sleep is our brains way of eliminating waste. Bottom line, if we don’t get enough sleep our brain is constipated. No wonder we are foggy and lack focus and decision-making ability when we are sleep deprived!
Sacrificing exercise for work is another bad idea that will catch up to us sooner than later. Most find themselves at too many holiday parties with a lot of temptations and the mindset that you’ll recharge and start anew in the new year. But why wait? The benefits of regular cardio, stretching and weight training are valuable every day to help your brain be pumped up and primed for thinking.
As far as food, I won’t even go there this time of year. It is better to concentrate on just a few good holiday habits rather than thinking we are going to put them all into practice. If we’re too unrealistic with our goals, we end up accomplishing none while we’re waiting for the day when we can do it all.
Take care of your mind. First start by saying no to accomplishing everything on your list. Decide which things are really important by contemplating the intent of each item. For instance, if sending out cards and a letter is something you have to do, think again! There are no rules when it comes to those kind of holiday to-dos. Chances are, your work list also has many items that are in the nice versus mandatory category.
Once you have deleted some items, think about what you will delegate and what you can diminish. Face it, you just won’t be able to do everything on the list. After you have deleted, delegated, and diminished your tasks, make a plan of attack that allows you to follow point number one.
A great step in taking care of your mind is to pause daily for prayer and/or meditation. Harvard Researchers are finding that daily meditation after just 8 weeks, makes a positive difference in our brain and gives us stress-fighting ability. According to an article in the Washington Post, researchers are not exactly sure how many minutes a day are needed. The guidelines suggest between 10 and 40 minutes will do the trick.
Take care of your relationships. This task is just as important as the self-care above for body and mind. The trick is to do each of these three items without sacrificing any. So how do we do that? We approach this by communicating and collaborating not controlling and manipulating. Just like in our tasks, consider the intent behind your communication with others. Listen to the needs and wants of others and then compromise.
Many of us confuse listening with reloading so we can get our point across and win the conversation. Again, there is no win or lose when it comes to respectful, caring relationships. Mark Waldman, co-author of Words can Change Your Brain, offers his followers a method for communication and collaborating with others in his book and on his website. Check it out for a stress-free way for collaborative communication.
The good news is that when we practice these three tasks through the holidays, they will help us have a healthy and vibrant 2016 as well!