Browsing the archives for the Holiday Stress tag

17 Dec 12

Beyond Holiday Stress: Steps to Reclaim the Holiday Spirit

by Robert V. Taylor

This blog first appeared on Huffington Post December 17, 2012

If you’re feeling a growing low-level anxiety about holiday stress, you are not alone! The season of joy, peace and goodwill can be reclaimed for you and your family with five intentional choices. The holidays do not have to be endured. Instead, they can be reclaimed by the choices you make!

Rethink family obligations. Like many families, Emily and Carlos have spent many Christmases on an endless shuttle with their kids, going from one family gathering to another. With both sets of their parents divorced and remarried, they felt obligated to attend four different events. After addressing the dread of this stressful routine and the crankiness it produced in their three children, they realized they had a choice. They’ve since chosen to alternate spending the holidays with two sets of parents each year. They have noticed that their choice has already relieved anxiety and stress in thinking about the holidays.

Reclaim joy! Explore possibilities for less stressful holiday experiences by expanding the season. Think about gathering friends and family for a tree-trimming party that might include an activity for children to make decorations for the tree. If your extended circle of family is scattered over the holidays because of travel, consider a January holiday party that has child-friendly games or activities. The spirit of joy is often best experienced when we do not try to cram it into one or two days!

Make a goodwill choice. Talk with your children about what the goodwill of the season means. Listen to their ideas about an act of goodwill that you can make as a family. One family volunteered at an animal rescue shelter because their 6-year-old daughter wanted animals to celebrate the holidays. Another volunteered as a family on a local river cleanup project because their 10-year-old son thought it would be a Christmas gift to the earth. A goodwill choice can become both a family experience and a teaching moment about the spirit of the holidays.

Celebrate peace. The holidays provide an opportunity to talk over the kitchen table about how you and your children think about the holiday theme of “peace on Earth.” The Hebrew understanding of peace — meaning the well-being of all — offers an entry point to conversation.

One 13-year-old expressed his concern about a classmate who was being bullied. He was looking for guidance on how to stop the bullying.

A 7-year-old said she wanted to ask her friends to bring cans of food to their Christmas party because people needed to be fed.

Inviting your family to think about peace and well-being offers the opportunity for unexpected answers from your children and the forging of a family commitment that lasts well beyond the holidays.

Expand your thinking about gifts. In this economy, many families are stressed about how to afford the multitude of gifts that they have been accustomed to buying in the past. For others, the sheer volume of gifts seems overwhelming and stress-producing. One couple has asked their family to join them in only having one wrapped gift for each child. Another has invited their family to buy gifts for only the children in the family. Others have created a holiday ritual of family gift-making, from cookies and jams to artwork. Instead of allowing gift pressure to derail and stress your holiday, creatively rethink how gift-giving can be appreciated and celebrated in new ways.

Any combination of these five steps can become part of a conscious, mindful choice to lower the stress level of the holidays for you, your children and your extended family. Instead of being a victim to holiday stress, choose a proactive path that allows you to enter their spirit and enjoyment!

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16 Nov 12

De-Stress the Holidays

by Robert V. Taylor

This blog first appeared in the Huffington Post, November 16, 2012

Holiday stress is an ironic reality for many. The anxiety that such stress produces is a sharp counterpoint to the holiday spirit of joy, peace, goodwill and gratitude! The good news is that instead of being captive to the stress, our mindful choices invite a de-stressing that is life-giving.

Here are four de-stressors that I and those I work with have experienced as transforming practices for holiday get-together s.

Appreciative Energy. As you prepare for a holiday gathering of friends or family, engage in “appreciative energy.” Visualize each person who will be present and then express your appreciation of one quality about her or him to yourself. For some, you will appreciate several qualities. For the challenging or quirky people in your circle, the act of appreciation allows you to step beyond life-draining energy that the relationship causes and instead allow yourself to enter into life-giving energy.

Be present and aware of the thing you are appreciative of in each person as you get ready to attend the holiday gathering. Your stress level decreases as you allow appreciative energy to ground you.

Spiritual Association. At work in my kitchen preparing for a celebratory gathering I realized that tension among a few guests had created a low-level anxiety and stress in me about how this might be played out in public. As I cooked I used a familiar practice of turning to images from a variety of spiritual traditions and associating one or more with each guest.

The images I associated with each guest included the “One who Plays” and the “Flute-Playing God” from the Hindu tradition, the “Nourisher” from Islam, the Sikh “Destroyer of Fear,” the Christian “Lover of Souls” and the Jewish “God of the Womb” and “God of the Breasts.” These playful, nurturing and tender images created a space in which I could mindfully anticipate each guest. While I could not repair the tension among a few, my stress dissipated in the images revealing something magnificent in each one.

Story Power. If there is a bigoted wildcard among the guests at a gathering, allow your stress to be replaced by the power of your authentic stories. One person I worked with said she was on the verge of withdrawing from family gathering because of the racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic comments of a few. Instead she chose another path. In response to anti-immigrant comments she told a story about the undocumented Latino family she worked with at a local community center. When faced with anti-gay jokes she told the story of attending the wedding of two women colleagues.

Your own story is filled with stories that reveal your joy and delight in the human family. Instead of trying to rebuff the bigot in the family share a story. You will be inviting another person to an unexpected meeting ground of oneness.

Detox Choice. If there is a person whose toxicity is untenable or threatening in some way, make a choice. You are not compelled to attend an event with them or obliged to invite that person to something you are hosting. Remember that in French, the root word for love and courage are the same. If your choice involves invites courage from you it will be an expression of love for yourself and your other guests. And love for yourself and others will be expressed in the courage to choose to detox a gathering.

Holiday stress is an oxymoron. Your choices can de-stress the holidays and allow the spirit of joy, goodwill, gratitude and peace to be present. Along the way seek out those who are grounded in delight, playfulness and wonder. They will become a mirror reflecting those qualities in you.

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2 Dec 10

Enclosed or Enlivened by the Holidays?

by Robert V. Taylor
RObert V. Taylor

Robert V. Taylor

The holiday season is filled with images that either enclose us with stress or offer new insights on being fully alive. There is much to be gleaned for your journey from several traditions.

As we approach the longest and darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere the festivities of Chanukah and Diwali are festivals of light. They each offer images that transform the pressures or stress that many feel about the holidays.

My friend Lori accepted an invitation to celebrate Chanukah. For each of the eights night of Chanukah she participated with her Jewish friends in the lighting of a candle on the nine branched Menorah. Beyond the Dreidels, gifts, the filled doughnuts or potato pancakes known as Latke, Lori discovered unexpected rich meaning in the imagery and mystical understanding of Chanukah.

Lori was transfixed by the Jewish mystical understanding of the lighting of the candles scattering “holy sparks” of light throughout the Universe. Lori and her friends spoke about what it means to be part raising holy sparks in the world.

It was another interpretation that transformed Lori.  As she sang “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh” rising into the air on her heels with each singing, she was being invited to think of being like an angel. The movement symbolized people rising to the level of the angels. With it comes the invitation to think about you as a partner with the Holy – you joining the angels in actions that are part of “God’s to-do-list.”   

Lori’s stress about holiday gifts was transformed by this new image. Now she gives copies of Ron Wolfson’s book God’s To-Do-List: 103 Ways to Be an Angel and Do God’s Work on Earth to her friends.  Instead of buying gifts at the holidays Lori commits herself to taking one action a week in the name of a friend to spread some holy sparks of light in the world. She approaches the holidays differently because of the unexpected truth she gleaned from a Jewish tradition.

This gleaning opened Lori’s eyes to the traditions of other friends and colleagues. Hearing her speak about her Chanukah insight, Lori’s Hindu neighbors invited her to participate in Diwali, the Festival of Lights that is a major celebration for Hindu’s and Sikh’s. 

Beyond the fireworks, the lighting of candles, the new clothes and feasting on sweets, Lori discovered that the festivities pointed to celebrating the triumph of good over evil. Over the five days of celebrating Diwali for the first time Lori understood that this light is about the inner light in each of us; a light illuminating the oneness of all things. Lori understood that Diwali is an invitation to reflect this light through being compassionate.

Acts of compassion, angel to-do-lists combined with light scattering holy sparks and rekindling your inner light – these were the gifts of Diwali and Chanukah. Lori wondered where all she had gleaned connected with the reading from John’s Gospel about the “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Lori talks about her own spiritual tradition renewed and strengthened by all she has gleaned. Her experience of the holidays has been transformed. The enclosures of anxiety and stress have been opened to life-giving images. Isn’t that what the holidays point to?

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