Holiday seasons are times of the year when people try to shake off the fatigue and stress of long days of work or study. However, they sometimes become a source of stress in themselves. Have you ever experienced stress or felt tired during the holidays? Well, there are a lot of reasons standing behind that. This article is intended to provide you with 7 ways of how to reduce stress during holidays this year.
Before going through the 7 secrets of reducing holiday stress, let’s first see what might cause one to get stressed on holidays. Some people might get stressed because they spend their holidays alone, having nothing to do, and getting overwhelmed with emptiness. Also, spending a lot of money on holidays can get people stressed as they worry about their budgets and excessive expenses. For parents, spending holidays with children can cause stress as children are sometimes unmanageable. Stress can come with the noise that accompanies relatives who usually gather for holidays. These things along with bad holiday habits such as overeating and over-drinking increase levels of stress.
To overcome these sources of holiday stress, try these 7 ways:
Sleep
During days of work or attending college, you might fall short of sleep. Having to stay late at the office, staying up to study for exams, or waking up early to make it to work or college on time leave you with little time to sleep and eventually get you stressed. The only way to make up for that lack of sleep is sleeping on holidays. However, you may get too indulged in activities like partying and hanging out with friends that you will add to the already-existing stress. This is why you sometimes get stressed on holidays. So, to get rid of that and reduce stress, you need to allocate enough time for you to get at least 8 hours of sleep. It is proved that sleep plays a major role in reducing stress.
Manage Kids
If you have kids, holidays might bring a lot of stress to them. They may get too excited about holidays, make too many demands, become over-active, and thus difficult to control. You can manage this situation in different ways. Try to make a holiday schedule with your kids planning for what you can do on this holiday. This way, you help them expect what is coming, manage their demands, and compromise. Create activities that you can share your kids with. This way you’ll have a good time with them, monitor them, and avoid getting stressed over leaving the kids on their own.
Plan for Expenses
Holiday stress has to do with the huge budget one needs on holidays. Expenses can go excessive due to parties, travel, gifts, etc. To avoid financial stress, plan for your holiday expenses. You can, for example, buy the gifts ahead of time, and you can make use of offers and sales for the occasion. Parties don’t have to be in fancy restaurants or places to be good. You can arrange for a lovely and small barbecue party at your home, for example. If you want to travel somewhere far or expensive, you can plan for yourself and your friends or relatives, suggest the place and share the expenses with them. Booking hotels or flight tickets ahead of time might save you a lot of money.
Go for Healthy Food and Moderate Drinking
Stress increases when you get yourself out of the usual routine or proportions of food and drinks. People sometimes eat a lot or take a lot of caffeinated or alcoholic drinks which make their bodies unrest, let alone the huge quantities of sugar or unhealthy fat in those foods or drinks. Indeed, holidays are the time for treats and time to reward yourself, but you should be moderate. Take sweets, alcohol, and caffeine in moderate quantities separating them with healthy meals.
Exercise and Relaxation
It might be tempting to spend your holidays sitting or lying on your couch, but this won’t help your body get rid of the stress and fatigue of the days of work and study. Lack of movement can be a cause of a kind of depression or stress. Therefore, to reduce holiday stress, get yourself to move. You don’t have to go to the gym and exhaust yourself. Start your day with simple exercises like walking and breathing deeply. Doing yoga can be helpful in relieving stress, muscle tension, and mental fatigue. Thus, try these activities to get yourself relaxed.
Have Fun and Good Time
Many people suffer stress during holidays because they exhaust themselves planning and preparing for the occasion. You see them rushing for shopping, cooking, cleaning, sending invitations, etc. They forget that the holidays are about having fun and a good time with friends and family. Instead of all those exhausting chores, plan for a close and warm gathering with family or going to a club or restaurant with friends where you can dance, talk and laugh, for example.
Keep it Simple and Realistic
Another reason for stress during holidays is that people forget to be realistic. They plan for dozens of things they want to do on holidays. Keep in mind that you cannot do everything, meet everyone, buy everything or travel everywhere on a holiday; otherwise, you will get stressed with the huge number of things you want to do. To reduce your stress, be realistic, and make your plan for the holiday simple. Plan to do one thing each holiday. This way, you will have fun and do a different thing each time.
If you take the above 7 practices, you will be able to enjoy a holiday free of stress.
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