Recovering From Christmas

 

I wish I could get a dollar or a pound (but probably not a euro…) for every time which I said that ‘Christmas is stressful’!

However good or stressful your Christmas was, it is important to be able to put it behind you and move on.  If you had a great Christmas then you still need to move on – you need to keep that success going in your life and make sure that it follows you into the new year.  If, on the other hand, you were please to put your head down on 26^th and hope that the decorations would soon be out of sight – don’t worry – that’s normal!

 

I love the fact that Christmas comes just before New Year.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually can’t stand New Year, but I do look forward to my New Years resolutions.  I think it is a great time to clear the decks and start again.  It is definitely a time to learn from our mistakes and understand the lessons behind those mistakes.

I shall tell you before you read further, that I can’t really tell you my resolutions, but I can tell you how I choose them and help you through that process.

Firstly, I write a little list of all the things which irritated me at Christmas.  This is not a verbose list – just a couple of words per point eg:

1. Too much food
2. Don’t buy cheap champagne
3. Don’t like the kids of Mr and Mrs Xyz

 

The list is quite long … but none of the things are particularly big.

Then I write a list of everything I am dreading doing at the moment, this is a really important thing – perhaps it is telephoning your mother or visiting your neighbour – it doesn’t matter what it is; write it down.

The things on these two lists are the things which don’t make me happy – but for some reason I still do them.  On closer inspection I usually find that many of them are hard to stop, I am some how obliged, mentally, physically or circumstantially to do them.  Obviously that doesn’t include buying cheap champagne, but seeing someone kids, ringing my mother or seeing the neighbour!

My New Years resolutions are all about managing these things; and this is how I do it.

Too Much Food

This did really irritate me – in my desire to minimise stress I thought that having covered all eventualities would make it easier – in fact I found the shopping stressful and then I worried that the food would go to waste.  I had written a pretty comprehensive menu for Christmas week – and looking back at it, the food which was not needed was the extras which were not on the menu.  So from this I get my first new years resolutions:

Write a weekly menu before you do your weekly shop – always trust that you have got it right.

I recon that this will save me money and stress.

Don’t Buy Cheap Champagne

I have just worked out how many bottles of Champagne I bought last year: my birthday, my partners birthday, 2 for Christmas, 2 for New Year, 2 for house warming gifts for friends, I also opened to 2 at BBQs I threw.  That’s 10 bottles of Champagne for the year.  So if I bought a case I would probably be fine for the year.  And do you know when the best deals are available on Champagne?  Either when people are trying to shift their stock just before New Year, of just after, when they need the shelf space.  So this year  I am going to buy my Champagne for the year at a whole case.  I will make sure that I get a discount by buying a case and I will get the best quality I can afford with the biggest discount.  Resolution number 2:

Buy Champagne by the case and when it is on offer

Friends with difficult kids!

We all know families, where we love the adults, but the kids are a bit of a nightmare.  So how do we avoid these situations?  This is a containment resolution – accept that if you can’t avoid them completely, but there are some things you can do.  I have two sons and when we have another family around for a BBQ it is easy to end up with 5 slightly hyper kids.  This is my solution.  I cook them slightly different food.  I tend to make it less spicy, I also cook theirs first, this creates a natural break between the adult meal and kids meal.  Then I always have an activity set up for them – either a film or a game on the Playstation.  Resolution number 3:

Always plan for difficult kids

Telephoning my mother

My mother is ill, and sometimes I find it terribly stressful talking to her.  It was my partner who solved this one for me.  Unless there is a special event, birthdays, Christmas, Easter etc – I only ring once a week.  I normally ring on a Thursday afternoon, as it fits in with all our schedules, but a Sunday around 11am also works.  It is really rare that I can’t make one of these times, and by knowing when I am going to ring, I can make myself a coffee (usually buy myself a cake as a treat) and sit down and get it over and done with.  Since I am calmer when I call I find it much easier to cope if she is in a bad way.  Having a schedule means that I have stopped ringing the day after a bad call to see if things are any better; the problem with this was that I got stuck in a cycle of ringing hoping to find that one day she would feel better – when deep down I know that it is unlikely.  Resolution number:

Set times for tasks you don’t like.

 

I go through the whole of my list of issues this way and this is how I create my New Years resolution – and it really works!

For other ideas about getting through each day, check out the book below – it is really short and super cheap

Learn to STOP Panic Attacks

This is a step by step guide to Panic Attacks with simple exercises to help control them and take back control of your life.This is a step by step guide to Panic Attacks with simple exercises to help control them and take back control of your life.