Conquering Holiday Stress with Relaxation

(image courtesy of "shewrites")

The holidays are a busy time of year. Usually, I'm racing around trying to find last minute gifts for people and prepare for my wife's birthday. This year I have final exercises due for the foundation of my digital media certificate, planning my wife's 30th birthday ugly Christmas sweater bash hosted in a hotel suite, gift buying, secret santa, office and family Christmas party, endless chores and finally plan annual New York trip to visit the in-laws. Seems like it's been difficult to manage it all, but somehow I'm surviving. I did get burnt out in the middle of it all and missed my deadline for certificate's core foundations.

For stress relief, I vegged in front of the couch on Sundays watching pro football. I've been fighting off getting sick again with the sleepless nights, but I've hanged in there.

One of the best things I've done recently was purchase a book off Amazon, "Stress & Relaxation workbook". Over 900,000 copies sold. What I like about this book is the overall practical approach the authors explain to stress and learning different techniques to manage stress. I wish I had found this book earlier, but the good thing is I'm still young and can apply these techniques for life as it only gets harder with age, kids, work, health, and other life stress factors. They say stress is actually a good thing when it motivates us to change and grow, the unhealthy part is when our mind and body has to focus in a stressed mode for too long, like a computer it crashes when it runs out of memory. Or the fight or flight symptoms that go into effect when faced with perceived danger.

Without going too well into the book here are my top favorite recommendations from the book:

• Meditation - Finding a quiet solitary place to escape technology and other bright screens to relax.
• Mindfulness - Observing thoughts and re-framing negative thoughts to positive ones.
• Controlled Breathing - Lowers blood pressure, heart beat, and other stress triggers
• Diet/Exercise - Another way to keep the heart and brain healthy is to get exercise & healthy nutrition
• Yoga - Another way to work on breathing with movement, mindfulness, body relaxation.

I've enjoyed writing more frequently this year than I have in the last few years and hope to keep on growing in 2012. Perhaps with more adventures, hobbies, music instrument learning, laughter, social, spiritual cheer next year. What's that quote? All work and no play, make Jack a dull boy. Heh, funny but true.

If I don't write again in this blog before the year is over... Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays everyone and have a Happy New Year. I hope the time is spent well with loved ones wrapped around the tree, fire, eggnog, sugar cookies, gifts, and laughter.