Let’s be honest- the holidays can be tough. Sometimes they’re even tougher because we think that they SHOULDN’T be tough. 

This time of year is a complicated one. We get filled with all this propaganda that this is a time for everything to be perfect. Christmas movies always end in joy and fulfillment. Pinterest boards of people with perfect holiday decorations. Family or friend visits where you’re supposed to feel connected and happy. 

But then suddenly we find ourselves turning into our 13-year-old selves around our family, getting deeply disappointed about a gift we received, feeling disconnected and stressed, feeling overwhelmed by an expectation that didn’t turn out the way we wanted. 

No, you are not alone. No, you are not broken. The holidays are a hard time of year, precisely because we go into them believing that they will be perfect and joyful, so we don’t prepare any strategies for how to get through them. 

So, before you enter another Holiday season that leaves you in tears, let’s talk about some ways that you can make it through this season.

Manage your expectations

The expectations we feel at this time of year can often knock us off track and leave us feeling disenchanted. The holiday propaganda is real and it’s hard not to wish for the “perfect,” decorations, family, gifts, experiences. So, before you start your celebrations, take a step back and look at your situation realistically. 

If you tend to feel uncomfortable around extended family, don’t expect that things will go smoothly just because of the season. If your partner isn’t a good gift buyer, don’t get upset if you don’t receive what you wanted. If you only have 4 free hours this week, don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t bake all the cookies, have perfect decorations, AND buy the perfect present for everyone you know. 

When we take a step back, we’re able to be more realistic about what to expect this season. It’s okay for everything to not be perfect. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable sometimes. When we change what we expect to include the uncomfortable, we won’t get so emotionally thrown off when something doesn’t turn out perfectly. 

Meet your own needs

One of the hardest things about this season is that we expect the magic and connection we felt when we were children. However, when we were kids, we had parents whose job was to make sure that we were cared for. We didn’t have to stress about making food, organizing visits, or planning anything. 

But we’re adults now. Unfortunately a lot of the jobs of making the Holidays good fall to us. And our own needs can often fall through the cracks. Add to that the childhood feeling that someone SHOULD be caring for our needs, and we have a recipe for disaster.  

So, before you start your holidays, take a moment to figure out what you need. Write a list of what would make you feel good for the next couple of weeks, and then beside each item, write down how you can fulfill that need. Don’t be afraid to communicate clearly and ask for help from those who are close to you, but let go of the expectation that it’s their job to solve your problems.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

The Holidays come with the expectation that we can do it all and be it all. There are more obligations at this time of year than at any other time, and it’s easy to get caught up in the stress of how much there is to “do.”

Go back to your list of what needs you need to meet this season. If someone asks you to do something and it doesn’t align with what you need to feel good, then say NO. You’re allowed to say no! It’s not selfish! In fact, caring for yourself will actually make the world around you better. 

When we practice self-care then we’re able to be more loving and giving to others. We do things from a place of joy, rather than resentment. If we rush around, all stressed out with our obligations, then we’re not able to do the one thing this season is meant for, which is to CONNECT with those we love. 

Get back in your body

When we’re surrounded by the energy of others, combined with all the obligations of the season, it's a recipe for stress. Stress moves us from our bodies to our heads, where we go into fight or flight to combat “danger.” When we use strategies to get back into our bodies, we get out of fight or flight and into a state of presence. 

When you feel yourself getting overwhelmed and stressed, the best thing to do is to BREATHE. Focus on the breath, deepen it and slow it down. Soften your gaze and count your breaths. This will bring you back into the state of mindfulness you need to be in connection. 

Make sure you take the time to move your body this season. Sitting around and overeating is the standard practice during this time. If you want to feel better and stay out of fight or flight, make sure you move your body! Take the time to go for walks, do yoga, or dance around. This will help you get out of your head and combat stress. 

Practice gratitude

No matter what situation you’re in, there is always something to be grateful for. Everything could turn out absolutely “terribly,” but there’s always something you can find that’s beautiful. Even if your holiday just blew up in your face, you’re still breathing and alive. Tomorrow is another day, and it just may turn out to be the best day of your life! 

The amazing thing about gratitude is that it actually rewires your brain. The more you practice gratitude, the more beauty you see in life. When you focus on the good instead of the bad, your physiology actually starts to change. You start to feel more feelings of joy and fulfillment and then see even more to be grateful for. 

So if you’re in a situation this season where something is uncomfortable, take a deep breath and silently list 3 things that you are grateful for at that moment. There will always be something good. It’s amazing how quickly that can change your perspective and reduce your stress. 

You’re going to be okay

The Holidays are just a condensed version of life. There is “more,” of everything. More experiences, more obligations, more people, more food, more desires. But that also means that there is more capacity for joy! 

When we approach the Holidays in a balanced way with good strategies, our whole experience of it can change. Rather than getting caught up in expectations and stress, we can experience the full gifts of the season.

Currently, the world is in a state of difficulty, and one of the only solutions we have is for everyone to stay in their homes for the sake of public health. There’s only so much Netflix you can watch before you start crawling up the walls, so here are a couple of creative things you can do it mix it up while you wait this out.

  Purge Your Home

You're home now, so why not spend some time making it feel terrific? I'm sure that there are corners of your house that haven't been touched in years, so now's the perfect time to do a purge and deep clean. 

Go through each area of your house and touch every object that's there. My rule of thumb is that if I haven't used it in the last two years, or I don't have an idea for its use in the next six months, I'll donate it.

Once you've removed everything that isn't useful, rearrange the space to make it feel fresh. Go around the whole house until each area feels useful and exactly how you want it.

Write Appreciation Notes

We're all feeling the burden of isolation right now, and everyone could stand to feel a little extra love. Instead of writing emails or social media messages, switch it up and go old school.

Get a pad of paper and take some time to write a letter to each person in your life you care for. Write down all of the things that you love and appreciate about them. Good memories you have of them, how they make your life better, how special you think they are.

Even if you're not able to mail them right away, just the act of physically writing down beautiful things about others is guaranteed to make you feel better about the world. And once you can mail it, you can bet that it will make those people feel special that you took that time.

Deck of Pain

Want to stay fit even though you're at home? Here's something we've been doing every day; it's called "Deck of Pain." Anyone can do this as long as you have a deck of playing cards.

Since there are four suits in a deck, choose four exercises you want to do that day, e.g., sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and jumping jacks. It's great if you choose four things that target different areas of your body. Assign each exercise to one of the suites.

Flip through the deck of cards one by one, and do the corresponding number of reps and type of movement the card designates. For example, if you choose a 4 of hearts, and the heart suite is sit-ups, you do four sit-ups.

Face cards count as reps of 10, and for Aces, we've been holding Plank for 2 minutes. We change up the movements daily. The whole thing should take about 30 minutes, and by the end, you'll have done about 70 reps of each exercise, and you can feel like a rockstar for staying fit during quarantine! 

Pictionary Telephone

Pictionary Telephone is a game that my friends and I used to play in person, but it can be done remotely. The first person writes down any sentence they feel like. Like, "The iguana ate a giant bug." They send this to the next person in the chain.

The next person quickly draws a picture describing the sentence. It's often hilarious because not everyone is great at drawing. They send the drawing to the next person in line.

The next person writes a sentence describing what the drawing is, and sends it on. Then the next person draws that sentence; then, the next person writes it out, etc. This goes on until it makes it's way back to the original person who wrote the sentence.

The final sequence is then shown to everyone. The results are HILARIOUS and are guaranteed to make you laugh. No time you play it is ever the same, and it's a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

Start Something You've Been Putting Off

We all have that one thing that we keep saying we'd like to do but haven't touched yet. Starting your first novel, taking up beadwork, planning your garden, learning a new dance move, redecorating your living room, wood whittling, learning Spanish… Now is the time people!

It is hard to be forced to be home. So let's find what we can get excited about during this time, instead of just sinking into the couch and watching the 100th episode of that show you're binging.

Not only does creativity reduce stress, but accomplishing goals will help you feel like things are going to be okay, and that there's a future though all this. By using this time to be productive, we'll be that much more prepared to rebuild and support the world around us as soon as we're able to leave our homes again.

In the last week, the coronavirus has escalated from a serious issue to a world pandemic. Governments are implementing never-before thought of travel bans, isolation practices, and extreme measures to try and control this thing. If you're not feeling at least a little bit afraid by now, you're in the minority. 

I'm currently stuck in Utila, Honduras, a place I never thought I'd be during a global crisis. While I'm on a relatively safe island with pretty good food security, the situation keeps getting scarier. The regulations are getting stricter with each passing day, and it's a big unknown around how badly this will escalate.

At this moment in time, the Honduran government has cut our island off from the rest of the country. The grocery stores have been picked over, with no news of when they'll send more supplies to us. Paper mask and glove-wearing military personnel are roaming the island, enforcing an 8 pm curfew, and dispelling large groups of people. You can go to jail if they catch you drinking, with fines if they find you in groups of over 30.

Although this island grows a bunch of its food and we might be completely fine (even way better off than some places), it's hard not to get caught up in patterns of fear about all of the terrifying things that could happen during this. However, being afraid doesn't help anyone; in fact, it makes things way worse. So what can we do when we get stuck in fear?

Take Time To Process

Nothing ever got solved by pretending it doesn't exist. What's happening right now is a big deal, so take the time to sit with it and feel whatever you're feeling. It's okay to feel freaked out or worried for a bit, as long as you don't let those feelings control you.

Take the time to think critically and get educated about what's going on. Stop listening to hype news that sells headlines by telling you how awful everything is. Read the science, listen to people who are experts, and do what they recommend.

However, once you've gotten educated and prepared about the situation, let it go. You control your thoughts; your thoughts don't control you. Once you know that there's nothing left you can do, there's no point in stewing about what may or may not happen. Letting your thoughts spiral is the best way to lose touch with reality, which can cause behaviors that will make the situation worse. At the very least, for yourself, if not others.

Move Your Body

When we get scared, we tense up, telling our sympathetic nervous system to create adrenaline and cortisol. The point of stress is to get our bodies prepared for fight or flight when we're in danger, and the biological response to stress should be a burst of energy that burns off stress hormones.

However, when we're in situations like this, our body doesn't get the chance to respond to our feelings of fear. There's no tiger we can run from, this virus is invisible, and stress won't help us fight it. So we close down, we hunch up, and our body creates even more hormones to compensate. The cycle that this creates makes our bodies feel even more uncomfortable and helpless.

The great thing about this is that almost any form of motion can remove these hormones from your body. I know we may all be stuck inside, but instead of just fear-watching tv, take the time to move. Do yoga, dance around, learn tai chi, follow a workout video. Doing anything at all will increase your sense of well-being, pump up your endorphins, and help remove your fear.

Help Others

When we feel afraid, our focus gets narrow, and we can only think about what's best for ourselves. That's fine if we're dealing with immediate danger (like the tiger), but bad when it comes to sustained issues. Problems like this require long term problem solving and community participation, so we need to get our brains out of fight or flight.

One of the best ways to move your brain out of its fear is to think about others. Start to focus on what someone more disadvantaged than you might need in this situation and then brainstorm ways you can help. Doing this not only will make your community better, but it will also make you feel less afraid.

Doing good is proven to help reduce stress and increase feelings of well-being. When we nurture others, it positively affects our physiology and releases oxytocin, the natural cure for fear. When we help others, we're also helping ourselves, and the whole community benefits as a result.

Be Grateful

The science behind gratitude is pretty compelling. People who have regular gratitude practices are proven to have more positive emotions, feel more engaged with and happy about their lives, show more compassion, experience less stress, sleep better, and have more robust immune systems. No matter how rough your current situation, there's always something to be grateful for. 

Gratitude is an affirmation of the world being a good place. It reminds us of all the beauty in the world, and all of the benefits we receive on a daily basis. It helps us block our natural tendencies towards negativity that ruins our happiness. When you're in gratitude, it's pretty impossible to experience feelings of resentment, anger, or fear.

It also helps us realize where goodness stems from, which is often our community. It strengthens relationships because it makes us understand how much other's support us. It reminds us to acknowledge other people, which in turn makes us feel more connected and benevolent to the world around us.

One of the best things to do when you're experiencing fear is to take some time to be grateful for what you have. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, turn your thoughts to all of the ways you're supported and okay. Spend some time writing them down or tell them to others. It will naturally remove the stress from your body, making you calmer, better able to problem solve, and happier about your situation.

Get Creative

We're currently in a situation, unlike anything we've experienced before. In all likelihood, this pandemic will not only lose us lives but also bankrupt many of us and tank world economies. It's hard not to get overwhelmed when thinking about the possible outcomes.

Since we've never experienced this before, we're going to need to use creative problem solving to figure out solutions where conventional thinking has failed. It's time to play, dream, and imagine. It's time to innovate and move the world in exciting new directions. Imagination is the key to solving this, and it needs to start with everyone.

Spend some time thinking about what you want your future to look like. Draw it, write it, talk about it. Be positive; get excited about the potential. Don't limit yourself but think as far outside of the box as you can imagine. As an artist, I play with this all of the time, and it's one of the skills that help me turn the impossible into reality. I know that I can create anything from thought, but it has to start with the dream.

One of the greatest things about using your imagination like this is that your brain doesn't actually differentiate between your thoughts and your experiences. It is one of the principles of positive visualization. When you let your imagination joyfully run wild with potential, excellent physical responses follow. When we play with possibilities, we make ourselves happier with the potential of creating real change.

We Can Do This

I know that it's really scary for some of us right now. It's hard to be locked in our houses, hard not obsessively to watch the news. It's going to take some real self-work to be calm and productive about this. However, I do believe that the best way to get through this is by taking care of ourselves and remaining a community.

The whole world is our community right now, and we need to have each other's backs. If we do the work to dilute our fear and help each other, I believe that we can come out of this stronger.