Finding a Balance During the Holiday Season
Take Pen to Paper: Edition 64
Happy Holidays, Friends!
I hope you are enjoying whatever the holiday brings your way. With all the time between Thanksgiving and New Year, the possibilities are many.
This time of year can be difficult, balancing home, work, and holiday activities.
In this newsletter:
It’s easy to overextend yourself.
Boundaries are essential.
Two components to securing your happiness.
Doing too much can be detrimental to your happiness.
If you are like me, it’s easier to say yes than no. Suddenly, you find yourself overextended.
The holiday season is a prime time for this to happen. There’s the cooking and baking, the buying and wrapping of gifts, decorating and parties. We spend a lot of time doing activities we don’t typically do. In addition, our culture puts on a constant display of festive expectations.
“No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives - worse, we often pave the way for those to take it over. … We’re tight fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.” - Seneca
As Seneca points out, we pay more attention to our possessions than our time. Seneca wrote this in his moral essay about how brief life is. He wasn’t even talking about how we are consumed with the trappings technology brings us.
His point is valuable. We don’t guard our time as well as our belongings. The holidays become an excuse to do things we would never do. This is fun and makes the season special, but it shouldn’t be excessive.
With the novelty of once-a-year activities, it’s easy to focus on what others want of us or what we think they want of us. We develop the habit of trying to make others happy and ignore our needs in the process.
The result can be stress and unhappiness.
Unhappiness spreads as easily as happiness.
I have experience with this because I used to be a people-pleaser.
I was the planner in the family (of course). I planned to please others, often putting myself last.
During the holidays, I wanted everyone to be happy. If someone asked, I said yes. I had no boundaries. I was stressed with the tasks I took on to make others happy. But my stress stressed out others.
One Christmas, I defended my actions to my husband, admitting I was trying to please everyone (except me, which is probably why I yelled that response at him). That’s when I realized something was wrong with my perspective.
I was out of balance with what I was doing, who I was doing it for, and why I was doing it.
Being out of balance keeps you from being in the moment. That, in turn, affects your perspective. I was working for others’ happiness to the detriment of mine. I needed balance in my efforts to do for others and do for myself.
I was in desperate need of boundaries.
Components for setting boundaries.
I’ve found two components to consider in setting boundaries for myself. They are useful year-round. If you practice all year, they will be easier to implement during the holidays.
Set your priorities.
Priorities can be general categories like family, faith, and even, financial.
Or they can be specific, such as the specific tasks you want to accomplish each day or week.
Setting priorities helped me cut back on buying, decorating, and cooking for the holidays. I donated many Christmas decorations, only keeping my favorites. As a result, I decorated less.
I don’t even cook on Christmas Day unless you count thawing and heating the Turkey Bone Gumbo I cooked after Thanksgiving. We still have plenty.
By prioritizing, I gained time to do more meaningful activities.
Know your purpose.
You need to know your purpose for your activities to be meaningful (to you and others).
Are you considering your purpose when giving your time?
Aligning your activities with your purpose makes them more meaningful. These are the activities that give you a deep-down feeling of worth.
My year-round activities of volunteering at school and art classes bring me a lot of happiness. If I could only do one, I would choose volunteering. It’s much closer to my purpose of doing good for others.
Once I identified my priorities and purpose, life became simpler. Decisions were easier.
I don’t propose that you work solely for your happiness. Like any area of self-care, your happiness shows. Others can tell if you are happy. They enjoy your presence when you’re happy, which puts you in a position to make them happy.
Once you've identified your priorities and purpose, it will be easier to decide what you can do for others and to stay balanced.
When you are working to find balance in your life between all that is pulling at you, start with yourself.
Set your priorities and know your purpose. You’ll be happier for it.
7 Days, 7 Thoughts on Gratitude and Good:
My grandmother gave my siblings and me A Charlie Brown Christmas and the four dolls picture above in 1967. I put them out every year.'🎄
I am not an Apple person, so you can imagine my dismay when they bought the exclusive rights to A Charlie Brown Christmas movie. This article gives you options for watching it if you’re like me and not an Apple person.
How about a real-life Snoopy look-alike to make you smile? 🐶
A quote: “You have to do the thing you actually enjoy doing, not the thing you find conceptually exciting.” - Ava Huang
I’m grateful for our family tradition of cooking Turkey Bone Gumbo after Thanksgiving to serve on Christmas Day. I get more time with the family and less time in the kitchen. I included the recipe in this issue of my newsletter over a year ago. You still have time to make it. Roast a chicken to use instead of a turkey. 🍗
Simplifying your life can be challenging, but once you do it, you realize it’s a good thing.
After touching on the topics of gifts and gift-giving in last week’s newsletter, I ran across this piece on gift-giving written by an anthropologist. It’s a quick read. If you found my newsletter last week interesting, you’ll enjoy reading this. 🎁
Thank you for reading during this busy time of the year.
I’m wishing you a stress-free holiday season. Remember, buying a pie is easier than making one from scratch. Think of the time you will save! Time you can spend visiting with those you love.
💚
Susan
What do you prioritize during the holidays? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear what’s important to you and how you make time for it.
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