4 Ways to Stress Less, Rejoice More This Holiday Season

Summary

Busy B2B marketing professionals face immense holiday stress, which can impact productivity and focus. This article provides actionable strategies to manage time effectively, prioritize tasks, and set boundaries during the holidays. By adopting these tips, they can maintain peak performance at work while reducing personal stress, leading to a more balanced, joyful season and sustainable success in their demanding roles.

By Maria Geokezas, Chief Operating Officer at Heinz Marketing 

The holidays are here. Did your heart rate go up when you read those four words? Then this article is for you.

And let’s make this clear from the start: You’re not alone if your stress level increases during the holidays. In fact, you are normal. Research shows Americans get more stressed due to lack of time, lack of money, the pressures of commercialism and gift giving, and the challenges of eating right.

If you’re normal, does that mean you just deal with it? Not at all. You can take four simple steps to take back your holiday joy, and still be the hardworking employee, devoted parent, and caring person you want to be during these weeks.

Step 1: Admit you only have 24 hours in a day

Here’s the best way to reduce stress this holiday season: Recognize that you are working with the same number of hours in a day that you have every other day of the year.

The holidays are loaded with unrealistic expectations, but you aren’t granted more time to make the extras happen. The result? You feel overwhelmed and anything but joyful. You sense you are letting down loved ones because you simply can’t do it all…or you do it all and then you’re grumpy and exhausted.

When you can acknowledge to yourself that the demands on your time will go up but the actual time you have will not, you can start to take steps to reduce your stress by reducing those demands.

Some of those demands on your time can’t be altered. You still owe your company those hours you are paid to work. You might still be parenting or caring for an elderly parent. You still have your day-to-day obligations. But these are part of your life every day.

It’s the extra demands on your time that you can control, those brought about by the holidays and societal expectations. Recognizing outright that your time is as limited during the holidays as it is every other time of year will help you decide how you will spend that precious time.

Step 2: Do everything by halves

Once you accept that your time is limited, you can start making choices about how you will spend that time. And you have many areas where you can make choices to do less:

• Shopping and gift buying
• Cooking and baking
• Decorating
• Focusing on appearance, meaning hair and nail salon visits and clothes shopping
• Cleaning
• Attending events and parties
• Traveling to see family
• Writing cards and notes
• Wrapping

That’s quite a list! And as we’ve already said, these are addons to what is already a full schedule for you. But if you can commit to reducing the time and energy you spend on each of these by half (or eliminating some of them outright), your ability to get these tasks done will increase…as will your joy as your stress level goes down.

And when you reduce these by halves, you also reduce your spending, thereby decreasing the financial stress of this time of year.

Step 3: Spread it out

No matter your religion or lack thereof, you are no doubt familiar with the12 days of Christmas, right? Did you know those 12 days actually take place after Christmas, not before? That’s because Christmas is a season, not a day. But those who celebrate Christmas tend to act like December 25^th is some kind of race to a finish line when in reality it’s the beginning.

I realize not everyone celebrates Christmas, but I use this as an example of this deadline-driven mentality we have about the holidays. But guess what? There isn’t a deadline. There’s no rule that says all shopping, cleaning, wrapping, baking and partying must be done by December 25^th or any other date.

So spread out what you can. Granted you can’t change the night of the holiday concert at your child’s school, but can your company party take place in February instead? Maybe instead of Christmas cards, you send out Happy New Year notes. Rather than rush to get all your decorating done at the beginning of the season, do a little at a time. Spread out the gift giving over several days. You get the idea.

And here’s what I’ve learned: People delight in having it spread out. Why? Because they don’t like the rush either. Have you seen your kids crash and burn after the Christmas hoopla is over? It’s anticlimactic for them because they had the big rush, the big day and then whoosh! It’s over. And it’s like they are coming off a sugar high. When we spread it out, we can savor the joy and avoid the crash, whether we’re kids or grownups.

Step 4: Just say “no”

If you’re saying “yes” to social obligations or additional tasks because you think you have to, step back and make sure you are doing what you want to do, not what you think you have to do. Whether it’s caused by Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) or some deep-seated family-of-origin issue, recognize where the pressure is coming from and address it.

Do you have to go to the neighborhood shindig? Do you need to be the one in the office doing all the shopping and gift wrapping for the family your company adopted for the holidays? Do you have to be the one sewing the costumes for the kids’ play at school?

This can mean saying no to your family too, if you decide not to travel for the holidays. And that’s a tough one! But technology can help. Rather than travel to see family when you’d rather not, whether because of time constraints or lack of money or an ongoing conflict, take advantage of technology. Zoom or a similar technology can be a nice way to hang out with far-off family without all the hassle…and potential heartache.

Saying “no” also helps you to stick your schedule as much as you can, and getting enough sleep and exercise is crucial to reducing your stress, as is eating well. Many people over-indulge during this season, sometimes because they don’t say no to social obligations, other times because they are self-medicating to deal with the stress, and often simply because they run out of time to eat healthy meals.

You can also say no to yourself, and this might be the hardest of all because we want to be seen as the capable perfect person who can do it all and pull off the “perfect” holiday, whatever that means. But guess what, dear one: You can’t do it all. So learn to say no to yourself. No, you’re not going to make up plates of cookies for all your neighbors. No, you’re not going to shop for a new outfit when last year’s will do. No, you’re not going to serve a four-course meal to a family that doesn’t appreciate it.

In conclusion, the stress level you experience during the holidays is up to you, although it doesn’t seem like it. We’ve been fed a lifetime of advertising promoting the perfect holiday season, and it can be difficult to let go of those expectations.

But here’s the reality of making these changes: Everyone benefits when you dial back your holiday efforts: your company because you’re still dialed in to your job, your family because you are more enjoyable to be around, and you most of all when you can focus on the joy.

Heinz Marketing specializes in helping busy professionals and teams streamline priorities, stay focused, and achieve their goals—even during the busiest seasons. Contact us today to learn how we can support your success

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