How to ease holiday stress (or any stress, really)
12 tips from an influential meditation teacher
Dear you,
Wasn’t yesterday’s Candlelight Chat with the wise-beyond-his-years Joseph Nguyen extraordinary? (If you missed it, don’t worry; the replay video will go out within the week).
Today I’d like to follow up with advice from another teacher, with his own wonderfully unique style - my friend Dan Harris. Dan is host of the extremely popular Ten Percent Happier podcast, and author of a great new Substack on “self-help for smart people.” Here he is, with advice for easing the various stresses of the holidays (or really, the stresses of any days).
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Greetings Quiet Lifers,
The holidays can be fantastic. They can also suck. Research shows that 89% of Americans find some aspect of the holidays stressful (SC: and the same is no doubt true worldwide), and for many, that stress can last throughout the whole season.
Whether you love or hate the holidays, my job is to get you to reframe the season as an opportunity to practice skills that will help you in every aspect of life.
Below, I identify three potential holiday pain points. For each one, I provide coping strategies drawn from ancient wisdom and modern science.
Pain point # 1: Overwhelm
Many of us feel time-starved and burned-out at baseline. Then the holidays come along and, all of a sudden, we have to add on shopping, cooking, travel planning, and more.
I have a (sorry to be cute) cornucopia of tips:
To-do lists. Research shows list-making can help you organize your thoughts, set priorities, and increase your productivity.
Focus on the “next needed thing.” I love this motto from the education pioneer Virginia Randolph. Instead of worrying about getting everything done at once, just focus on the most important thing.
Sing your worries. If you are swamped by intrusive stress/anxiety thoughts, try singing those thoughts out loud. It can help you not take your thoughts so personally. [This is SC, interjecting to say that I have never ever thought of this idea, and love it.]