Surviving The Holidays With Self-care

The holidays are upon up which encourages spending time with family, having happy moments, delicious treats and sales at your favorite stores. They are also notorious for stress from packed shopping and grocery stores, financial strain from increased spending money and from traveling to visit with family members, and overindulging on those sweet treats causing your pants to become tight and sometimes, negative physical feeling right after eating them. People also find that they have less personal time to focus on themselves, so they tend to eliminate healthy eating and exercise from their schedules. These self-care items should never be eliminated especially during high stress times. The holidays are about giving, but like the old saying goes:

“you can’t fill someone else’s cup if your cup is empty”.

Now, if you find that you are neglecting yourself, there are small steps you can take to help take care of yourself during the holidays. First, eat healthy when you can. If you know there is an event coming up with high calorie foods, try to eat healthier earlier in the day. Or if your high sugary lattes increase, try alternating high and low sugar lattes. Second, if you are struggling financially during this time, look at giving more personal, heartfelt gifts versus expensive gifts. Third, if your stress level is increasing, find ways to relax like having a movie night at home with your family or a hot bubble bath by yourself. Finally, if you find yourself cutting out exercise time due to your schedule, try to find little ways to increase your activity. One example is park further out in the parking lot at the shopping or grocery stores. This will also give you a minute or two to work on relaxation techniques like deep breathing before entering a chaotic store.

Now these are only a few examples, take a look at your lifestyle and see what you can do for yourself that will help you survive the holidays.