Pre-Holiday Stress:
How to Let it Go So You Can Enjoy the Holidays

by www.Sedona.com

The holidays are here, bringing with them a time to share laughs and conversation with family and friends, sit back with cocoa by the fire, and reflect on the year gone by, and the year to come. Sound familiar? If you’re like most Americans, probably not.

In reality, most Americans love the holidays, but are too stressed out and frazzled to really stop and enjoy them. Instead, we’re out rushing from mall to mall to find that perfect (and hopefully not too expensive) gift, preparing extravagant meals (or at least arranging for them to be catered) and baking cookies … all while trying to wrap things up at work so we can afford to take an extended holiday weekend. (And did we mention the challenges of spending time with relatives who may not be our favorites?)

Sadly, it’s easy to get so overwhelmed by pre-holiday stress that by the time you’re able to stop and take a breath, the holidays have already passed you by.

The Holidays: What’s Stressing Americans Most?

An American Psychological Association (APA) survey of 1,000 people found that financial pressures were the top source of holiday stress for most (61 percent) Americans. Other holiday stressors included:

Pressures of gift giving
Lack of time
Credit card debt

To relieve stress, 36 percent of those surveyed said they either eat or drink alcohol, 45 percent said they exercised, 44 percent turned to religious and spiritual activities and a small percentage used massage and yoga.

“People tend to reduce stress in ways they have learned over the course of time because they turn to what they know,” says Russ Newman, Ph.D., J.D., APA executive director for professional practice. “Ironically, they may take comfort from eating or drinking because it’s familiar, even though it’s not good for their health. But, there are other behaviors people can learn to further relieve stress and its [these] effects that may be both better for them and longer lasting.”

Healthy Stress-Relief Tools for Pre-Holiday Stress

One of the best options for dealing with holiday stress is to learn how to release it. The Sedona Method is a process that shows you how to do just that. In short, it will liberate your natural ability to let go of any unwanted emotion on the spot, and allow some of the suppressed energy in your subconscious to dissipate.

How is this done? The first way is by choosing to let go of the unwanted feeling. The second way is to welcome the feeling, to allow the emotion just to be. The third way is to dive into the very core of the emotion.

By doing this simple exercise you are free to create a solid, positive mental attitude that will allow you to experience the holiday season for what it’s meant to be: a time of joy and peace.

Sources: American Psychological Association

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