The Grinch, Max and Holiday Stress
The Grinch, Max and Holiday Stress
Roy Biancalana
Life Coach / Relationship Coach
407-687-3387
A beautiful Christmas Carol proclaims, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Really? When we stop to consider the parties, decorating, shopping, traveling, cooking and visiting family members, and then factor in this struggling economy and how that might impact our holiday season, it may be more accurate to say, “It’s the most stressful time of the year.” But thankfully, we have the sweet little dog, Max, from the Christmas poem, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to teach us about overcoming holiday stress.
Little Max, as you recall, found himself all stressed out one holiday season. After his master, the Grinch, stole all of Whoville’s toys and presents, he loaded them up on his sleigh and then attached the huge sleigh to poor Max, assigning him the responsibility of pulling everything they had accumulated up the steep and slippery slopes of Mt. Crumpit. Suffice it to say that Max was under a significant amount of stress and from his situation we can learn three things:
1. Attaching Creates Stress
Max was attached to something that was beyond his ability to control—a huge, heavy sleigh. Likewise, if we are attached to things like material possessions (or lack thereof), intimate relationships, our image in other people’s eyes, or even our physical health, we will feel stress. Stress is the result of trying to control the uncontrollable. We cannot control the economy, our partners, our kids, our image or our health. But often we attach to those things and we feel like Max, weighed down with too much strapped to our backs. Max teaches us to “let go.”
2. Assigning Blame Creates Stress
Another cause of stress in our lives is playing the victim, blaming others for what is occurring in our lives. It would be understandable if little Max thought, “Mr. Grinch is such a jerk! Look at what he is forcing me to do!” But whenever we blame our plight on another, we disown our power and our ability to create our destiny. With the victim mentality, our happiness, health, peace and prosperity are in someone else’s hands—and that creates a huge load of inner stress. Max teaches us to “let go” of the victim mentality.
3. Accumulating Feelings Creates Stress
Without question, though, the single greatest cause of stress in our lives is the accumulation of unexpressed feelings. Max accumulated a lot of stuff in Whoville. And when we accumulate emotions and feelings and do not handle them appropriately, our body is racked with stress. Unexpressed emotion jeopardizes our health, inhibits real intimacy, and saps our aliveness and vitality. Accumulating feelings, rather than appropriately expressing them, is the surest way to live a stressful life. Max teaches us to “let go” of our feelings.
But if we can find the courage to unhook ourselves from these patterns, it can, indeed, be “the most wonderful time of the year.”
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