Overcoming Holiday Stress
A beautiful Christmas Carol proclaims, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Really? It might be more truthful to say, “It’s the most stressful time of the year.” There are parties to attend, preparations for visiting families members, shopping and so on. But an additional stress factor this season is the economy. I want to offer some thoughts about stress that I hope will make this holiday season, indeed, a wonderful holiday season for you and your family.
I love Dr. Suess’, How The Grinch Stole Christmas. I especially love Max, the Grinch’s sweet little dog. One scene especially illustrates stress. After they raid Whoville, stealing all the toys, the Grinch loads them up on his sleigh. Then, he attaches the huge sleigh to poor Max, assigning him the responsibility to pull all that they have accumulated up Mt. Crumpit. Max is stressed! And we can learn three things about stress from little Max.
Attaching to externals creates stress
Max was attached to something external. If we are attached to the external world of form, things like material possessions, intimate relationships, our image in other people’s eyes, or even our physical health, we will feel stress. If we attach to anything external to give us security and happiness they become harnesses of stress. Stress is trying to control the uncontrollable. We cannot control the stock market, our partners, our image or our health. But often we attach our happiness and security to those things and we feel like Max, weighed down and stressed out with so much on our shoulders.
You and I can relieve stress by unhooking ourselves from external sources of security and peace and turning our attention inward, harnessing to Spirit, a source of peace that is untouchable by external events.
Assigning blame creates stress
Another thing we do that causes stress in our lives is by seeing ourselves as victims and assigning blame to someone or something for our plight in life. If I was Max, I would be thinking, “Mr. Grinch is jerk! Look at what he is forcing me to do!” Whenever we see ourselves as at the effect of someone or something, we make ourselves powerless, and that is stressful. Victims erroneously think their life situation is someone else’s fault. And of course, if someone else is at fault, it is someone else’s responsibility to make things right. In this view, life is totally out of your control. Your happiness, your peace, your security is in someone else’s hands – and that produces anxiety and stress!
But no one is putting a gun to our heads. We do not have to put up with a boring or abusive relationship. We are not stuck in a dead-end job. It is not our genetics that makes us overweight or unhealthy. We are not alone because all the good mates are taken. We are not in debt because our partner spends too much. If we unhook ourselves from assigning blame and see that we are the creators of our experience, that we are responsible for what is occurring in our lives, that we have the power to create what we want, we eliminate stress.
Accumulating feelings creates stress
Without question, the single greatest cause of stress in our lives is the accumulation of unexpressed feelings. We do not know Max’s feelings, but we do know that when we do not feel our feelings deeply, when we do not welcome them and honor them like we would a best friend at our front door, and when we do not speak our unarguable truth to the appropriate people, our body is racked with stress. Our health will be jeopardized, our relationships will become shallow and our aliveness and vitality will be sapped. Do not underestimate the severe implications of carrying around emotional baggage. Accumulated feelings will eat you alive.
Feel how your body tightens at the thought of interacting with a co-worker that does not know how much something they said hurt you. Feel the tension in your neck at the thought of your in-law criticizing you again for how you raise your children. Feel the heaviness in your heart when your spouse rolls over at bedtime, not wanting to make love with you. Feel the butterflies (or maybe the Raptors!) in your stomach when you think of your job security in this economy. Express them to the appropriate person at the appropriate time. Unexpressed feelings cause stress. They steal your energy and your joy. And all you have to do to unhook yourself from that stress is to speak your feelings to the person involved. That single move releases the feelings from your body and creates peace!
Learn from little Max. Unhook from these patterns, so that you can experience this holiday season as “the most wonderful time of the year.”