With the holiday season fast approaching, our thoughts naturally turn to family, friends and that well-deserved work hiatus that follows the annual office party. However, many people suffer with ‘holiday anxiety’ and ‘holiday blues’ – resulting from holiday stressors and demands, unrealistic expectations, loneliness, anxiety… And then on January 1, there’s the anticlimactic letdown and sabotaging critical self-evaluation.
How vulnerable are you to holiday blues?
- Do you commit to family gatherings, and then find it difficult to follow through?
- Do you find it difficult to balance work demands with holiday demands—to balance yours and your family’s expectations with manager or client demands?
- Have your holiday experiences been a time of joy and relaxation? Or do you stress about holiday deadlines and seasonal demands of family, parties, financial constraints and over-commercialization?
- Do you dread the annual office party—consider it a meaningless waste of time, money and effort?
- During your holiday vacation, do you experience stress responses such as headaches, excessive eating and alcohol consumption, trouble sleeping and irritability? Anxiety or depression?
- Does this promise sound familiar? “This year will be different….”
This year can be different. By applying your “value lens” to your expectations and commitments, you’ll feel less overwhelmed and actually enhance the upcoming human and holiday experience. Just as values-based goal setting is a crucial tool for life planning and career achievement, it’s no less important for planning leisure activities where we expect genuine meaning … instead, we often find disappointment.
The Values Lens – A Resource for Making Meaning and a Meaningful Holiday
What is your values lens? It’s a way of seeing those things that most matter, the personal fulfillment arising from experiences in life that resonate with our sense of significance and meaning. Look at these techniques to apply your lens:
- Identify what motivates and inspires you—the values at play that make work, leisure and personal goals significant and achievable.
- Visualize ways to apply these motivational values to the seasonal experience. Is physical activity invigorating? Is good health a value or ideal that you cherish but neglect? How about ‘giving back?’ Then training for a spring 5K run might be a valuable holiday stress reducer … shape up with your work team -- forego the annual office party and cut firewood for poor elderly families.
- Don’t just promise that ‘this year will be different.’ Focus makes the real difference. Create a time to focus on your values before the busy season hits. Develop holiday goals that are aligned with your values -- just as you’d incorporate strategic goal setting to your business vision and your family’s future. Focused goal setting for the holidays will enable you to prioritize demands and expectations – and eliminate the stressful ones that burden you. Focus is a means of separating the wheat from the chaff – with true focus on ‘less,’ your efforts will deliver a meaningful ‘more.’
- Share your values and goals with your family and associates. This will help determine values that are shared and can be worked on together with sure benefits for all. It will also enable your ‘support systems’ understand that values should be respected. You’ll find that when you respect your values, others will, too.
Our values really do make life meaningful for us, and further tell us when to say yes … when to say no … the guide we need for everyday and the most meaningful decisions. And when we make real meaning of any experience, it extends to our families, our friends and even our workplace associates.
This year, give yourself your values. They’re one holiday gift that really does last a lifetime. Learn more with this free download.
Looking for more insight on your values lens? Get the microscopic perspective and more values-based strategies for work and life with LifeManual, the values-based system that’s changing careers, and changing lives. LifeManual is Peter H. Thomas’ goal setting and life planning blueprint that led to Peter’s four decades of extraordinary entrepreneurial and personal success.
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A special holiday discount is available on multiple LifeManual book orders through December 15 – buy one and get any additional copies for friends and family at 50% off. Order now. When you go to purchase, enter the following code NL2HOL1 and press recalculate to see your discount.
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