I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that the holidays can be the most frustrating time of the year.
It’s not that I don’t love the holiday season. I absolutely do! It’s that there are high expectations for how great the season is supposed to be, and those expectations can lead to frustration when life squishes them (as it so often does).
How many of us have looked forward to a nice team gathering in the clinic that we had to miss because of an emergency? How about a puppy appointment we didn’t get to see because we were talking finances with a family that was trying to afford Christmas? It’s not the problem that gets you. It’s the difference between the problem and the fun holiday idea of what was supposed to be happening.
Still, you can be frustrated repeatedly by something and still treasure it. Just ask anyone who has raised kids. You can love them more than life itself… and also blow steam out of your ears on a regular basis. The holiday season is kind of like that for some of us.
There’s also just a TON going on around the holidays. There’s a clamoring for attention from retailers that redlines the day after Thanksgiving and stays there. We and people around us are often frazzled, cash-strapped, and sleep deprived. A lot of us feel these weird and conflicting obligations to be present in the moment, to be hyper-aware of the experience others are having around us, and to have a plan for how everything will go so we can create the “spontaneous” magic people expect. Overall, there are just a lot of emotional stimuli swirling about for about six consecutive weeks.
For this reason, I’ve spent more than one holiday season with my emotions being tossed around like a sock in the dryer. I have been tied up in feelings of frustration over the behavior of people on the roads, obligations that have been hoisted onto me, and an endless stream of noise that I feel like I should be (at least emotionally) reacting to. This is a holiday experience I’d like to avoid going forward.
The best tool I’ve found for turning down the noise and associated irritation is made up of three questions that I ask myself whenever I start to feel stressed or irritated. The questions are:
- Does this situation directly affect me?
- Do I have influence in this situation?
- Is this supposed to be fun?
What I do with the answers to these questions varies with the circumstances. The important thing is that the questions make me slow down and ask myself how much the offending situation impacts me in a tangible way, what control I have, and whether or not the objective of the activity was to have fun. (If you’ve ever seen someone get angry at a holiday event that’s supposed to bring joy, you understand the purpose of the last question.)
I don’t know if these questions will help others as much as they help me, but I have them tagged as a note in my calendar so they pop up just before Thanksgiving every year to remind me of what’s coming down the pipe (and chimney). Maybe they’ll help you to catch yourself when you start to take on stress so you can decide intentionally how you want to feel and what you want to do. Maybe they’ll just give you something fun to mention at Holiday Parties. Either way, they’re my gift to you this season. I hope they bring you some extra joy that might otherwise escape.
Happy Holidays,
Andy
