YELL’N SHOUT
12/12/2022
We’ve all heard the flight attendants say to put on your own oxygen masks first, because if you pass out, you can’t help anyone else. The same is true of holiday self-care. If you don’t/won’t take care of yourself first, you’re not going to be pleasant to be around. So, you understand the concept. Now what?
The vast majority of stress is mental, but it takes various forms – relationships, financial, physical (yes, that’s often mental, too), and family. Let’s create the recipe for self-care. Mix equal parts of gratitude, forgiveness, relaxation, journaling, and personal alone time. As with any recipe, if you leave out an ingredient, what you get is not what you had hoped for. The problem with mental health is that it’s not as measurable as most of the components. But you know when it’s all working well and when it’s not. What you have to understand is that when everything is working together, you feel wonderful. You feel like a ton of weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You wonder why you never saw this. Here’s why.
If I ask you to hold a grain of rice, you might think I’m nuts, but you’re trying to be helpful. Imagine I keep doing that every couple of minutes. At some point – a week, a month, 6 months, it really doesn’t matter- you will collapse under the cumulative weight. Along with others, you’ll question why you collapse with one grain of rice. It’s not the one grain. It’s the cumulative weight that caused your knees to buckle. The solution- don’t allow the grains of rice to accumulate. Do the same with your holiday stress issues (really, do it all year long to be healthier). You can “set the weight of the stress down” by working on each one of the above components.
Remember- If you don’t take care of your wellness, you’ll be taking care of your illness later on. Read that again.
Holiday stress is going to come. You can’t always control what is coming, BUT you can control how you react to it.
Take good care of yourself and enjoy the holiday season
Tikkun Olam- heal the world. Leave it a better place when you leave.
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