We’re supposed to be feeling jolly, giving and thankful during the holidays, but hosting guests often causes the opposite reaction. A little bit of stress and anxiety are totally understandable, considering all of the elbow grease and time that goes into preparing the average (read: enormous) holiday meal, getting the house ready, maintaining it for guests and entertaining said guests. No matter how much you love your visitors, it’s very likely that at some point your eyelid might start to twitch uncontrollably. Before you put out your “No Vacancy” shingle, however, take a look at these suggestions for enjoying and embracing, rather than stressing over, your role as holiday host:
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Home for the Holidays
The holidays offer plenty of reasons to be stressed out and anxious -- the gifts you haven’t wrapped, the pile of cookie exchange invites, the office parties. But for many, the biggest source of holiday stress is family -- the family dinner, the obligations, and the burden of family tradition. And if you’re fighting clinical depression, or have had depression in the past, the holiday stress can be a trigger for more serious problems.“There’s this idea that holiday gatherings with family are supposed...
Read the Home for the Holidays article > >
But... it’s so much work to get the house ready. I used to clean like a maniac when I was expecting company. The house was invariably a wreck again five minutes later. No one’s going to walk around with a white glove making sure you’ve disinfected the baseboards. Settle for making the place presentable, provide clean linens, slap on a sincere smile and you’re good to go.
But... my [insert relative here] drives me crazy. Sometimes even people we love make us batty. Instead of dreading the inevitable snarky remark, change your mindset to a more positive channel! “Do psychological preparation and make a decision that you’re unoffendable,” says psychotherapist, life coach and upwave reviewer Terri Cole, LCSW. “If you get offended, you’re playing into the end result that you say you don’t want. Choose loving. You can either be right or loving; you can’t be both.” So when someone pokes you, don’t take the bait. You’ll be happier for it!
But... everything has to be perfect. We often put so much pressure on ourselves during the holidays to be the second coming of Martha Stewart that we forget to enjoy ourselves. “People go in with a structured idea of how it needs to be for it to be successful,” explains Cole. “None of that is what the holiday is actually about.” Think less about the bells and whistles and more about spending time with guests you don’t get to see very often. I bet they want that more than those origami napkins you were planning to fashion.