Have the holidays become an endurance race for you? One that lasts from mid-October to the first week of January?
You have a whirlwind of events to attend while that nagging “what to buy _______?” floats in the back of your mind.
You love Christmas music, but then again, there is too much of a good thing. [Same goes for those store decorations.]
It’s all lovely on November 1, but after a month or so they start to wear on you? According to lots of research, you are not alone. More and more people just flat get stressed out and into survival mode during the holidays. The problems is that being in survival mode can really take away from enjoying the holidays as a celebration of life.
Fact is, the holidays are stressful. Another fact is that they can be a lot of fun. The ACT Matrix is a tool for figuring out how to combine the holiday stress and fun into a package that works for you. Whether you are familiar with the matrix or not, following these ten steps can help you go about creating a holiday season that you survive AND enjoy:
Note: You can refer to the matrix at the top of this post. However, it’s even better if you get out a piece of paper (or use a whiteboard) to draw your own matrix.
1. Notice your five senses. If you have a Holiday cookie handy, use all of your five senses to experience the cookie. If no cookie is handy, then use any object. However, you might want to leave out taste for health reasons.
2. Using your mind’s eye, re-experience what you just experienced with your five senses. In other words, imagine seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting the cookie.
3. Now take a moment to notice the difference between your five senses and mental experiencing of the object. You simply take five seconds to notice the difference.
4. Recall moving toward someone who is important to you. This is as easy as recalling walking toward a loved one or friend.
5. Recall moving away from some unwanted feeling inside of you, like fear. This is as easy and recalling running away to reduce fear after you were frightened.
6. Notice the difference between how it feels to recall moving toward who’s important and how it feels to recall moving away from fear.
7. In the lower right space of the matrix write down who and what are important to you this holiday season, e.g., friends and peace.
8. In the lower left space of the matrix write down the stuff that can show up inside of you and get in the way of moving toward who and what’s important for the holidays. Fear is always on that list. Maybe thoughts like, “This is too much!”, or “What am I going to buy ________?!”
9. In the upper left space write the kinds of behaviors (like walking, eating, sitting) that you do to move away from the stuff in the lower left. For example, you might drink alcohol to move away from stress. You might also avoid a holiday party.
10. Finally, write down the stuff you can do to move toward who and what’s important to you. For example, you might visit friends, hug a loved one, and attend a holiday party at work.
Now that you’ve completed the ten steps, step back and look at your Matrix.
The basic “trick” of the matrix is to stay in the center circle. There you are aware of both your senses and your mental experiencing. Also, in the center you get to choose toward and away moves.
The trouble with holiday stress is that you can get “in your head” at the lower part of of the matrix and forget to notice the cool sensations of the holidays.
Also, if you get focused on stress, then you can end up burning a lot of time over on the Away side and not have enough time for the Toward side.
Need some help and tips on filling out your matrix and shifting time from the Away side to the Toward?
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