Holiday stress is a big topic these days. Stress around money, gifts, religion, traffic, other people’s holiday stress too much work or no work. Whatever stress has affected us all year gets magnified in December. And then, its the new year. So, we make resolutions that we hope will help us alleviate the stress from December.

A lot of people start feeling helpless around now. They feel like their life has a life of its own and they don’t know whether to look forward to the new year, enjoy each day or obsess and worry. There is a choice. We can decide that while some of the things we stress about aren’t that important and we can let go of those things. There are also some bigger issues that are stressful and that can impact our lives. But even though we may have very real stress we don’t have to become our stress. When we become our stress, each moment is an effort, each moment is filled with fear, pain and inaction. It is when we maintain our sense of self, and know that we are the same persons no matter is going on outside ourselves that we can still find some inner peace and figure out how to resolve, relieve and eliminate the negative stresses.

It may sound counter intuitive but if we can take our minds away from our worries, we can rest our minds and then arrive at new solutions. So allow yourself to take some time to enjoy your surroundings, people you love, watch a good movie, go for a run or read a good book, then come back, sit down, write down the stressful events in your life, what you want to do about them and look forward to getting into action.