Holiday time is stressful. There is a crushing amount of work to complete between now and January 1. There’s the added strain of traffic-laden road trips, heated political debates with friends and colleagues, and the pressure of shopping for presents and decorating your house for the season, and most of it leaves you feeling less than festive and joyful.
This constant high level of stress is enough to push anybody over the edge, any time of the year—even if you tend to be on the calm and steady side—and I, myself, am not immune to this condition. This past June a friend and mentor named Mariah came to visit me. She noticed how stressed out I was, juggling a growing client load and taking care of my 4 year-old daughter who was done with preschool for the summer.
After letting me ramble on for 10-minutes about how my world was coming to an end, Mariah asked me a few good questions: “What do you do to rejuvenate and restore your sense of calmness? What activity centers you, clears your head, recharges your batteries, and makes you feel normal again? In other words, what do you do to ground yourself?”
What helps ground me when I’m starting to feel like an uninsulated wire (about to short out) is a walk in the woods. Even if for only 5 minutes, this simple activity has a centering effect on me. When I make it a regular practice, (at least 3 times a week) it definitely clears my head and calms me down—and returns me to normal.
Everyone is different, of course. What works for me may or may not work for you. So, here are some other examples of effective grounding activities utilized by a few people who are near and dear to me:
My wife, Amanda
Running an expanding business is stressful, and a demanding client (or husband) can be just the thing to overload her. Amanda loves horses, and she even trained for the Junior Olympics in dressage many years ago. She loves talking about them, reading about them, watching them, and, of course, riding them. Even if she’s just standing alongside a field with horses, it immediately changes Amanda’s mood and refills her emotional reservoir. I call them her “4-Legged Prozac.”
My friend, Ashley
Ashley has a pressure cooker job in the financial services industry. He’s required to keep tabs on several international markets around the clock for his high-end clients. The way he grounds himself and feeds his soul is by kiteboarding. Some of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on his face happen when he’s ripping across the water, towed by a monstrous kite. Whether it’s on the Outer Banks or in the exotic waters of Portugal, this guy makes a point of riding the waves from time to time so he can calm his furiously-overworked mind.
My Father, Chuck
Dad has been a dentist for almost 50 years, and he’s now facing the cusp of retirement at the age of 76. One would imagine his life to be relatively stress-free at this point, but the opposite is true. For the next month, his home will be bombarded by every branch of the family tree, and he’ll have to help clean the house, unpack and arrange all the Christmas stuff, and tackle a massive to-do list that goes along with the holiday preparations. He’ll be taking care of all these tasks while still working four days a week.
Dad’s grounding activity of choice has always been to go fishing. Even this past week, during the Thanksgiving weekend, he managed to steal away for 60 minutes to “slip out on the boat” where he is free to cast his line, listen to the waves, and smell the salty air.
The activity you choose for grounding doesn’t have to be something as involved as kiteboarding or fishing; it could be something as simple as taking a walk in the woods, cooking a meal for your family, reading a good book , or even going for a run. What matters is that the activity replenishes you.
Carving out time for yourself can be a challenge when you’re hard-wired for success, but if you do it regularly, you’ll find it to be a real game changer in terms of staying energetic and productive, and for maintaining good relationships with co-workers, clients, and especially loved ones.
So, what’s the one thing you can do for yourself that will feed your soul over the holidays?
