Saturday, December 12, 2009

Stress Less--Plan Your Holiday and Work Your Plan

This year we will have our home full of children and grandchildren but the biggest kid of all will be my husband. Like any kid, he can come up with all sorts of ideas for things to do, places to go, and people to see. As Christmas approaches, the list seems to grow longer--right in relationship to my stress level.

To keep the peace of the holidays intact, I try to put a rein on expectations. We discuss what we want to do for the Christmas season and then decide what is truly feasible without overloading our calendar and making ourselves crazy with a schedule that is impossible to keep up with.

The important thing is to work the plan. Once it is in place, and someone wants to add more, be sure to weigh the importance of the addition and negotiate what will be cut from the plan to insert the new activity. Make it a rule to not add unless you subtract. If you don't, you will find yourself exhausted by the time you sit down to make those New Year Resolutions.

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