Handling the Holidays: How To Refrain from Throwing Eggnog at Others-Use Outcome Thinking®!

Handling the Holidays: How To Refrain from Throwing Eggnog at Others-Use Outcome Thinking®!

• December 22, 2010

SO why is it that you can be a rational human being yet you enter in to your family holiday and suddenly you feel tense, angry and finding yourself fighting with your siblings?

The past unfortunately is always brought with you to every holiday gathering because it is stored in your brain.  So literally your brain sees your brothers face and it remembers that Christmas he took your new train set and wrecked it.  All the feelings of anger and frustration you had flood into you even though you think you have gotten over it.

So how can you give yourself a clean slate for the holidays so you can enjoy them more?

• Take a piece of paper and just free write all that comes to your mind about the holidays of the past.  NOW I recommend you do this BEFORE your read further otherwise you will never get a true answer to your view of the holidays and your feelings about them.
• Read what you wrote and circle all the negative words or events.  These show you how your unconscious mind actually views the holidays.  Did you first write about good thoughts or tense thoughts?  This tells you the immediate view you have.
• Look at the negative views or past events and think about how you can change them.  For example, do you put too much pressure on yourself to create the “perfect” holiday?  If so, what can you do to stop doing that? Do you need to start earlier so that you can get everything done that you want? Do you need to delegate more? Do you need to prioritize?
• With events that happened in the past you need to really think about what you can do to get rid of your feelings about them.  You can write a letter to the other person that you never send. You can set aside some time before the holidays to talk to the person about it- you have to do this in a non-blaming or attack mode or else you will just make the holidays worse.  Or, my favorite, you can write out multiple view points of the same event.  What you often find in this process is a view point you never had which then changes how you ultimately see that event.

May you have a blessed holiday filled with laughter.