{"id":4991,"date":"2013-12-04T12:01:44","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T17:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/?p=4991"},"modified":"2013-12-01T22:05:20","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T03:05:20","slug":"surviving-holiday-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2013\/12\/surviving-holiday-madness.html","title":{"rendered":"Surviving Holiday Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"laura-vanderkam\"<\/a>Does the holiday season overwhelm you? On Monday I posted Calming Those Feeling of Being Overwhelmed<\/strong><\/a>. Now with the holiday season is in full swing, it can take busy to another level. So I\u2019m happy to have Laura Vanderkam,<\/strong><\/a> author of many books including, “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast” — a paperback compilation of the bestselling ebook series, out from Portfolio\/. She has great advice or getting through the season.<\/p>\n

Think You’re Too Busy For The Holidays? You’re Not<\/strong>
\nby Laura Vanderkam<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The onslaught has already started. Around this time of year, my inbox fills up — not with reminders of holiday obligations, but rather with tips from experts on simplifying those holidays. Career experts pontificate on whether you should even bother job hunting in the last 2 months of the year. People warn off starting projects because \u201cyou know how the holidays always are.\u201d Got a good idea? Better luck trying in January, because from now through December 31, nothing is going to get done.<\/p>\n

Yes, the assumption is that we are all crazy busy this time of year. No one has time to pay attention to anything! And not only are we booked solid, we\u2019re assumed to be unhappy about it too. All the celebration and hubbub is just a tax on our time. So magazines assure us that we don\u2019t have to bake. We don\u2019t have to throw big parties. Don\u2019t exchange gifts!<\/p>\n

My birthday is in early December, and it\u2019s a semi-milestone one this year. So I thought about hosting a little birthday celebration. But then I worried — won\u2019t people be too busy? Won\u2019t it just be an imposition to have one more thing on the calendar?<\/p>\n

Of course, then I realized that if a friend asked me to celebrate a birthday with her, I\u2019d be excited about it. I\u2019d look forward to an excuse to spend a cold winter evening with friends — especially if I didn\u2019t have to do the planning. My friends aren\u2019t total Scrooges. Why wouldn\u2019t they feel the same way?<\/p>\n

The truth is, the holiday season is a wonderful excuse to nurture social ties — and strong social ties are a major component of human happiness. As for gift giving? Spending money on other people (\u201cpro-social\u201d spending in research parlance) is also strongly tied to feelings of well-being. Traditions nurture a sense of identity; one study found that the more children knew about their family\u2019s history, the more sense of control they had over their lives.<\/p>\n

In other words, the festivities of the holidays aren\u2019t an imposition on life. They are life. They make life better.<\/p>\n

Such celebrations also don\u2019t take nearly as much time as we think. Let\u2019s say you have 10 holiday events between November 25 and December 25. That sounds like a lot, but if each event averages out to 3 hours, that\u2019s 30 hours of celebrating over 30 days. Spending a mere 4% of your life for one month on holiday festivities doesn\u2019t sound like it should keep you from doing much else. If anything, you can catch up on your TV watching in January.<\/p>\n

Because here\u2019s the thing: you can plan nothing and attempt nothing over the next two months because \u201cthe holidays are always so crazy,\u201d but you\u2019ll still be tired in January. People are always tired. We don\u2019t draw energy from avoiding life. We draw energy from meaningful things.
\n**************<\/p>\n

Join the Self-Love Movement\u2122<\/strong><\/a>! Take the 31 Days of Self-Love Commitment<\/strong><\/a>—\u201cI commit to do my best to do something loving for myself, however big or small, for the first 31 days of 2014.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0and get my book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways<\/a><\/strong> for free at http:\/\/howdoiloveme.com<\/a><\/strong>. Read my 2013 31 Days of Self-Love Posts HERE<\/strong><\/a>. Join the Self-Love Movement\u2122<\/strong><\/a>! on Facebook<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Please leave comments under my posts so we can stay connected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does the holiday season overwhelm you? On Monday I posted Calming Those Feeling of Being Overwhelmed. Now with the holiday season is in full swing, it can take busy to another level. So I\u2019m happy to have Laura Vanderkam, author of many books including, “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast” — a paperback…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2,15],"tags":[815,816,133],"class_list":["post-4991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-positive-mental-attitude","category-self-empowerment-confidence","category-self-love-acceptance","tag-busy-holiday-seson","tag-holiday-stress","tag-laura-vanderkam"],"yoast_head":"\nSurviving Holiday Madness - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2013\/12\/surviving-holiday-madness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Surviving Holiday Madness - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Does the holiday season overwhelm you? On Monday I posted Calming Those Feeling of Being Overwhelmed. Now with the holiday season is in full swing, it can take busy to another level. 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Let Me Count the Ways, a She's appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows, including Oprah, Howard Stern, and Good Morning America and has been quoted in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, and Men\u00b9s Health. After being a consummate People Pleaser who felt unworthy of getting her own needs met for many years, Daylle found a path of self-love that enabled her to build her self-esteem and reinvent herself into a dual career. She learned to get taken seriously without being overtly assertive when she became one of the first women to start an independent record label (on a dare!) and learned to play ball nicely and successfully in an industry dominated by men. To help independent musicians empower themselves, Daylle writes music business books for Billboard\/Random House, including the very popular Start & Run Your Own Record Labe and I Don't Need a Record Deal! Daylle's books have been translated into over 10 languages and are popular around the world. She speaks for colleges, organizations and corporations. Through her company, Project Self-Empowerment, Daylle creates programs and materials to help people empower themselves. One goal is to raise the money to self-publish her book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways and give it away for free in colleges and through organizations, to give thanks for all her blessings. Daylle uses her writing and speaking to help others find the kind of contentment and empowerment that she has.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/author\/dschwartz"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4992,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions\/4992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}