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Are You Letting Joy or Stress Dictate Your Holiday Season?

 I stumbled across this article today and it struck a chord with me.

It seems like every year between Halloween and Christmas, but especially between Thanksgiving and Christmas, people seem to get a little crazy.....ok, a lot crazy!

They push to buy more, to entertain more and cram more expectations into their already busy lives. As the clock picks up speed and the dates on the calendar become blurred, exhaustion sets in just as the most festive, joyous holiday arrives.

Are You Letting Joy or Stress Dictate Your Holiday Season?

Sometimes holiday stress overrides our joy. 
We get caught up with decorating, buying gifts, and the plethora of other overwhelming holiday expectations.

We miss out on the daily pleasure and joyful opportunities all around us because stress is taking precedence.

All of this stress isn’t necessary. It comes from placing our attention on all of the materialistic aspects of the holiday season and getting distracted from what is most important.

When we get distracted we end up missing out on the entire point of the holiday.
This is a time of year for gratitude, appreciation, love, and joy.
Yes there will be stress and a feeling of pressure and urgency at times, but we can learn to balance this with some holiday cheer.

Here are four ways to help you have more joy during the holidays.

Lower your expectations

First thing first, don’t take the holiday so seriously. Everyone has different traditions but allow yourself some space and cut yourself some slack if something doesn’t happen exactly how you expect. Don’t make it things a problem unless they really are a problem. The holiday doesn’t have to be perfect. Stop comparing yourself to others and just do your best.

Allow yourself to take a break

Sometimes our responsibilities and obligations get in the way of our health and well-being. We have so many worries and things to take care of that we forget that life is meant to be enjoyed. Make sure to give yourself a break when you are feeling stressed out. Just slow down and do one thing at a time.

Focus on connection 

The holiday season is really about spending quality time with friends and family. Make this the focus of this holiday season. It isn’t about the gifts as much as the joy of giving and showing our appreciation for those we care about.

Be playful

What if you could take this holiday season less seriously? Not do less or be irresponsible, but be more playful with what you do. Think about when you were a child and how much fun you had. Make decorating playful. Sing songs, watch holiday movies and dance. Go sledding or have a snow ball fight! Don’t let stress get in the way or you having fun.
Life’s too short to not live joyfully. It is a choice we can make but one that requires commitment. It requires letting go of outcomes and the concentration to be present and savor the moment.
Are you committed to being joyful this holiday?

The original article by Joe Wilner can be found at:
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/best-self/2014/12/are-you-letting-joy-or-stress-dictate-your-holiday-season/

One Of The Most Freeing Things We Learn In Life

25 Minutes of Meditating Eases Stress

Even brief sessions of mindfulness meditation—25 minutes for three consecutive days—can alleviate stress, new research suggests. 

 

“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” says lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.

For the study, researchers had 66 healthy individuals aged 18 to 30 years old participate in a three-day experiment.

Some participants went through a brief mindfulness meditation training program. For 25 minutes for three consecutive days the individuals were given exercises to help them monitor their breath and pay attention to their present moment experiences.

A second group of participants completed a matched three-day cognitive training program in which they were asked to critically analyze poetry in an effort to enhance problem-solving skills.
Following the final training activity, all participants were asked to complete stressful speech and math tasks in front of stern-faced evaluators. Each individual reported their stress levels in response to stressful speech and math performance stress tasks, and provided saliva samples for measurement of cortisol, commonly referred to as the stress hormone.

‘Automatic’ Mindfulness?

The participants who received the brief mindfulness meditation training reported reduced stress perceptions to the speech and math tasks, indicating that the mindfulness meditation fostered psychological stress resilience. More interestingly, on the biological side, the mindfulness meditation participants showed greater cortisol reactivity.

“When you initially learn mindfulness mediation practices, you have to cognitively work at it—especially during a stressful task,” says Creswell, lead author of the study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

“And, these active cognitive efforts may result in the task feeling less stressful, but they may also have physiological costs with higher cortisol production.”

Creswell and colleagues are now testing the possibility that mindfulness can become more automatic and easy to use with long-term mindfulness meditation training, which may result in reduced cortisol reactivity.

Additional researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Commonwealth University took part in the study, which received support from the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund.

Original article found at:  http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/788044-25-minutes-of-meditating-eases-stress/?sidebar=related-below

Your Body On Meditation

This article was originally published on www.GreenMedInfo.com

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