5 Ways to Stay Sane in Silly Season 

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas time.

For a long time the end of the year always felt stressful, full of deadlines, rushing around, conflicting family agendas, annoying Christmas songs, an overload of overspending, over eating, over drinking and by the end of it I always felt over it!

Over the last few years my approach to the holiday season has changed and I’ve found some great ways to stay sane in the silly season that I hope will help you enjoy the holidays more too.

1. Less Presents and More Presence  About 5 years ago my family decided to change the game around Christmas gift giving and started doing a Secret Santa draw for the adults (kids still get spoilt). That means each person only buys one gift (for the person they draw), and each person only receives one gift. And this truly has been the biggest gift to all of us! We spend less time, money and stress getting caught up in the consumer frenzy (that plagues our planet and psyches with unnecessary stuff), we get one great present we really want instead of a bunch of mediocre ones, and we all feel more relaxed. Which means spending time together is so much nicer, and because of that we do more of it and really give each other the priceless present of presence.

1. Stoke Digestive Fire with Spices, Soups & Probiotics – Tis the season for over eating and drinking, and this always makes me feel heavy and disgusting. But it’s hard to avoid the sweets in every staff room, holiday parties every weekend, multiple family gatherings and special gingerbread lattes. But oh how our poor digestive tract feels the pressure! I try to give the digestive juices extra support by taking probiotics, adding more spices to my food and giving digestion a break by eating light veggie soups between holiday functions.

1. Good Ol’ Home Cookin’ from Scratch – Traditional holiday food is delicious but not exactly flying the “healthy” flag. There’s always a time and place for enjoying “unhealthy” food, but for me I’ve found I don’t really enjoy it when it’s packed full of processed nasties, refined sugars, e-numbers, preservatives and comes out of a can or unethical “farm”. On the other hand, good ol’ fashioned home cooking from scratch holiday food is amazing! I now do the cooking for a lot of holiday gatherings and I do it from scratch, which means I can insure the ingredients come from a source I feel good about consuming.

1. Exercise Adventures – To balance out the over indulgence even more I always plan extra adventures full of exercise, like snowboarding, surf trips, dancing, yoga workshops or big long hikes with friends. Staying active and moving my body is a requirement for sanity all year around, but especially this time of year I up the anti and it makes a world of difference.

1. Make Time to do Nothing – Holidays should be about rest, but it’s so easy to get caught up in the buzzing around catching up with friends and family that by the end of it all we’re starting the new year exhausted. I’ve started to give myself permission and even prioritise just doing nothing. Having slow mornings, reading a novel, puttering around in my PJ’s until noon, taking afternoon nana naps and having long, lazy hang out sessions. The rest can wait until the new year, now is time to recharge and review all that’s happened over the last year.

Enjoy the holidays with these mindful tips!