Enjoying The Holidays While Facing The Challenge Of Transitions
November marks the beginning of the “Holiday Season.” Hopefully, you are looking forward to spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year with family and friends. However, you may be going through a life or work transition that you may or may not have planned for and are trying to figure out how to make it through the holidays keeping a positive and grateful attitude.
You may have been laid off, lost a loved one due to death or divorce, or faced a serious illness. On a positive note, you may be planning a wedding and are trying to balance the requests and expectations of each family. Perhaps you are a sleep-deprived new parent loving your new child but struggling to stay awake and meet the demands of life and work.
Facing the holidays when the expectations are that you will be merry with the rest of your family and friends is not always easy or realistic. To accomplish this, you need to approach and define the holidays in your own way. This can be a challenge more easily said than done, but it is possible. Whenever I’m going through a trying time, I remember a favorite quote by Melody Beattie:
Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Gratitude is one of the ways to develop more resilience when faced with a life or work transition. This skill allows you to bounce back from adversity. We are better able to discover the true nature of ourselves and move forward in life. One of the resilience skills I talk about and emphasize when giving transition presentations is focusing on optimism through gratitude. When you can exercise this ability, you are better able to see what is right in your life instead of what is wrong. You can also begin to see what is right with you and not what is wrong with you.
The following are the results of a study presented in the Harvard Mental Health newsletter. The article is entitled In Praise of Gratitude.
“In one study, they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on specific topics. One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.”
This study was conducted by two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California-Davis and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, who specialize in research on gratitude.
Gratitude Defined
After reading the article and the study referred to above, I looked up gratitude in the dictionary. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. Gratitude is appreciating the people, places, things, and events for what you gain from them, with a focus on the positive whether it’s concrete and easy to see or subtle and vague. In the process, you’ll begin to train yourself to balance the positive with the negative, giving gratitude the upper hand.
During this holiday season, keep in mind there will be times when you think you will never survive a change or transition that has occurred in your life. However, you must develop trust in yourself that you are capable and will find the supports necessary to move through change to accomplish growth.
Take Action
Here are some actions for you to take:
- Lovingly let go what used to be even as you grieve the loss. Fighting change and transition is going to cause more stress in your life than letting go and accepting that change is a vital part of life, even when we didn’t ask for it.
- One of the techniques that works is to compartmentalize the transition from the rest of your life. Create a lovely box to put it in or a balloon symbolizing a temporary letting go. You can come back to it later when you are ready.
- Reach out to your family members and the friends you love and trust to support you. Let them know what’s going on but also be prepared to let them know that you are dealing with it and you still want to enjoy your time with them.
- Three times a week make a list of 3 positive things, people, and events in your life and honor what is right, not dwelling on what is wrong. This will keep you in a positive and grateful mindset.
- Volunteer for a local community group or agency to give back. Volunteering has many redeeming characteristics when you can get outside of your own worries and help someone else less fortunate than you.
- Give yourself time to rest and relax during the holidays without guilt. Work slows down and other events pick up so choose where you want to spend your energy.
- Get your endorphins going and lift your mood by taking your body outside and run, walk, bike ride, swim, etc.
Become the architect of your holiday season, setting the stage for success by remembering what you are grateful for and let that gratitude guide you through the holidays.
Make this time of transition the best time of your life.
Dee Cascio
Author, speaker, Licensed Psychotherapist, Certified Life Coach, Retirement Lifestyle/ReCareer Coach, and Life and Work Transitions Strategies Coach.
As you face changes and transition in life and work, I welcome the opportunity to assist you either on a one-on-one basis or in a group coaching setting in order to meet your needs. Please contact me.
The Life and Work Transitions Community
You’ve joined a great group — people who plan to make successful transitions in life and work. May you be inspired to use your strengths and skills to grow in this season and may each transition be your best ever.
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