Post Holiday Hangover: Back to Reality
I hope everyone had a good holiday season! I always find the couple weeks after the holidays to be pretty rough. There’s so much anticipation, energy (negative and/or positive) exerted, and scrambling to get everything done and ready for the upcoming break. Then, once it’s here, it’s not restful. Exciting and fun for some of us and it’s exhausting and daunting for others. Either way, it’s a lot of energy and is rarely recharging for most people. Now we are in the part where we are all tired and reeling from our holiday celebrations but expected to go back to the grind and our normal routines. Not to mention the overwhelming anxiety that comes with how much money most people end up spending over the holidays. That’s enough to make anyone want to hide from the world or go into overdrive trying to make up the money they spent.
If you are feeling tired, unmotivated, and wanting more time off- this is normal despite how much it sucks. There’s nothing wrong with you or whatever thinking errors might be existing in your head. A side from all the things I listed in my holiday blues post last month, a lot of us now are attempting the task of implementing positive changes through our resolutions or goals for the new year. This is a good thing but we all tend to get intimidated or overwhelmed in implementing some change. We also may be feeling exhausted from the reflection of last year, especially if last year wasn’t that great.
Either way, it’s important to be patient with yourself during this time. Most of us are tired, most of us are feeling intimidated to “get back to reality”, and most of us want more time off to recover and recharge from December. Normalizing your thoughts and feelings around this time can be helpful in avoiding getting caught in a shame cycle. All we can do is our best. For those of you who are feeling the pressure to start your resolutions- Please remember change takes time and there’s often backsliding into old behaviors no matter what it is you are trying to change. Baby steps and self-compassion are key to any form of change and improvement. A lot of people fear that self-compassion can lead to complacency and “making excuses” for ourselves. This can happen if you are allowing yourself to give up on your goal. However, most of the time its more motivating. Examples of Self-compassion:
Reminding yourself that change is hard but with persistence you will meet the goal
Encouraging thoughts- i.e. -”I got this” - “Everyone slips up sometimes but I can learn from it and do better next time” -
Make reasonable and attainable goals each day and build on those for the next day
Focus on and celebrate the successes
If you focus on the failures, use them to learn how you can get around barriers in the future
Remember it’s ok to have a difficult day, it’s part of being human
I hope this is helpful! How are you taking care of yourself while you are pushed back into reality?