Holiday Flavored Tips: 10 Tips for Setting Your Intentions and Having a Stress Free Holiday Season

The holidays are fast approaching and for many, the holidays mean spiraling head on into a multi-tiered web of stress, but the good news is that it doesn't have to be. We can try to do it differently this year by setting our intentions and our goals and realizing that we don't have to morph into some perfect (whatever that means), superhero-diy-holiday-homemaking-maven, so that we can ultimately enjoy the season. Set your intentions so the holidays can be enjoyable, fulfilling, light and breezy.

1. Sit with yourself. Schedule a moment to sit down and have a pow-wow with yourself and your favorite beverage to ponder what you'd like your holidays to be like. Make a list if need be, write it in your handy-dandy Tracyville notebook, on a kitchen chalkboard, on your smartphone (not as fun as a Tracyville notebook - wink, wink), or whatever. 

2. Set your intentions of how you are going to feel or behave in your body. We can let the season run us, or we can decide to run the holidays. Your holiday season is your personal ship and you can set the tone on your ship. Your ship can be one of stress and anxiety, or it can be one of fun, peace, love and good cheer.

3. Ask for help and delegate. That's what family and friends are for - to help us when we need help and to be there in good and needful times.

4. Shave down your to-do list to include  the absolute necessities.

5. Wrap gifts as you go. Don't save all your wrapping for the night before Christmas.

6. Consider scaling back holiday decorating. Instead of whole-house decorating you can simply cover your top 3 bases - the door, the tree and one focal point.

7. Don't bake - buy. Local grocery stores have amazing bakery departments these days and the choices are varied and plentiful.

8. With regard to cooking duties, keep it simple. Do you have to create a spread fit for royalty? If you do have to create a gigantic feast, you know what I'm going to say next...once again, refer to #3 and ask for help and d.e.l.e.g.a.t.e. 

9. Set your intention to enjoy! Let go and enjoy! The holidays are meant to be full of love, fun, happinesss and joy. Reframe your thinking and set your dial to enjoyment and enjoy the process of the holiday...enjoy the shopping, enjoy the cooking, enjoy the decorating, enjoy the sights, smells, and sounds of the holiday and above all, enjoy, cherish, relish and stay present in the time you have with those whom you love most in the world. 

10. I repeat...enjoy the holidays. They only come once a year!