By Suzanne Leyden, Nutrition Health & Wellness Coach and Owner of The WellNow Co

Overwhelm at Christmas, and throughout the rest of the year, is rife. We are all wrapping things up for the end of year and planning things for next year, organising Christmas and all that it entails. There’s rarely a moment for yourself, but you’ve never needed a break more. So what can we do about it?

There’s no point in pretending to be having a ball and actually not enjoying a moment of it (possibly like our gorgeous fur-baby ;-)), and becoming exhausted from it all. This feeling of burnout can lead to low mood, irritability, exhaustion and more. I don’t think any one of us is striving for that existence. Christmas should be about joy and family, gifting and eating, connecting and laughing. Make that the goal. Turn the stress upside-down and take back control. I’ll give you a few starter tips to get you on your way.

GAINING PERSPECTIVE

The first thing is to gain perspective. It’s essential to carve out a dedicated time (it may be just 5 or 10 minutes) to see what is important, and prioritise your list of to-do’s. It may be that some of the things weighing you down can be sorted within a a few minutes – like ordering an online food shop to arrive on the 23rd of December, which means you don’t need to think about that again until it arrives. Or popping to your local shops to get your nieces and nephews gifts in one fell swoop. Or sharing the workload that’s pushing you to breaking point with your team – sometimes just asking can get you very far. 

TAKING BACK CONTROL OF BALANCE

Whatever it is, you can approach taking back control of balance in your life in a similar way and here’s my approach:

1. Write your full list of to-do’s.
2. Group the list, if possible, into things that can be done together at the same time, or delegated, or pushed to the new year.
3. Take the list and put the items one-by one into your calendar. This way you are no longer facing one long to-do list, but managing each day as it comes, hour by hour. 
4. Work through your list without the overwhelm. And if you don’t get to an item on a particular day, you can re-schedule easily.
5. While scheduling these items in, block out a few windows for yourself. They may only be a few minutes, or maybe you can manage an hour. There is no doubt, that with some clever scheduling there is definitely time for you that you can squeeze out of your day.

FINDING WELLBEING

Time management, organising and finding some time for yourself is an essential part of finding balance and wellbeing in an otherwise always-on, highway-to-burnout, overwhelming world.

Once you do get those regular time slots for you into your day, or week, then you need to figure out what to do with them. Hint: it’s not about spending that time doing things for other people. I’ll focus on that in my next post.