Building Up Your Resilience for Christmas

Whilst Christmas is meant to be a time of joy and happiness, there is always so much to do and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Those thoughts of ‘I can’t cope’ can creep in unexpectedly and detract us from enjoying the festivities.
Resilience is defined as ‘The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.’ It is how much we feel we can cope with different situations.
Having a good level of resilience is required to help us survive Christmas without feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and drained.
Here are my tops tips for building resilience and helping you survive Christmas with a smile.

1. Plan ahead – Each day leading up to Christmas, write down the top 3 things you need to achieve. Even if your ‘to do’ list is longer, by only focussing on only three things you are more likely to to get these done, and more.
2. Build your energy – Think about the activities and people in your life that build your energy. Write a list. Then plan in time doing these things over the Christmas period. Mine are having a bath, running outdoors, socialising, 9 hours sleep, playing music I love and eating healthy food. What’s on your list?
3. Visualise – Use visualisation to think about what you want your day to look like. Find a quiet, undisturbed space for 5-10mins, take a few deep breaths and then start your visualisation exercise. By focusing on the positive, it will put you in a more positive state and more able to cope with, and enjoy, the day ahead.
4. Look after yourself – Christmas doesn’t seem the obvious time to be exercising and eating healthily, but our mental and physical health is key to building up our resilience. What exercise do you enjoy and how could you factor this into your Christmas plans? Whilst you may not be able to resist the chocolates and wine, think about the rest of your diet and try to balance with nutritional food and drinking plenty of water to help with your digestion.
5. Optimism – Identify what you have in your life to be grateful for. Think about your achievements. Recognise and focus on your strengths, and then think about how you can use these to help solve any challenges. With practice it is possible to cultivate a positive mindset.
6. Get balance – Finally, look at whether you are achieving a healthy balance across the areas of your life that will help to build your resilience. A fellow Bird Table coach and owner of Talent Tree Coaching, Amy Elworthy shared this great tool to help to do this. Look at each of the categories in turn and ask yourself – out of 10 where do I rate myself now ? Then ask, where do I want to be? And finally, what small actions can I take to get closer to where I want to be? Then action it!

Our resilience is really put through the paces at Christmas, but by allowing time for ourselves and following these tips will help us feel much more in control and able to cope.
Building your resilience takes self-love and discipline. If you struggle this, or any other aspect of confidence and clarity, then please contact me to see how I can help.
Have a very happy Christmas!

Marie x
Confidence & Clarity Coaching
Tel: 07554883026
E mail: mariehaycocks@certanovo.com