Recently, I was asked to create a presentation to help people manage their stress and find work-life balance around the holidays.

Because that’s hard! I mean, let’s face it, Work Life Balance is difficult to find EVERY DAY. Yes, every day. And, especially when the calendar is fuller and expectations are even higher, like around the holidays.

Let’s just call it what it is. We can work towards Work-Life balance any day. We’re talking about this in December, but I could probably start this with “Finding Work-Life Balance in the New Year”, and while you could be busy then for different reasons, the strategies might still be the same!

Let’s get started. I want to talk at stress management. Because, like and in conjunction with life balance, this time of year and every day of the year is a good time to talk about how we can take better care of ourselves.

First, a couple of tools that you can use around the holidays and also every other day of the year. You can use them at work or home or on the train or in your car or as you fall asleep, or at a holiday event while you try to not overreact to your obnoxious uncle, or standing in line at a retailers or when you really just want to go home. The two tools are Square or Box Breathing and Progressive Muscle Relaxation.

I have talked about square or box breathing before (click here to check out that article), go to my website’s blog page and search for “breathe”, and I want to put it out there again today. Square breathing is when we breathe in for 4 counts, we hold that inhale for 4 counts, we exhale for 4 counts and then we hold the exhale for 4 counts.

That’s it. We can count it in our heads, or perhaps we do it while we listen to a favorite song.

In for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. Imagine the 4 sides of a square or box as you breathe. Try it in sets for 30 seconds then 60 seconds then 2 minutes. We can just do this for ourselves any time we can use a little break. I practice square breathing multiple times a day, and it makes a world of difference in how I feel and how I manage my stress.

And, Progressive Muscle Relaxation. From Healthline.com, Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a form of therapy that involves tightening and relaxing your muscle groups, one at a time, in a specific pattern. The goal is to release tension from your muscles, while helping you recognize what that tension feels like. Again, that was from Healthline.com.

This is a great technique to help us relax and relieve tension, but it is also really helpful for us to identify what stress feels like and where we personally hold stress in our body. There are many places that people commonly hold stress. Head and forehead, jaw, neck, shoulders, back, arms and clenched fists. And more.

So, How to:

Starting at our feet and toes and then working up our body, we squeeze our muscle groups for a count of 5 and then fully release the squeeze, all while breathing nice and deep and taking a few breaths between muscle groups. So as we slowly work up through our feet and then ankles and calves and knees and thighs and hips and on up our body, we may realize there’s an area that’s fully clenched all the time, like our shoulders or our fists or our jaw, and this awareness can help us to release that tension and also identify it quicker next time. You can do this any time you’re feeling stressed or anxious, and it is especially great to help you fall asleep.

And now for the Great question I mentioned in the title.

A trusted counselor recently suggested a strategy to help with instances when my anxiety or my ADHD start to run the show. And it really resonated with me. It is so simple. When I am feeling anxiety or stress, we can’t just eliminate those feelings. We can use tools like Square breathing and progressive muscle relaxation to help us cope. And he suggested, to help me manage anxiety and stress, to figure out what I like to do and do more of it.

Of course, I mean we know that, right? But I needed to hear it. And perhaps you need to hear it, too. Find out what you like to do and do more of it. Yep, I love that.

This a next level stress management, time management and productivity strategy, right?

Family members decided for themselves that they wanted to do more of the things that bring them joy. Amazing, right? And they realized that their pets bring them joy so they adopted a dog. And I look forward to meeting her. But they said “Let’s do more things that bring us joy”, and dogs bring us joy, so let’s get a dog.

Again, seems incredibly simple and profound. And I needed to hear it. And perhaps you do do, too. Figure out what we like to do, and do more of it. This isn’t even stress management advice, this is just advice for life.

We can start with the easy things that the world tells us to try, like a hot bath, a glass of wine, a facial or massage, a work out, whatever that looks like for you. But the possibilities are truly endless.

When he asked me the question “What Do You Like To Do?”, my first answer was music. In addition to being a certified professional organizer and organizational coach, I am a professional and liturgical musician. So I can consider how to do it more. On my own, or with my choir. This time of year, I can sign up for more Masses at church for Advent. I can set up my music stand in my office and practice vocally or playing my flute or ukulele more often.

We also follow and support a number of independent musicians and I’d like to do more of that. I can listen to more music. I can set myself up to succeed by creating more Spotify playlists that capitalize on the musicians I want to hear more of, or make lists of songs that will calm me down or energize me. And while I love Christmas music, and I do, I also keep listening to the bands I love even this time of year because that makes me happy, too. And I can look ahead to the tour schedules for our favorite bands, and put upcoming shows on my calendar, to continue to do more of what we like to do.

To manage stress and just live better, find out what you like to do and do more of it.

Other things on my list were being with family, reading, watching movies (theatre or streaming), hiking / being outside, cooking and baking, and travel. My challenge for now and for 2025 is to do more of those things.

On the other side of that, identify what you don’t want to do and do less of it.

My example of this is meal planning. A year ago, I identified that I wanted to eat well and cook my own food for health and budgeting reasons, and because I really like to cook. BUT I don’t want to cook as much, especially during the week. So, cooking on weekdays was something I wanted to do less of. Cooking brings me joy, and so do calmer and weeknights, so I make a point to batch cook on the weekends but not weeknights.

What do you like to do? Find what you like and do more of it. And find what you don’t like, and do less of it. There is beauty in the simplicity.

Use these stress management tools this week, if you need them, and ask yourself the great question, What Do I Like To Do? And do more of it!