Don't Do it an Don't Stress It!

You've heard the slogan of a famous athletic shoe manufacturer -- “Just Do It?” Well I'm here to tell you now -- “Just Don't Do It!” -- if you want to reduce your stress.

Let me explain. In a previous article I talked about that short “window of opportunity” for “me” time just prior to the holidays hitting. Well that door has done slammed shut.

My revelation: every year since my eldest child was two years old (he is now 17) I have decorated my front yard for Halloween with life-size Styrofoam gravestones. Every year I buy more and more to the point that now when I decorate, it actually looks like the family plot right there in the front yard. I have gotten quite elaborate with my Halloween decorating, strategically planting blue spot lights at all the right angles to highlight the graves in a ghostly fashion when evening fell. Needless to say, this is a very time consuming project and it entails getting all the decorations down from the attic in the outside shed, gathering the outdoor lighting cords and fixtures, hammering things into the ground, placing and replacing the tomb stones for special effects, etc. In short, it takes all day and creates a big mess of empty boxes and other strewn about items.

I think you see where I'm going with this. This year was an extremely busy year for Stress Dynamics and I'll not bore you with the details for now as I want to get to my point. I simply did not have the time or the energy to decorate the front yard. But as the days passed from the first week to the second week of October and my little seven-year-old daughter asked, “Mommy, where are the grave-stones? Aren't you going to decorate our yard for Halloween?” The pangs of guilt were overwhelming.

I found myself unable to sleep, unable to eat (I wish), thinking night and day about those darned gravestones. Finally, I approached Mandy. “Honey,” I said, “I want the front yard to be decorated for Halloween, but Mommy does not have the time or energy this year to do the gravestones.” The look on her face was horrifying. I then followed up with, “but I really want to decorate, so when we go shopping let's keep a look out for something we'd like to use in the front yard, ok?” She agreed.

We were out grocery shopping and came upon one of those new electric inflated yard decorations; this one was an 8-foot stack of jack-o-lanterns that lights up at night. I immediately grabbed the last one at a bargain-priced $39.99 as the box reported: “sets up in only minutes.” Which it did.

Moral of the story: think of your time as money invested. If you are beginning to get stressed about “doing something,” for the holidays and you don't want to do it, DON'T DO IT! Then brainstorm ideas that are reasonable and agreeable alternatives to keep your stress level low and your family happy. Compromise is the key.