How To Set Your Own Male Standard This Holiday Season

Want to enjoy the holidays this year, but not exactly sure how to pull it off? Holiday related expectations and commitments, plus the extra seasonal partying, can make it tough to stay on top of your cool dude game. Have you been through a rough holiday season a time or two? Do you realize the season can be easy breezy, and you can glide through, smiling all the way? Would you like what’s left of 2013 to be full of fun, and avoid holiday pressure and anxiety?

Awesome holidays start now! Ask yourself how you want to feel. Want to be happy, inspired, calm, and peaceful? When you’re clear on how you want to feel, you can make choices accordingly. Knowing how you’d like to feel is the best way to be pro-active with planning, including taking care of yourself. Naturally, when you take care of yourself, you’re in the best shape to take care of, and be content with others. Like going to the gym to get in physical shape, tune in to yourself, and plan how you want to feel.

Here’s a little experiential adventure to get you started on smooth skating. Before you begin, get a pencil and paper, or keyboard, in preparation. Fast forward, in your imagination, to mid-January next year, and hear yourself say, “Wow, the holidays were really great!” Take in a deep breath, and fully exhale… Delve into your mind’s eye and imagine looking back… Where were you for the holidays? Who were you with? What were you doing? Smile inside, as you imagine. Notice how you were feeling. Really notice what you were feeling.

Keep breathing, and list three words that describe how you felt.

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Close your eyes, if you want, and continue imagining.

When you are ready to come back here and now, take another deep breath, and fully exhale. Open your eyes and look around. Name a several things in your immediate view, like your computer, your phone, a tree outside the window, a painting on the wall. Name whatever you see. The purpose for naming things in your immediate view is to return your focus to now, and get you off the thoughts in your head. This is an important forever tool to get a grip when you start to lose your cool. It works anytime, anywhere, even at the Christmas dinner table! It doesn’t matter whether you name things aloud or silently. Once you have your mind disengaged from what you were thinking, take another breath — and in the pause — is a golden opportunity. In the pause, you can choose how you want to proceed.

Magnificently, the three words you selected can serve as your overall holiday intention, and guide you through the holidays. They can help you decide whether to go formal or informal with your holiday attire, and if you’re hosting the big meal, whether you want a fancy, traditional sit down dinner, with china, crystal and silver, or a buffet with trays. Maybe you’ll decide this is the year to volunteer at a soup kitchen. It’s totally up to you! Just because “that’s the way it’s always been done,” doesn’t mean that’s how you must do it this year.

Deciding how you want to feel is also a forever tool. To work it best, if you’re in a relationship, talk about how you want to feel with your significant other. Be considerate, and flexible while allowing the feeling to serve as a guide. Inform extended family, and others who may be affected by your decision, well before the holiday itself. It’s important to give people time to consider your perspective, and prevent blind-siding them.

Follow the feelings you want, and have and awesome holiday season!

About Anne Kirvan