3 quick ways to relieve holiday stress

First aid for your nervous system

The holidays can be amazing. They can also suck. The menu of potential vexations is vast: overwhelm, financial worries, FOMO, grief, loneliness, travel indignities, obnoxious family members. I could go on.

Here are three quick things you can do in acute situations:

• Sing your worries. If you are swamped by intrusive thoughts, try singing them out loud. It can help you take your stressors and neuroses less personally.

• Put a half-smile on your face. This can trick your brain into believing you’re happier than you actually are.

• Straw breathing. This is a quick and surreptitious deep breathing exercise that can reset your nervous system. Take a deep breath, then exhale for twice as long, blowing the air out of your mouth as if you were blowing into a straw. Repeat three times or more.

Try these hacks and let me know in the comments if they worked.

Before I leave you, a programming note:

Starting January 6th, I’ll be launching a free, 7-day New Year’s meditation challenge. Every morning, you’ll get a guided meditation in your inbox. And then, several evenings during the week, I’ll do live Q&A’s via the Substack app. If you want to do me (and yourself) a solid, invite some friends; doing the challenge with other people will confer all sorts of carpool lane benefits.

For my last chat of 2024, let’s share some pics. I want to see it all: the chaos, the calm, the children, the animals, whatever.

Happy holidays. I’m grateful to you. We’ve got a big 2025 planned, both here on Substack and over on my podcast. Xx

P.S. We re-ran a great episode with meditation teacher Kamala Masters today. It’s about how to be OK no matter what (i.e. equanimity). Paid subscribers have access to a cheatsheet below, which includes: key takeaways, time-coded highlights, and a transcript.