Recipe for Holiday Stress: 21 Ingredients to Avoid!

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape!

The holidays are a special time for cooking, baking, and eating. New recipes, old recipes, Grandma’s recipes, Uncle Mark’s recipes, Mom’s recipes—and favorite recipes! We all have those dishes we look forward to every year. But here is one entree we do not want to serve:  

Recipe for Holiday Stress: 21 Ingredients to Avoid!

1. Argue over with whose family the holidays will be spent.

2. Seek perfection in decorations, gift selection, and people.

3. Take every comment personally.

4. Possess a rigid “my way or the highway” attitude.

5. Nag the teen son about getting a haircut.

6. Draw no boundaries, saying yes to everything and no to nothing.

7. Talk about self while asking little to nothing about others.

8. Use plastic money to spend more than what’s in our bank account.

9. Fail to recognize, compliment, and appreciate the people around us.

10. Stay connected on Facebook but disconnected from the people present.

11. Allow the kids to be in charge instead of Parenting the QBQ Way. (Note: Children actually want and need the parent to be “the boss.”)

12. Push to win the “Cleanest House on the Block” award.

13. Give others unsolicited input on what they should be doing for a living.

14. Choose arrogance over … Humility: The magnet that draws people to us.

15. Live the Seven Sinful Words: “We’ve never (or ‘always’) done it that way before!”

16. Refuse to own our emotions by blaming others for our mood.

17. Tell someone they eat too much; tell someone they eat too little.

18. Engage in grudge-holding instead of, “Hey, no big deal. Let’s forget it.”

19. Complain about/criticize the in-laws, or anyone—but especially the in-laws!

20. Get hurt and angry over, um … nothing.

21. Tell others they need to read the QBQ! book because you are convinced that they need more personal accountability!!!

Actually, I don’t mind all that much if people commit #21. 🙂

At QBQ, Inc. we teach this: Stress is a choice. Some people fight that because they think it’s the people and events in our lives that stress us out.

Sorry, but we create our own stress. And, no, don’t waste one second of your life denying what you just read. It’s true for each of us: I do the stress thing to myself!

A woman emailed me right after I spoke for FedEx in Toronto where I had said, “Stress is a choice!” She politely stated that she didn’t agree, and would give herself one month to gather evidence that stress comes from external sources. Thirty days later I received this delightful note:

“I admit I have failed to prove you wrong, John. I do create my own tension. I am now practicing personal accountability by asking QBQs so I can take care of my own stress problem!”

She’s right. We can always ask Incorrect Questions (IQs) instead of The Question Behind the Question—or QBQs. (Quick IQ vs. QBQ tutorial)

When we choose to ask IQs like, “Why is this happening to me?” “When will he change?” “Why doesn’t she ever listen?” and “Who made the mess?” we have chosen victim-thinking, procrastination, and blame. And trust me—these human traps will spoil any holiday celebration!

However, if we ask QBQs such as, “How can I contribute?” “What can I do to honor others?” “How can I find the good in people around me?” and The Ultimate QBQ!—“What can I do to let go of what I can’t control?”—we’ll be okay. The stress will be less, the fun will go further, and the holiday joy will be real.

Now that’s a dish worth serving!

Discussion and Application:

Are there any bad ingredients on the list above that are a trap for you? If so, which one(s) do you commit to avoiding this holiday season? In what other ways have you seen holidays “ruined”? Feel free to share!

If you are not a subscriber to our QBQ! QuickNote blog updates, sign up here.