Simplify Your Holiday Life Today!

Welcome to my Simply Put Together blog!

Simplify Your Holiday Life Today!

Here are 3 tools you can use to get more time and pleasure out of the remaining days of the holiday season! These tools come from my new book, Simply Put Together, a 2008 Planner with a path to individual wellness and personal satisfaction.

Stop Shoplifting!

Shoplifting, as you know, is taking what does not belong to you. I am not talking about stealing a shirt here. Are you shoplifting other people’s responsibilities? Are you taking what belongs to others and keeping it for yourself? Here is an example. Your husband promises to make dinner. You come home and he is barely started! Do you take over, all exasperated? Another example. Your co-worker comes to you for help with a proposal. You take it and make the changes for them. Here is another. Your teenage daughter tells you she needs her band uniform at 1130pm for school the next morning. And you wash it for her.

Where are you shoplifting in your life? It’s important to support the people in our lives, but does stealing their responsibilities help them or your relationships? Christmas is only days away. Take a look at your daily life and see if you are shoplifting. If the woman in the example had let her husband cook on his own schedule, not taken over the proposal and let her daughter do her own laundry, she would have gotten 2 ½ hours back that day!!!! Buy yourself some time and try to stop shoplifting other people's responsibilities this week.

Forgive Something

Forgive something. Tis the season, right? Next time something makes you angry, use the season to “forgive” it. This may sound crazy, but Christmas is a time to be a little crazy, so try it. Maybe traffic makes you mad, or your mother, or your boss. The next time someone or something gets under your skin, give it the Holiday Forgiveness Treatment. Just tell yourself, "I’m forgiving this one," and then, CHANGE THE SUBJECT! Don’t linger on the topic. Replace that thought with something you are looking forward to doing. Basically, you are replacing all that anger with something positive. Instead of brooding for an hour or so, your mind will be free to think of something else, like last minute gifts, or the party you are having. Forgive something today and see how that gives your mind time to do something better for you!

Holiday Replay

You can create more pleasure in your day with a Holiday Replay. Think back on a happy childhood Christmas memory and re-live it. Either in your head, or actually do it. Go sledding. Watch Holiday movies. My daughter and I play a game where we recount favorite holiday memories. Back and forth we go. Sometimes they are silly…..like when she remembered being afraid Rudolph's nose light would go out and Santa would crash into her window. Doesn’t matter. Holiday replay can be sharing memories or doing them all over again. But it’s really about making room to experience the magic of the holidays, simply by reaching into the backs of our minds and grabbing onto the things that made our past seasons delightful.

A few small changes and you can create more time and pleasure this season!