Updating my CV

Image by Shafin Al Asad Protic from Pixabay

Thursday marks the official start of my new role, although you could argue I’ve been doing it part time over the last few months anyway. My time as a service manager has ended, with this particular team after five years.

I have been fortunate over the last 20 years with the same employer to have had a variety of roles that have stretched me, challenged me, made use of my skills and knowledge. I have been able to experience project management and service management, working in back office functions, and being very connected to clinical environments. I have met a multitude of people from all sorts of different departments along the way. I understand how things work around the organisation and, on most occasions, who to talk to, to get things done.

I have moved back into a project management role, which is much more up my street. Process, structure, planned activity, and less people management are things I enjoy and am reasonably good at.

As with most new roles, particularly in the same organisation, you start doing the work before you’ve actually officially started the role. I have been quite deliberate in maintaining connection with my department as much as has been appropriate over the last few months, but can now take a step back and focus on my new tasks fully. I will still need to do some things for my, now former team, as their structure gets sorted out and accesses to various systems are moved around. Until someone is in post I’ll still need to authorise some things to help them out.

On my last official day as their manager, I went over to see the team and deliver several tubs of chocolates for them as a thank you to them for their hard work and support over the years. In return I was given a card and bunch of flowers. It’s hard to know what to do when I haven’t been around them much over the last few months and given the projects that I’m involved in will impact on them, I’ll still be seeing them a fair bit as that progresses.

I have now officially changed my email signature, and changed my details on my social media profiles. It does feel a bit odd though, like cutting those apron strings. I can legitimately not get involved in staffing or service issues and pass people on to others to deal with things that would only take me a few seconds to deal with probably.

I have also updated my CV, which I do on a regular basis, just in case. When I first started in the NHS 20 years ago, almost to the day, I started life as a Project Administrator at a Band 2. I did a six year stint as Research & Development Administrator before returning to the same project I started on but now as an Assistant Project manager, and finally as Acting Project Support Manager at the end of that project. Then came my first foray into service management. Not an easy one, going straight into Domestic Services, managing a team of over 250 staff who worked 24/7 and a £5.5m budget. I did that for five years before getting itchy feet and needing to move into a different service, where I became Health Records Manager with a smaller team of about 65 staff, who only worked Monday to Friday. Alongside that latter role, I also supported the Document Ratification Group as Deputy Chair. It was in December 2020 that I was first seconded back into more of project role, whilst still keeping an overview of the Health Records team, before the role I am now embarking on fully became available.

So as I move into a new year, I have a new role to get my teeth into. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

7 Ways to harness your voice

It’s not what you say but how you say it. When it comes to saying something important it’s the way we say it that has the impact rather than what we actually say.

In an article in Woman & Home magazine, vocal coach and professor and researcher of voice and brain science, Jessica Doyle, offered seven ways we can harness our voices with confidence, whether doing a formal presentation or just trying to get your friends or family to listen.

Warm up the vocal chords – your voice is created by skeletal muscle, the same sort that you work out at the gym with, so for peak performance it needs a warm up. Humming through a straw for two or three minutes, from the bottom to the top of your vocal range and back, or undulating through the range is a good way to deal with ‘morning voice’ croaks or if you’re not feeling too great.
Sort your posture – how you stand or sit affects the sound of your voice, so does your head being too far back or too far forward, it can give it an abrasive quality. Sitting too long, carrying heavy bags or walking in heels changes your body’s alignment and centre of gravity. From standing, hang like a ragdoll. As you roll back up slowly inhale, then exhale again when you bend forward again. Whilst standing check you head is balanced on top of the spine with shoulders down and centred under your ears, rather than rounded or overextended backwards.
Use breathing techniques – breath can relax your body and energise your voice. Lack of breath control can make it sound like you’re gasping for air when you speak. Expanding the chest, abdomen and pelvic floor using deep breaths and thinking of your body filling up with air can help.
Self-care – getting the right amount of sleep, staying hydrated and eating a balanced diet all ensure your brain, body and voice are ready to do their best. It takes four hours for the water you drink to hydrate your voice. A dehydrated voice sounds scratchy and tires more quickly.
Prepare – not for what will happen, but what might happen. Recreate scenarios, practise in front of a mirror, have people interrupt you with a question, or answer a phone call. When you’re prepared for interruptions they are less likely to throw you off.
Focus – the reality is that we’re not designed for multi-tasking. Trying to focus on several things at once stops the brain from performing its best, making it even harder to achieve the task in hand. Be present. Dedicate 10 to 15 minutes of present practice each day in the lead up to your event or conversation.
Positive affirmation – thoughts are extremely powerful and your brain can be tricked into thinking they are real. Write down a sentence highlighting your strongest fears about speaking in public, then flip it to way you love speaking in public. Write it down two or three times and put it up where you’ll see it regularly. Read your sentence aloud last thing at night and first thing in the morning. When you have negative thoughts, shut them down by repeating your sentence slowly and firmly.

I do quite a lot of public speaking, whether presenting or chairing meetings both at work and #bellringing. I’ve given quite lengthy talks too. I’m usually very ok with the confidence of delivering a presentation that I have prepared, so know what I intend to say and the messages I want to get across, and I’m ok at dealing with interrupts and questions. However, what I find most annoying is that after about 20 minutes my throat dries up and I start coughing. I always make sure I have a glass of water handy. When I start coughing it can make my nose run too, so it looks like I’m snivelling as well.

As we start to consider a national recruitment campaign for #bellringing I dare say I’ll be doing a lot more talking. I think the things I need to be aware of, given the suggestions above is to drink plenty of water before the event to allow time for my voice to be well hydrated and to do some warm up exercises beforehand.

What are your top tips for not croaking during something important?

Feeling festive for the weekend

I’m not a fan of Christmas commercialism. There’s too much pressure put into gift buying and overeating and getting together with people to get stupidly drunk in the name of Christmas. But there are certain traditions I do enjoy.

This weekend I’m feeling the festive vibes.

I don’t work Fridays but this week was Disability Awareness week. I’m on the Equality & Diversity networks and my Director is the Chair of the Disability one. We’d planned to do an awareness campaign involving a stand in the Atrium and a drive to enlist more supporters into the network to help support our staff with different abilities. I agreed to go in for a few hours to help with the stand. In the end it was just me and my Director and we had a good chat about all sorts. We managed to get a few more people signed up and a couple of staff with disabilities signed up for the Disability Passport, which will help them and their manager to make suitable adjustments. I felt all warm and fuzzy like you do when you’ve done something good for others.

When I got back home I decided to do an audit of the Christmas presents I’ve already bought. Whilst I was at it I wrapped them too. In the background I’d lit a couple of Christmas candles and was half watching a Christmas film. It was a pretty naff film but at least I didn’t have to concentrate. I made a list of everyone I needed to buy for, what I’d already got and started a shopping list of the missing items.

Saturday is the city Christmas Market so we agreed to take a wander in for a look. I fully intend to purchase whatever takes my fancy without having to justify it to anyone. Don’t care if it’s a bit cheesy or not. I’ll get a few things off my list too.

In the afternoon we have the #bellringing Carol Service so a bit of festive ringing, singing and mince pies. Cards are written ready for distributing, saves on postage!

I decided to dress up a bit sparkly and, dare I say it, very girly. I wore a pink sparkly top with my faux black leather trousers. I even painted my nails pink. The outfit made me feel a bit more festive anyway.

With time owing from Friday and some annual leave I’ve got Monday off work to head to Lakeside to finish the Christmas shopping. That’ll be the last of it. If I don’t get it then, I won’t get it at all.

So this weekend I’m feeling the festive. It won’t last. Next week I’ll be back to bah humbug!

Why is it so hard to break bad habits and stick to new ones?

As you know, I’ve been developing myself over the last year or so and have started to form some new habits, but they’re not second nature yet. When faced with a menu at a restaurant and there are choices between gorgeous sounding salads and fruit options, why do I go straight for the dirty burgers and chips?

According to an article by Claire Cantor in Platinum Magazine, 43% of our daily actions are habitual, meaning we do them without consciously thinking about them. This could be like reaching for the bag of crisps even when you’re not really hungry, or one that we’ve got into on a regular basis of having a bottle of wine with dinner on a Wednesday.

Wendy Wood, Professor of Psychology & Business in the USA described the habit loop as the cycle of cue, context, reward. The idea is that habits are learning that is activated by a context, (its Wednesday), followed by an action (drinking the bottle of wine), and reward (the pleasure of drinking a fine red, or chilled white). When we get the reward we’re hit with a dose of dopamine, the feel good hormone. It’s this that helps form habit memories which trigger again when the same context occurs.

In order to break the cycle we need to change our context or environment in order to short-circuit the unwanted habit loop, replacing the bad habit with a positive, rewarding one. Habit formation requires persistence, repetition and context manipulation. It can take on average 66 days to form a new habit and for some it can take up to 250 days!

A way of breaking bad habits is to make it more difficult by increasing the effort involved or putting obstacles in the way. If you want to stop looking at your phone so much, put it out of reach and turn alerts off. A way to make new habits stick is to do it with a friend, you’re more likely to enjoy it and they will hold you to account over it. Try mentoring someone else who’s trying to stick to the same habit as you, it’ll help build your own confidence in your own ability, and you wouldn’t want to be seen as a hypocrite. You could try rewarding another behaviour, make your new habit enticing.

Its important to have a clear plan for successfully changing habits. Ask yourself what new habit do you want to establish? How are you going to do it? Making smaller, more achievable changes are a lot easier to stick to and can set off a chain reaction of positive changes. Don’t rely on willpower; this will only get you so far. Believing that change is possible is crucial to success. If you do a simple task each day, like making your bed, you start to embody the traits of an organised person, or if you write every day, you identify with being a creative person.

Wendy set out five tips on how to help make good habits stick:

Create the right environment to make life easier for yourself
Understand your cues
Reduce or add friction
Enjoy what you are doing and set rewards
Start with small, easily achievable goals and follow a plan

Over the last year, some good habits that have stuck have been writing this blog, introducing fruit into my diet on a daily basis, being more mindful of my interactions with others. What I still can’t get out of is choosing the dirty burger and chips from a pub menu.

In 2022 I want to start forming some new habits around interactions with others to break existing patterns and create new, positive ones.

What bad habits do you want to ditch? What new ones are you trying to stick to?

9 Ways to radical acceptance of situations beyond your control

A newish buzz phrase, Radical Acceptance, is where we accept situations that are beyond our control without making worrying judgement calls on them. This helps reduce the suffering and pain caused by those situations. Acceptance is the positive change in both thought and behaviour.

Psychologies Jo Hemmings explained this new way of thinking that allows you to embrace a way to let got and move on, for your ultimate health and wellbeing, in an article in Platinum Magazine.

The idea of radical acceptance is based on a Buddhist philosophy that our attachment, experiences and interpretation of pain is what causes us suffering. It suggests non-attachment to overcoming suffering. That’s not to say you should not feel the feelings, but the intention is to not allow the pain to turn into suffering. This means being mindful about your thoughts and feelings and identifying when you are allowing yourself to feel worse than necessary.

Being non-judgemental is a key element of radical acceptance. It does not involve approval or agreement with the situation but understanding the reality of what you can’t change and not getting caught up in an emotional reaction.

It is usually applied when you are unable to change what is happening or to influence the outcome. You don’t have to agree with what’s going on, but you do need to help yourself take a step back and accept things as they are. It can take some practice if it’s not something you’re used to. It’s normal to feel negative emotions from time to time.

The article suggested nine coping mechanisms for radical acceptance:

I will get through this no matter what
I will survive and this feeling will fade, even though this feels painful right now
What I’m going through right now is touch but it will pass
It’s possible for me to feel anxiety but still manage this situation in an effective way
It’s possible for me to accept what happened and still end up happy
I don’t understand why this happened, but ~I can accept that it did
When I remain rational, I am better able to make good choices and solve problems
It’s better to take the right actions than keep judging or blaming
It’s best to stay mindful and focus on what needs to happen in the moment

Not all situations are suitable for radical acceptance, like being in a toxic or abusive relationship or where you’re being treated badly. But like any skill, the more you practice the easier it becomes to recognise the times where it could be appropriate. It has nothing to do with being passive or giving up.

Some practical tips on how to apply radical acceptance include:

Reminding yourself that certain aspects of reality can’t be changed
Practicing a feeling of acceptance through relaxation techniques and self-affirmations
Accepting that life can be worthwhile even when you’re experiencing pain and identifying events in your life that you are having a hard time accepting
Making a plan of action
Creating coping mechanisms to help you through difficult times
Accepting things as they are instead of how you want them to be
Understanding what is within your control and what is outside of your control
Seeing yourself as an observer rather than a participant
Allowing yourself to let go of the need to control situations
Focussing on your rational mind instead of catastrophic thinking
Allowing yourself to be flawed and make mistakes
Forgiving yourself, but also learning to move on and accept responsibility
Allowing yourself to stop thinking about how things could have been
Looking for patterns in your negative thoughts

“Give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace” – Reinhold Niebuhr

Spring cleaning your mind

Your mind creates your experiences of life, impacting on how you feel, how you show up in the world and the actions you take every day. When you wake up to the lies and stories you tell yourself about how you’re not good enough, smart enough, will never have what it takes to be successful, we become mindful about what goes on in our minds.

Cleaning our your mind clutter can be overwhelming to start with when you realise just how much mind clutter you’ve accumulated over the years.

Podcast fave Tonya Leigh suggested a way of clearing the clutter that starts with picking one area in your life that is causing you the most suffering or pain, or the area of least satisfaction, or the area you’re most excited about improving. Then figure out what’s in that area and pull everything out in the open, and decide whether that thought belongs in that space, or is it creating the results you want in your life. If not, it’s time to let it go.

She suggested it might be easier to write down all your thoughts about this area of your life. This allows you to distance yourself from it and look at it more objectively.

You need to be clear about writing the facts e.g. how much you have in your bank account, if finance is the area you want to work on. Decide what your thoughts are about this fact. Some may see that as more money than they could ever dream to have, whilst others may consider it not enough. We can all have different opinions about the same fact.

You may feel that some of your thoughts, the ones you’ve felt for a very long time, are true. You’ll need to decide which of those thoughts or beliefs you want to change and ask yourself the Marie Kondo question of whether it sparks joy, confidence, passion, abundance or whatever it is you’re looking to create. If it doesn’t then it has to go. Does this thought belong in your future?

You won’t change anything overnight but what could you practice making small shifts towards and what will you be willing to let go. One day you’ll realise you no longer or rarely thing about it anymore.

TL implores us to thing like the person in your future and start cleaning up your mind one thought at a time.

I have plans next year to start working hard on one aspect of life that I am currently dissatisfied with, which when I think about it, does probably cause some suffering and pain (not physically). I’m not sure how I’m going to tackle it yet, but in my mind I have a brainstorming mind map of all the people it would involve with some clear aims and actions around it, and what I would determine as success criteria.

Maybe when I get that area of my life sorted, it’ll be one less thing to worry about.

5 Lessons in Less is More

Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

Restraint can feel counter intuitive. If we have more options we have more opportunities and more fun. Why would we want to deny ourselves pleasure? Or reduce our chances of experiencing something new?

By having so many choices and opportunities, we can often feel overwhelmed and actually reduce our chances of being able to get anything constructive completed. We end up with so much stuff around the house and in our wardrobes. It can also lead to financial instability too.

Podcast fave Tonya Leigh describes pursuing restraint as the antidote to self-created chaos. It’s the measure of keeping someone or something within limits. As adults we may think we are beyond imposing limits but to live within the limits of our dreams, we need to cut away at the excesses.

Practicing the pursuit of restraint can have a profound effect in giving us more space to breathe, dream and take action. TL offered five ways to learn the art of restraint:

The restraint of dreams – whilst it’s great to have dreams things don’t happen overnight, and if you focus on one dream at a time you have clear focus on what to say yes or no to. Momentum starts to build and enters every part of your life. Choose one priority, singular. You can only have one prior thing, if everything is a priority, then nothing is.
The restraint of friends – the demands of having lots of close friends can be overwhelming. We can feel guilty about not responding to messages quickly or not accepting all the invitations. By trying to be a good friend to many, we spread ourselves too thinly and end up not being a good friend to those closest and who matter most. You also need to keep space for yourself for recharging. Having a few close friends to invest in fosters better quality time, relationships and communication.
The restraint of learning – when we get all the self-help books, or follow a number of different teachers or coaches, we barely have time to read what we have, we’re not truly invested. Don’t’ buy a new book or new programme until you’ve finished the last one in order to give yourself time to develop that new knowledge into wisdom you can apply in your everyday life.
The restraint of spending money – abundance is about taking care of your money and spending it on the things that mean the most to you. Putting thought into purchases can start to give you a better relationship with money. Decide ahead of time how much to spend on yourself and others. Make it purposeful and intentional.
The restraint around food – that’s not to say you should have hard rules on what and when to consume. You need to eat, but you should consider the pleasurable experience with built in restraint. Don’t deny yourself the treats but don’t allow yourself to gorge n them either. When you first begin to practice restraint it’s uncomfortable but that’s part of the process of building a new you. Allow yourself to feel the emotions that drive you to the family sized bag of crisps and instead learn to feel them and deal with them more constructively.

Restraint doesn’t have to be a shackle but can give you freedom to be in control and creating things you’re proud of because you’ve given it your full focus. Once you start cutting away the thing that don’t align with your dreams, you start to have clarity and experience less is more.

I’m better at restraint in some areas than others. I’m quite good at prioritising one thing at a time and giving it my full focus. If I’m not in the right headspace to deal with something I’ll leave it until such time as I am and spend that time focussing on something else instead. I don’t have many friends (ahh), not close ones anyway. I know lots of people through #bellringing but I’d class them as acquaintances; not necessarily people I would socialise with outside of a #bellringing context. The same with work colleagues. I am interested in their lives but not a part of it outside of work.

The restraint of money is a mixed bag for me. I can absolutely not buy stuff just for the sake of it, but can equally buy something just because I can. I recognise I am privileged enough to earn a decent salary and we have no major outgoings with the mortgage paid off and no young children to get through university etc. My money is my money to do what I want with after the household bills have been paid. I struggle to spend what I earn each month so put the balance away into my savings account. But every now and then I’ll have a bit of a splurge. I do have a very full wardrobe of clothes. But I can budget for things when I know a larger expense is warranted. I’ll put limits on how much I spend on other people.

Food is another variable for me. I like food. Having increased my consumption of fruit over this last year, which is a good thing, and as much as I say to myself I’ll choose the healthy option, I like food. We were eating out on Saturday lunchtime and there were some lovely sounding salads and lighter meals but it was a horribly wet and cold day and I wanted something stodgy to keep me warm so ordered the Dirty Cheeseburger and chips, and blooming loved it. I am easily persuaded by the not so healthy choices. We don’t tend to buy junk food at home and always cook from fresh ingredients, so my diet is pretty good really. I no longer trek over to the shops at lunchtime to stock up on snacks. I take my own breakfasts and lunches in each day. Only rarely do I feel the need to have some crisps or chocolate these days.

Overall I would say that I’m ok with restraint. I can recognise when I need to add more of it in my life, but I also know that I can have some excess without going overboard.

Where do you need to practice restraint? Be courageous enough to put protection around your dreams.

Are you a people pleaser?

An article in Psychologies Magazine looked at how seeing things from your own perspective is not an act of disloyalty toward others. We may find over the festive season that we give in more readily to the demands of others on our time and energy. People want to get together, or want to control events which we may not agree with or want to do.

In a quick quiz of rating a bunch of statements from 1 (that’s not me at all) to 10 (that’s so me) it aimed to identify if you were a people pleaser or someone who has assertiveness superpowers. I played along. My scores totalled 69, smack bang in the middle of the 50-75 range. The results suggested that I should check in with myself “it’s wonderful to be nice, but you have needs too, so don’t end up being someone else’s doormat”.

The article suggested that if you are used to putting others’ needs ahead of your own you are likely to be hypervigilant to the needs of others and out of touch with your own. It suggested the following that should be done regularly to help re-establish what matters to you and what you want:

Decide what you want for dinner, or what you would like to watch on tv, regardless of anyone else’s preferences
Read about items in the news and develop your own opinion or position on current affairs
Make a list of what matters to you and what is unacceptable to you in your relationships with others
Plan your perfect day, doing exactly what you want
Get through a day without saying “I don’t mind, it’s up to you”.

When you live with other people, some of these things are not always possible and compromises have to be made.

I usually go through the recipe books and decide on what meals we’ll have for the week ahead and C decides what day we have which meal based on what else we’re doing. We don’t often argue about the tv as neither of us is that bothered by it. We tend to watch the same few channels most of the time and if either of us wants to watch anything specific we can do that, the other person tends to go do something else if they’re not interested.

I do read, quite a lot in fact, and try to have my own opinion on things but when it comes to voicing it, I often get spoken over and either my opinion is not heard or invalidated by what the other person said. I often start to say something, someone else talks over me and I give up. Occasionally someone might ask what was I going to say, but by that time it’s irrelevant.

I know my own values when it comes to relationships, but again, living them is often a different story. There are so many dynamics and complications around relationships. I know what I’d like my relationships to be like, but making that happen takes both parties and when the other isn’t willing to participate I’m on a losing battle, and they’re not always relationships you can turn away from, or want to.

Planning your perfect day is very different from living it. Again, so many complications around that. What I might want to do doesn’t fit in with other diary commitments, or other peoples. What I might like to do may have financial implications that can’t be justified.

Getting through a whole day without saying “I don’t mind” is really hard. Sometimes I really don’t mind. It’s not about being indecisive or letting the other person take over, but I have no really vibe one way or the other, I’m happy either way, so if the other person has a preference, I’d be just as happy to go with it.

I’m not sure it’s as easy as this article makes it out to be. There are too many variables, which we may take as heavily disguised excuses, but you have to take a whole lot of things into account and being a people pleaser or not requires compromise on both sides.

4 Types of tired

I find that if I’m up late for a few nights in a row, I get exceptionally tired, so much so that I can fall asleep almost as soon as dinner is over, stay asleep until bedtime, then sleep right through to the alarm the next morning, and still feel tired. I also find that I’m tired more during the darker winter months. I wouldn’t say that I suffer from Seasonal Adjustment Disorder as it doesn’t get me down particularly, but I think my mind says “it’s dark, must be time to sleep”, and when dark happens around 4pm, I start to shut down a lot earlier.

An article in Top Sante posits there are four main types of tiredness but it should be recognised that with each of these types, when your overall energy level is low, you’ll reach them more quickly. Listening to your body can help you decide what to do next, whether that’s resting or having a routine or schedule.

Signs, causes and how to help each tiredness type are detailed below:

Mental tiredness – can find it hard to find the right words, brain fog or a sense of being unable to settle, often caused by anxiety patterns pushing your mind into overdrive. All you mind to rest by reducing stimulation. Using mindless tv shows, podcasts etc may be a good way to distract your mind, allowing it to settle. Reducing your exposure to noise and harsh light can help your brain fully rest.
Emotional tiredness – being extra sensitive or reactive and feeling like you’re at your limits emotionally. Often overact to small things and lack any kind of resourcefulness, as if you don’t have the capacity to take on anything else. Take some time to get away from the source of emotional overwhelm by setting firm boundaries with other people, taking time out on your own and allowing yourself to feel all the feels in order to process and digest them.
Physical tiredness – aching muscles and physical weakness, all you want to do is lie down and rest. Listen to your body and allow it time for deep physical rest whilst working to build up your energy reserves so you don’t run out of energy so quickly when you’re active.
Environmental tiredness – a sense of flatness, apathy, drained by all the small things. A sense of despondency and hopelessness, spending increasing amounts of time in the same small environment. Changing your environment can help, if you have the physical energy, like moving the furniture around, redecorating, or something as simple as lighting a scented candle. Avoid spending the whole day in bed though, at least relocate to the sofa.

The advice the article offered was that fatigue is real and you shouldn’t try to ignore it. Give yourself a chance to heal by understanding the underlying physical and psycho-emotional needs.

Of the four, I probably suffer with a combination of mental and environmental tiredness. I have a busy day job, then come home to a busy home life with activities most evenings and all weekend. I get little time to just simply sit, and when I do, I usually end up nodding off. Environmentally, we have so much stuff in our house that there’s barely a surface that doesn’t have a pile of something on it. I try to keep my spaces tidy, but the volume of #bellringing paraphernalia we have of one sort of another creeps into just about every room in the house. It’s too much sometimes to look at it and wonder how the heck it’ll all get sorted. There’s too much of it to even know where to start sometimes. I’d love to have uncluttered floor space, a table I could put a nice vase of flowers on without running the risk of them getting knocked over, or even be able to get to the wardrobe and cupboards without having to mountaineer my way over boxes and piles of stuff. It’s tiring just to look at it.

What sort of tired are you?

What sort of celebration would you prefer?

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

This was the topic of the latest Psychologies Magazine ten question quiz and obviously relates to that time of year we are hurtling towards that includes stresses and pressure.

My responses were almost even across the board between simplified, soulful and connected. I didn’t score anything as personalised. Simplified came out the leader but only by one point. The summary of that read:

“If you feel overwhelmed by the consumerism and consumption of the festive season, you may have secretly relieved last year when lockdown put a limit on the usual excesses. You understand the value of creating a time of joy and celebration in the depths of winder, but wonder how and when it all spiralled out of control and you got sucked into a Christmas period that serves up mainly expense and fatigue, emotionally and physically.

It’s not easy admitting that all the traditional seasonal hoo-ha leaves you cold – no one wants to be seen as a Scrooge. But if you really don’t want to start another year feeling financially stretched, out of balance and exhausted from all the excess, isn’t it time to acknowledge those feelings and seek a simpler experience?

You may be aware that it’s not just you that feels the impact of all the festive busyness, and that others around you are also overwhelmed by the pressure we have somehow come to accept as unavoidable at this time of year. Simplifying your Christmas starts with thinking about how you want to feel rather than what you want to do. In essence, a simpler Christmas is a more conscious Christmas, with time to savour moments of joy and connection. The first step is to share your feelings with loved ones – you might find you’re not the only one who feels this way and craves a new way of doing things.”

Christmas 2020, for so many was very different from what they may perhaps have done traditionally. We couldn’t have the annual family gathering that celebrates both Christmas and my Dad’s birthday, so there was no traditional car boot swap of presents. Instead, there was a different kind of pressure. But it almost felt that because we couldn’t get together, extra effort had to be made in order to make everyone feel connected. We couldn’t get to see R for Christmas for the first time ever. Her and her flatmate were stranded in Surrey. Luckily neither of them could go home so at least they had each other for company.

This year we are able, at the moment anyway, to have the annual gathering and the great car boot swap, so I’ve arranged lunch for 13 people. I just hope that the over exuberance of being together doesn’t spill over into excesses of gift giving (see my blog post of a few days ago about joining the CASG).

R is still going to be stranded in Surrey, but thankfully that’s because of work commitments. Her flatmate is heading home to his folks. She’ll be working all Christmas Eve and there won’t be any public transport for her to be able to get back home to us. She has to be at work again on the Monday. So we’ve decided to book into a hotel nearby and go down on Christmas Eve, meet her after work and spend the evening with her, probably over a takeaway. We’ve booked for all of us to have Christmas Day dinner at the hotel and Boxing Day lunch too as we suspect there won’t be that many places open, and her flat is a bit small for all of us to be cooking a big meal in. We’ll be able to go for lovely walks along the river and spend some quality time with her. She’s not into the whole fuss thing either, so it’ll be a low key affair, with us enjoying some down time, relaxing, without over indulging in excess of partying, drinking and eating and present giving. We all know what we’ll be giving and getting each other as we’ve all put in specific requests, and none of us needs all the additional frippery.

I’m looking forward to a low key affair, with the indulgence of being in a hotel for a couple of nights. I am grateful to all those hotel workers, bar staff, kitchen staff, table staff, room servicing staff, and everyone who gives up their Christmas with family to wait on other people who don’t want to do it for themselves. I shall make a point of leaving generous tips in gratitude.

Are you planning a low key affair, or full of excess?