It is that time of the year when it seems as though all the stress and pressure of the other months have accumulated just for December to bear. The stress may just be too much for some of us. The media is not helping things out as they bombard us with their ‘I need this item for Christmas’. It is not easy to resist their temptations because all we want is to have a lovely Christmas celebration. 

How then would you have a stress-free Christmas in the midst of this hyper-media campaign that makes it difficult not to succumb to their Christmas expectations? 

As mothers, we always want everything to be perfect – perfect gifts, decorations, perfect Christmas meal and so on. Things does not look very good as all these expectations need to be met in just a day. Can you imagine the pressure on trying to have a perfect Christmas?

To celebrate a near stress-free Christmas, we need to make sure our level of perfectionism is under control. We need to adjust and re-adjust especially if we had set the standards unrealistically high. You need to know that there is a great difference between perfection and out-of-control perfection.

For you to have a perfect Christmas, you will need to adjust your standards if you find out that you have set them at an unrealistically high level. Ask for help if the need be and make sure you accept if things don’t turn out the way you wanted. Take it as ‘good enough’ when it is goes out of expectation and just laugh-out-loud when it goes wrong.

Do not let your perfectionism push you to the extent that you get obsessive about little details which may push you to the point of exhaustion. Do not push yourself to becoming upset because you want to pursue perfection. You may end up not even achieving your goal of having a perfect Christmas.

Some of us even take it too far as to compare our lives unfavourably with those we think are having perfect lives. This can bring you a lot of stress. To enjoy a stress-free Christmas, you need to set your standards of perfectionism at a level you can control and not a level where it will take control of you. There is nothing as good as having a stress-free Christmas.

Have a lovely Christmas!