Adapting Your Holiday Plans

Change Management Lessons from Lee Gardenswartz, Jorge Cherbosque and Anita Rowe

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I am currently reading Emotional Intelligence for Managing Results in a Diverse World by Lee Gardenswartz, Jorge Cherbosque and Anita Rowe.  I recommend this book for many reasons, one is for their guidance on how to manage and respond to change. 

You can:

1. Alter the situation: to make the change more favorable.

2. Alter your behavior: so you can cope with the change.

3. Accept the new change: by developing a positive perspective about it. 

The authors recommend taking any of these steps to help empower ourselves and others to bounce back when change is required.  This section of the book helped me to think about how I can help myself and my family navigate the holidays amid the pandemic. 

Using their model we could:

1. Alter the situation: ask our extended families to consider new ways that we can celebrate the holidays in 2020.  For example, we could:

   1. host an outdoor, simplified Thanksgiving “dinner” with a small subset of our family members on a good weather day before or after 11/26.

   2. replace Thanksgiving “dinner” with our own private Turkey Trot run or Thanksgiving Day hike.

   3. pick a food bank or charity in our hometown where all family members can make a donation.

   4. send everyone a cherished family recipe and set up a Zoom call for us to join, so we make it together, asking one person to lead the demonstration while the rest follow along.

2. Alter your behavior: learn a new skill to help you adapt to the 2020 holidays.  You might want to:

   1. master crafting so you can make holiday cards or gifts.

   2. learn how to bake or cook if you normally do not do that for the holidays.

   3. take up yoga, meditation or journaling to help you manage your stress.

   4. get comfortable setting boundaries with family members about your wishes for celebrating this year.  

3. Accept the change: come to terms with our pandemic related reality.  To develop a positive outlook you could:

   1. write out a positive mantra to repeat as needed to manage your stress.  “Today I will find joy where I am”.

   2. journal 3 things to be grateful for each day during the holidays.

   3. help others- write cards to military personnel overseas or donate clothes to a shelter. 

   4. exercise regularly to burn off stress and get a boost of endorphins.

I hope these ideas will help you find ways to celebrate the holidays safely. 

You can download 15 Ways to Celebrate the Holidays Safely in 2020 here.