As you work with your coaching clients during this holiday season, no matter the main coaching issue, the impact of the holidays becomes significant. How can you help your clients make it through – Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day – with less stress and more joy and peace? Here are a few ways you can empower them to more freely celebrate the things that are most important to them during the holidays.
Empower them to “start now.” Clearly to de-stress the holidays, a sooner start is better. However, whenever they decide they’ve had enough stress and need to take charge of their holiday experience – even if it is the day before Thanksgiving or into December – you can coach them through choices that will make a difference.
Challenge them to “do a new thing.” What new results do your clients desire? Identify what has caused stress in the past and strategize what needs to be done differently to eliminate the stress. Of course, hang on to what has worked in the past. But for whatever hasn’t worked well, challenge your clients to dump the same-old-same-old and change it up!
Ask them to pray about it. Every holiday season, calendars are filled to the brim – often with no thought of “is this what God has for me this holiday season?” What happens when we pray “God, how would you have me spend my holiday time?” What can we say “yes” to and what can we say “no” to, based on direction from God in prayer?
Coach to the gap. Encourage your client to cast a vision for the holidays and develop congruent plans. If the holidays went wonderfully well, what would that look like? What would need to be done to realize that vision? What is the next step? If you have coaching sessions throughout the holiday season, you will be able to coach clients through the action steps necessary to experience the holidays they desire.
Jesus says that his purpose for coming to earth is “so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of (John 10:10b, The Message). As we enter into a season centered on celebrating his birth, we can honor his purpose by helping our clients to reach out for more of this better life he’s called us to – a life including less stress and more joy and peace. In the midst of it all, less stress can result in focusing on the reason for the season: Jesus and the true life and eternal purposes he brings.
For more from me on this topic, check out my website www.de-stressingtheholidays.com