If you're trying to maintain a budget or reduce some physical clutter from your life,
the holidays can be a very challenging time.
My name is Anthony, from Break the Twitch and I'm on the Mint blog talking about three
tips that you can use to talk to friends and family about having a holiday season that's
more focused on people instead of stuff.
For many people the holidays have become a very stressful time.
There's the time spent shopping to get the perfect gift for everyone and all the travel
that's associated with the holidays trying to get back home when the roads are busy and
the airports are really really busy.
Well, that's one way to do holidays but there's another way that you can do them
as well.
And there are some ways that you can talk to your family about maybe parting down the
stuff and focusing more on spending quality time together.
This can be particularly stressful if you're on a tight budget or if you're trying to
embrace a level of minimalism and own less stuff that you don't need in your life.
That can make gift giving during the holidays very difficult.
Luckily, there are some things you can do to get ahead of it and have the right kinds
of conversations with your friends and family to make sure you're all focused on the right
things like being together and sharing some fun experiences together as well.
The first thing you can do is start having this conversation early.
Don't wait until the day before your favorite holiday when everyone has already gotten all
the gifts they want to give and you're about to get together to celebrate the holiday.
So make sure that you start having this conversation right now about how you'd like to shape
the holidays a little differently.
The second thing you can do is preemptively suggest some fun activities you can do instead
of exchanging gifts.
Come up with a particular thing that you like to do with a friend of yours and instead of
being somewhat presumptuous and saying, "Hey, you don't have to get me a gift this year."
You can say, "Hey, instead of exchanging gifts this year why don't we do this thing
that we really like doing together" whether that's just getting a gift card for a coffee
shop that you really like going to together, and scheduling some times to go do that or
some other fun activity that you can do while you're both in town.
The third thing you can do is a matter of positioning, how you talk about these things,
it's really great to ask questions to people like, "What might you like to do or what
might you want if it wasn't a physical present this year?"
So, asking people what they might like to do together or asking what their favorite
thing is, that way you can sort of gift experiences if that's something you're into or you
can position it in a way that allows you to share that conversation with someone else
in a meaningful way.
Also, positioning the conversation in a way that reflects your desire to make the holiday
more about time together and quality time with people you care about is never a thing
that people are going to argue with.
It's something you can really embrace, your family can embrace when you have that discussion
saying you know, I know shopping can be really stressful for everyone, so what if we just
take all of our time and bring our full selves to the holiday this year and make sure that
we're present and engaged and really have a great time together.
It really does feel like the holidays have become even more intense with just the busyness
of modern life, but there definitely is something we can do about it, we can take steps to make
sure people know we really want to focus on spending quality time with themas opposed
to just sitting around and sharing and exchanging gifts with each other, without the stress
of shopping and without the financial stress of shopping as well.
So try out these tips and get talking to your friends and family and get talking about how
you want to have a less stuff-centric holiday.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét