Surviving the Season: Your Guide to Keeping Healthy Holiday Boundaries
The holiday season is upon us. While it’s billed as the most wonderful time of the year, reality often involves navigating a minefield of tricky family dynamics, overwhelming social expectations, and abundant food and drink.
If you want to make it through the festivities feeling good rather than depleted, you need one crucial tool in your arsenal: healthy boundaries. The goal for the holidays should be simple: “Keep the good in and the bad out.”
Here is your practical survival guide for maintaining your peace this season.
1. Master the Art of Surface-Level Conversation
When you are at a family gathering or a holiday party, your safest bet is to “stay surf”—as in, keep things surface level.
This is not the time to get in-depth about your deepest emotions, your controversial opinions, or your political affiliations. Just don’t do it. Keep it simple. Talk about the weather, the food, or even the paint color on the walls if you have to. Engage in helpful tasks like cleaning up to keep busy, but keep the conversation focused on “superficial crap” rather than gut-level issues.
The Golden Rule of Holiday Chatter: Do not get into an argument with anyone. It is simply not worth it. If someone tells you that you have to engage in a heated debate, they are wrong.
Instead, try an approach inspired by Dale Carnegie. People generally care more about themselves than what you have to say. Use this to your advantage. Shift the focus off of yourself and ask questions about the person you are talking to. Be a good listener, and you’ll navigate the room much more easily.
2. Protect Your Heart (and Your Eardrums)
The holidays often bring us into contact with difficult people. Here is some tough love: If you have someone in your life who keeps “stomping on your heart” when they don’t deserve access to it, stop asking for trouble.
“Whatever you need to do to stay healthy, stay healthy.” If that means distancing yourself from toxic people, do it.
When you do need to communicate difficult feelings to family members, do not raise your voice. Yelling rarely solves anything. Communicate your feelings by being monotone if necessary, but keep the volume down.
Conversely, don’t forget to express love to the people who do deserve it. Be explicit. Send that text telling your kids or friends how proud you are of them and how much you love them.
3. Practice “Soft Gaze Awareness”
Boundaries aren’t just about relationships; they are also about how you interact with your environment.
We need to stay conscious of what’s going on around us. The speaker recommends practicing “soft gaze awareness.” Practically speaking? Put your phone down. Don’t walk through life—or a holiday party—staring at a screen. Be present.
4. Boundaries with Food, Drink, and Rest
Finally, you need boundaries for how you treat your own body during a season of excess.
- Food: When you’re eating holiday meals, try to eat one plate, breathe, and let it sit.
- Drink: If you drink alcohol, do so safely and slow down.
- Rest: Take the opportunity to rest intentionally. You want to feel good going into the new year, not exhausted.
Your goal is to be the “MVP of the vacation by intentionally having fun.” By setting these boundaries, you protect your ability to actually enjoy the season. Make good choices and have a happy, healthy holiday.
THANK YOU for a powerfull 2025 of 79 podcasts. We have some great things that will come to the show with new guests, new format changes and best of all, more choices to help you navigate in this life.
See you next year.
