Holiday Survival Tips from a Life Change Expert

Why are the holidays so hard to survive when youve lost a loved one, gone through a divorce, or lost a job? The holidays are a time of strong emotion that focuses on family, love and tradition. When youve lost a loved one, or a life style, or a family unit, your traditional holidays are shattered. As a result, the holiday sights and sounds, are only a grim reminded of what you have lost.

December 7, 2004 -- "Try some of the following survival tips to make the holidays a bit easier," says, author Cheryl Perlitz.

Take care of yourself:
- Get a massage
- Exercise increases the production of endorphins and enhances feelings of well being and positive attitude
- Journal even when you dont feel like it
- Good nutrition makes you feel fit over or under eating takes a toll mentally and physically
- Vitamins will help you fill in the gaps
- Give yourself small gifts
- Get up and out in the mornings and go out for breakfast let them wait on you
- Keep moving and busy without throwing yourself into a frenzy
- Let your feelings out stuffing them makes them come out with a vengence later

Simplify the holidays:
- Clean closets
- Eliminate your poisonous or negative friends
- Say no to extra things you said yes to, and shouldnt have
- Go through your files and dump the extra papers
- Give gifts only to those you WANT to
- Remember you dont have to do it all. You dont have to bake cookies, buy for everyone, decorate the house, spend time with all relatives. UNPLUG and let others take care of you
                   
Surround yourself with color and positive things:
- Poinsettias are bright and beautiful
- Buy flowers at the grocery store for each room of your house
- Buy a gold fish
- Rearrange your furniture
- Find a great CD and play it as loud as it goes
- Boil orange slices, cloves and apple juice, to make you surroundings pleasant

Surround yourself with people and activity:
- call your treasured friends and tell them you will need help over the holidays
- try grief groupschurch groups
- reconnect with old friends and family
- ask for hugs give hugs

Honor the people who are missing from our lives during the holidays:
- Make list of the funny things to remember
- Print and share list along with fun family pictures
- Give family members a funny gift that person would have given
- Do a family memory album and give it to the family as a gift
- Reconnect with that persons special friends

Change traditions but keep some things the same:
- Go to midnight church instead of noon on Christmas day or visa versa
- Grab bag gift giving instead of shopping from lists
- Go to movie after Christmas dinner
- Give small gifts to those who have supported you
- Have an open house on Christmas day and have your friends bring the food
         
Do things youve always wanted to doand didnt have time for:
- Test drive a red Volkswagen beetle
- Paint in watercolorseven though you stink at it
- Walk your neighbors puppy through the forest preserve
- Sit at a coffee shop and read a book
- Do a jigsaw puzzle
- Buy yourself a doll or stuffed animal...hug it...alot

Give to others:
Giving to others warms your heart, puts your life in perspective and takes the focus away from your own feelings.
- Visit & volunteer:
- childrens hospital
- soup kitchen
- work with church in community rotary or other community group
- buy a gift in honor of the person who died and give it to a child in the hospital / a lonely person / a sick person
- give time or $ to a charity in honor of that person

In the business world, Cheryl Perlitz is best known as the author of the popular book, "Soaring Through Setbacks - Rise above adversity - Reclaim your life," and her upcoming Survival Tips Handbook. Her clients, friends and colleagues know her as a fearless mountain climber and nature lover with an insatiable spirit of adventure. As a dynamic speaker and facilitator her message to you is "TRANSFORM YOUR MOUNTAINS INTO OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVENTURE AND POSITIVE CHANGE."

I wrote, 'Soaring Through Setbacks - Rise Above Adversity, Reclaim Your Life,' because I felt there needed to be an approach to grief and change that was not clinical in orientation. When I was deep into the grief process myself, there was no such book available to me. Those books written by psychologists and doctors, although valuable, are tough to assimilate when you are disoriented confused and in emotional pain. 'Soaring Through Setbacks' is meant to be a simple approach to loss and change that is written by a simple layperson, explains Perlitz.

For more on how to 'SURVIVEREVIVEAND THRIVE' in the face of change and loss, please visit www.SoarWithMe.com

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