Christmas is here, it is time to slow down and celebrate
Christmas season is here, and it is time to slow down, slow down so you can negotiate the bend and accelerate in 2024.
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Today, many professionals find it challenging to slow down. It may feel like being lazy. In a corporate culture that quantifies every action, you may be tempted to evaluate the worth of taking a moment to wish a colleague a Merry Christmas.
Christmas is a season of joy and peace. Unfortunately, there is a lot of busyness and commercial activity, which takes the peace out of the season. Now, you have to make an effort to live with the peace that Christmas offers.
Slowing down is one of the best things that we can do. Even high performers need time off, consistently and deliberately slowing down to recuperate to keep performing at high levels.
The ability to slow down depends on your braking capabilities. Formula 1 cars are some of the most engineered and high-performance mobility machines we can think of. These machines are designed to accelerate and travel at very high speeds.
However, the nature of the Formula 1 race court (similar to our life's journey) and the competition require that engineers pay attention to another critical element in the design.
This element is the racing car’s braking capabilities. Engineers enhance the speed of the racing car only when they have improved the braking capabilities. It is an oxymoron that speed is a function of braking capacity.
I believe that this is similar to human performance. Without highly developed braking capabilities, humans exert themselves to the point of burnout. The global burnout epidemic at work is staggering.
The sandwich generation is experiencing burnout. Remote workers (until recently, most people enjoyed working remotely) are experiencing the same. In some cases, the data suggests that the burnout level today is higher than the pre-covid situation.
Christmas is an opportunity to slow down. The season offers several opportunities to develop braking capabilities for accelerated performance in the years ahead.
Celebrate your faith:
Christmas is a celebration of the faith of about 2.5 billion people globally. It is also a time for reflection. The occasion is a time to express gratitude and extend well wishes to family, friends, and neighbours.
Most importantly, Christians use the time to remember the best gift they received- Jesus, the light of the world coming to save the world.
So they also give gifts to those around them. All these actions – spending time in quiet reflection, expressing gratitude, and giving gifts, have been identified as major contributory factors to our well-being.
They support us in building the buffers that prevent us from experiencing burnout. Make time to participate in these activities.
Get together with your family and friends:
The family theme associated with Christmas provides another opportunity to connect with significant people in our lives that we have been running away from throughout the year using work as our excuse.
Apart from emergency and critical workers who may be on a working shift, it is hard to justify being away from family and friends during the holidays. Do not come up with another reason. Find time to connect with family, friends and neighbours.
Find time to engage in conversations beyond casual Merry Christmas. You may be surprised that those conversations will give you the leads you need to achieve your 2024 budget (but this should not be the object of your engagement).
Improve your fitness:
Many individuals take the fun at Christmas to excessive levels. One of the things you can do during the season is to focus on and improve your fitness. To paraphrase R2Bess, the music group, we must ensure that we are not putting on digits.
There will be many opportunities to indulge in extra sweets and fizzy drinks. The queues at the Doctor's office are a bit longer after Christmas.
The reason is that their clients, during the Christmas period, ate all the things they were not supposed to eat. Remembering the true meaning of Christmas, especially when you have the opportunity to indulge, should help you to stay in check.
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Monitor your finances:
During Christmas festivities, there is also the pressure to empty the wallets. This practice leads to a "long January" for many people. Remember, the best gifts and joys are priceless.
If you are paying too much for a seasonal experience, ask yourself this question. Is this providing me and my family with true joy, or am I doing this to fit in?
Having a great Christmas should not put you into debt. That will be a sad situation when the real reason for Christmas is Christ coming into the world to pay our debt. Navigating the commercialisation of Christmas celebrations will require wisdom, purpose and grace.
Have fun
Christmas is also a time for fun and merrymaking, even during war times. During the First World War, on Christmas Eve, British and German soldiers stopped fighting to sing Christmas carols to each other.
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At some points, the Allied soldiers even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing. You are not at war with yourself.
Even if you are at war, the soldiers from World War I have given us a powerful example of what we can do at Christmas. Make time to participate in fun activities, turn the lights on, decorate your tree, sing Christmas carols and dance.
I pray that you go through this Christmas and come out leaner, fitter, better, rejuvenated, renewed in faith and ready to accelerate. Merry Christmas.
The writer is the Founder of the CEO Accelerator Program and Chief Learning Strategist at TEMPLE Advisory. He specializes in leadership development, executive coaching and strategy consulting. T
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