November 2025
The holidays can feel like a balancing act. There’s joy in celebration, but also pressure to finish projects by year’s end, manage expenses, and meet expectations.
No wonder 63% of U.S. adults say the holidays are more stressful than other times of the year.
Some stress is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to define the season. By setting priorities and managing your pace, you can conserve your energy and focus on what matters most.
Why Holiday Stress Builds
Increased work, family, and social demands are compressed into a few weeks in November and December. End-of-year goals collide with shopping lists and travel plans, leaving little space to rest. The steady tension can drain focus and cause fatigue or detachment.
Stress thrives in chaos, but awareness can start change. Knowing your limits lets you respond, not react.
Simple Shifts That Help
Set boundaries early.
Decide what you can reasonably do and save time to recharge.
Keep expectations manageable.
Simple traditions often create the best memories.
Make time for recovery.
Short breaks, such as taking a walk or logging off early, reset your focus.
Give with intention.
Acts of kindness shift focus from stress and foster gratitude.
Supporting Connection
The holidays can heighten both joy and tension. Long days, close quarters, and high expectations sometimes make patience run short. When stress builds, take a pause before responding. A few seconds to breathe can shift the tone of an entire conversation.
If tension lingers, steer toward lighter topics or shared memories to reset the mood. Focus on connection, not perfection. Choosing presence over pressure helps keep gatherings meaningful rather than draining.
And if the season feels especially heavy, reach out. A conversation with a friend, counselor, or workplace resource can help you feel supported and regain perspective.
A Calmer Way Forward
You don’t need a perfect season for it to be meaningful. Slow your pace and focus on what brings comfort and connection, and the holidays feel more manageable and genuine
Calm isn’t about stepping away from life; it’s about being fully present for it.
Wellness Works® Book Review | Don’t Believe Everything You Think (Expanded Edition)
Joseph Nguyen’s Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning & End of Suffering explores how thoughts shape, and often distort, our emotional reality. With a calm, compassionate voice, Nguyen shows that freedom and fulfillment begin when we stop identifying with every thought and start observing them.
Highlights
Key Concepts
This book demonstrates that suffering originates not from our circumstances but from our thoughts. Nguyen explains that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional; it is born from the stories we tell ourselves. He dismantles the illusion that we must fix our thoughts or fight negative emotions, recommending a shift: see thoughts as passing, not truth.
Nguyen emphasizes that experience is created from within, not forced by the outside world. Understanding this, readers can move beyond self-doubt, anxiety, and overthinking to reclaim inner calm.
Practical Applications
This expanded edition turns reflection into daily practice. Nguyen adds new chapters that answer reader questions, along with prompts and exercises to quiet mental noise. These help readers observe rather than resist thoughts, making peace available now instead of waiting for external change.
He also includes original poetry, brief, reflective pieces to open the heart and soften rigidity. Used for morning or evening reflection, these guide readers toward sustained awareness and acceptance.
One practical teaching is developing what Nguyen calls a “superpower of being okay with uncertainty.” Rather than seeking control, he encourages surrender, not defeat, but trust. This attitude fosters creativity, intuition, and resilience.
Impact
Readers often find relief in realizing they no longer need to escape anxiety through thinking. Nguyen’s message, that free minds come from awareness, not willpower, invites effortless growth. Changing perspective, rather than forcing positivity, allows readers to find peace amid chaos.
Through this new understanding, self-sabotage, rumination, and fear start to loosen. Life, Nguyen suggests, need not be perfectly managed; it just needs to be clearly seen.
The Final Word
Don’t Believe Everything You Think is more than self-help; it’s a mirror showing how our inner world creates our outer experience. Nguyen offers not another strategy, but an invitation to clarity, to stop overthinking, stop fighting your mind, and rediscover the peace that comes from simplicity.