Entertaining your friends can be memorable and fun, but it can also be stressful. It’s a natural behavior to want everything to be perfect; you overprepare, have anxiety about who is coming, and don’t know how to entertain.
With all this added stress, your stomach churns, your head hurts, and you want to cancel. Canceling will cause more stress. You will feel guilty, unsuccessful, and ashamed. Tackle each problem one at a time, and you will come out on top.
- Take care of yourself. It is a research fact that stress can cause health issues. Your immunity system beaks down, and just before the party, you find you are stuffy, headachy, and have little energy. Give yourself a lift with a beverage high in vitamin C that helps your body’s defenses by giving you’re a high blend of vitamin C and other nutrients. Just add a couple of Immunity Boost pumps (immune-boosting beverage supplement) from Monin.com to a glass of water or fruit juice and let your immunity system calm down.
Solve your over-preparing jitters by following several tips
One tip is to use a delivery service. Have someone else prepare your feast. Look for grocery delivery services to avid shopping among crowds and wasting time. You could also investigate catering possibilities. Determine what you want on your menu, find the caterer that delivers these types of foods, and give them a call.
- Another fun tip is to take your guests out to a restaurant. Eating out might be a bit expensive, but it will save you the headache of cleaning your home and cooking. Eating out will help you relax. Someone else is cooking and you don’t need to worry about the ambiance – your party is perfect.
- Hire a cook. Cooking is stressful, and having someone else cook for you saves you time and anxiety. Hiring a cook can be pricey, but it would be less stressful than cooking all week to have the perfect get-together.
Other strategies you can use to keep calm over a party
- Keep it small. If a successful holiday party is what you want, only invite a few friends and keep the meal simple. If you want to entertain large groups, work up to it.
- Connect your guests. Invite those who would enjoy being with each other. Have you ever been to a party where one guest dislikes another guest? It makes the atmosphere in the room is tense. This tenseness will bring on health issues that will last for weeks after the party. Bring people together who inspire each other. Guests who get along is the best way to ensure your guests are having fun.
- Don’t clean your entire home. When you are entertaining, only a couple of rooms need to be perfectly cleaned. Pick up, wipe off counters, clean the bathroom, and shut the doors to other rooms. The entertaining space you are using needs to be comfortable and clean, of course, but cleaning one room is much easier than deep cleaning an entire house.
- Know that your guests empathize with you. Anyone who has given a party will know your stress. Guests will appreciate what you are doing and ignore a small burned roast, a hungry dog, or unruly children.
- Be kind to yourself. Realize that your guests are coming to your home to enjoy themselves and see you. There are not coming to scrutinize the way your house looks. Most guests are just happy to be invited to your party. Just remember that guests are there to have a good time and reconnect with others.
- If you have a goal and know what a successful party looks like, it will be easier to get through the party. Try not to put yourself into others’ conversations, and if you hear politics or religion being discussed, try and defuse the tension.
- Go around the room and make small talk. Ask questions. Etiquette expert Elaine Swann says that you should be prepared with information about each person in the room. Ask quests questions about themselves and redirect thoughtless conversations to different topics.
Above all, take care of yourself. Try not to spread yourself too thin; remember that you need to keep up your good eating habits and use good nutrition. Add those nutrition boosts that will keep your immune system active and your stress levels low.
