Striving Styles and the Holidays

Getting the most this season based on your Holiday Style

Do you go into the holiday season full of anticipation and excitement, only to finish up feeling let down and deflated?

Are you looking for ways to get greater enjoyment from the holidays and avoid the post holiday depression this season?

Not everyone approaches the holidays in the same manner. Each of us has a Holiday Style which determines how we approach it based on our Striving Style. By understanding our Holiday Style, we can ensure we have the best possible experience without any post holiday depression.

The Striving Styles Personality System distinguishes eight distinct Striving Styles – predominant needs that we have to satisfy in order to maintain our self-esteem and to meet our true potential as human beings. Each of the Striving Styles contains clusters of behaviours a person likes to use to get their needs met and how they are most likely to do this.

Based on our Striving Style, each of us has a Holiday Style, a behavioural approach we take to the season. We have one set of behaviours you see when we are striving to enjoy the season, and another when we become depleted and begin to just survive it.

For example, if you are a Socializer Style, during the holidays you will likely find yourself approaching the season with a spirit of “How many parties or how much socializing can I squeeze in?”. However, this approach often leads to not getting to the shopping, feeling overwhelmed and even having to cancel due to double-booking. Unintentionally, the Socializer will miss out on having a deep, meaningful experience of the holidays and feel depressed, exhausted and ashamed for having let others down through the holidays.

What is unique about the Holiday Styles is the ability for each of us to understand what we bring to the holidays when at our best, potential risks if we don’t stay connected to the needs of our style, and finally how to have the best possible holiday experience for us personally, thereby avoiding the typical post-holiday let down and depression.

See Part II for the Intellectual's Holiday Style