Prioritize Self-Care This Holiday Season

If you are feeling unusually stressed out this holiday season, new research suggests that now is the time to take a break. The Indiana University Kelley School of Business study found that when customers are anxious, they profit the most from taking the time to ‘self-gift’.

‘Self-gifting’ or interacting with a product or experience with the primary objective of improving one’s emotional well-being, does not have to be excessive. It might be anything from drinking tea to listening to music to watching a calming YouTube video: anything that allows you to focus on yourself.

Self-Care in the Holiday Season

“There are so many ads reminding us to take a moment for ourselves, for self-care, but we find that people are least likely to engage in this kind of behavior when they need it most,” said Kelley Gullo Wight, assistant professor of marketing at the Kelley School. “There’s this moment of self-sabotage. People who feel the most constrained or stressed are not taking advantage of these self-gifts. You might think, ‘I’ll be too distracted, or I will not be able to have a mindful moment to benefit,’ but our research shows this belief is wrong. People can benefit and focus even if they are stressed. That is exactly when you need it the most. Taking the time to ‘self-gift’ will lead you to feel less stressed in the long run.”

Wight and her co-authors, Jacqueline R. Rifkin, assistant professor at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson College of Business, and Keisha M. Cutright, associate professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, used behavioral experiments to investigate why people do not take advantage of ‘self-gifting’ experiences and when it would benefit them most.

Self-Gifting During Stressful Times

They discovered that persons who were pushed for time were the least likely to engage in self-gifting, but they enjoyed the greatest increases in how joyful and relaxed they felt afterwards.

Researchers recommend that marketers encourage consumers to ‘self-gift’ by presenting the product or service as useful, particularly during stressful times.

Advertisement

“This holiday season, if you are focusing on everyone else, you have got people coming into town, and absolutely no time for yourself, take two minutes,” said Wight. “You may tend to want to wait for self-care until the stressor is over, but our research shows you will benefit most by taking a minute for yourself anyways. That’s when you should be looking out for yourself.”

Source-Medindia