It's beginning to look a lot like no other Christmas ever.

Welcome to episode 292 of Live Happy Now.

This is your host, Paula Phelps, and as Christmas arrives this week, most of us are experienced the holidays in very different ways.

This week, we're joined by Dr. Jennifer Wegman, a professor at Binghamton University,

an author of Resilience, How to Master Stress, Reduce Anxiety, and Live Well. She's here today

to give us some tips on how to redefine the holidays and make this time one of gratitude and renewal.

Jennifer, welcome to Live Happy Now. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be

here. I'm excited to have you here. And the reason I invited you on the show is I found this great

article that you had written that was tips about how to make the most of the holidays during COVID-19.

And to start, I wanted to find out what inspired you to come up with

these tips. Well, one of the things that I focus on in my work, I'm a teacher at Binghamton

University in upstate New York. I am in the Health and Wellness Studies Department. And my

area of research focuses on stress. And one of the things that I've been studying for the last

several years is ways in which I focus on students in particular, but all of us can utilize

stress to our advantage. And this concept has come to the forefront in the last eight or so months once COVID has hit

and our lives have been turned upside down.

But I think that it has been bubbling to the surface in all of our lives even more so now

as we head into our holiday season.

So I thought it was important to help people try to embrace a

holiday season that may look a little different and feel a little different than it has in the past.

We know it's going to be different, but we're not really sure how it's going to feel.

So we know we have to change our mindset. We have to change our

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