Imagine the following scene. The date is January 4th (or 9th, or 16th, or whenever you go back to work after your holiday). The place is the water cooler, or wherever conversations tend to happen at your workplace. You ask a colleague how their holiday was. How likely are they to say something like, ?Yeah, great? now I just need a holiday to recover from it.? Or perhaps they've returned to work with horror stories of family flare-ups, financial worries after over-spending, or all-out depression at having to coming back to work. Perhaps you find yourself answering the same way?

If you do, you're not alone. In theory, the holiday season is a chance to relax, recuperate and celebrate with the people you love. In practice, holidays can be immensely stressful ? and even if they're not, getting back to ?real life? post-holiday can really turn on the tension. So what can we do to get back to normality as painlessly as possible?

EASE BACK INTO ROUTINE

If you've been keeping to a completely different timetable during the holiday season to the one you'd usually keep (for example, late nights and even later rising), plan to ease yourself back into your workday routines. Try setting the alarm for the same time you'd need to get up if you were working for a few days before you actually start back. Once your body has re-established its routine, you'll probably find heading back to work less stressful. If your eating or exercising changed over the holiday period, try gradually easing them back to normal as well.

REVIEW THE HAPPENINGS OVER THE HOLIDAY

If your holiday period wasn't everything you'd hoped it would be, take some time to get to grips with what happened. Perhaps family tensions flared up, relationships ended, or the world of work intruded into what was supposed to be a time of rest and celebration.

Whatever the situation, what were your expectations or hopes going in? How realistic were they? How much control did you honestly have over what did or didn't happen? Try to be as objective as possible about what happened and the likely consequences going forward. It may help to spend some time journaling this, or talking it through with a trusted friend. Many things that felt earth-shattering when they happened become far less so once we separate out objective events from the interpretations and meanings we give them.

GET MINDFUL ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS

In a perfect world, we'd be so passionate our jobs we'd actually feel a tinge of regret as the holiday season approached and we had to take a break from it. Sound too far-fetched to be real? Actually, for those lucky people who've found a way to make a living from their passion, that's exactly how reality is. Not that that's the only right way to be - for others, a job is just how they finance their real passion ? whatever it might be.

But what if neither of these things describes you? What if you don't *have* a passion ? in or out of your job? What if you only go to work because you have to pay the bills somehow? What if you actively hate your job? In either case, however long your holidays last, it won't be long enough, and you'll find yourself dreading the return to reality.

If that sounds familiar, you may be getting a wake-up call from your subconscious. Ask yourself whether you're truly happy with how your life is at the moment. It's all very well enjoying your two or three weeks vacation each year, but what about the other 49 or 50? What would need to change in your life ? your everyday life ? for you to start enjoying that too? This may not be a question with easy answers, but by asking yourself it (and committing to acting on the answers), it can make a huge difference in the quality of your life.

Ideally, however you spent your holiday, it will have been time you enjoyed, rather than endured. Good or bad, however, it's now in the past; and focusing on the present and short-term future will do a great deal to alleviate any post-holiday stress you may be feeling.