Are you looking forward to the season ahead with shivers of anticipation? Or just shivers? Here are 6 steps to save you untold aggravation, angst, time, and money by persuading you not to do the things you don’t want to do this holiday season.

List Your Holiday Traditions

Take a few minutes to write down every holiday custom you feel you should follow. Start with family patterns, but don’t end there. Offices and friendships have their own traditions.

Choose to Enthuse

Looking over your list, visualize each activity. Notice how your body reacts. Do you tense or relax, feel like smiling, snarling or [...]

Clam energy is exuberant, witty, wise, hilarious, and brilliant, but no one ever realizes this, because Clam keeps it all inside, out of fear that someone will steal its intellectual property.

When Clam maneuvers its way into the bouillabaisse of your life, play your cards close to your vest. Closer! CLOSER! No one must know of your genius, or they will filch all your best ideas! (Which you’ll get around to developing any day now.)

If Clam is your totem, your inner life is teeming with good intentions, none of which you ever act upon. You’re possibly the world’s best singer, [...]

You never know when Tick will enter your life, so undress carefully and check all your crevices as soon as possible after reading this. When Tick does crawl up your pant leg and into your life, rest assured that this totem animal will help you take advantage of others while inspiring revulsion in all you encounter.

Tick energy is intrusive, draining, and waaaaaay too intimate. Let it inspire you to show up at the homes of friends you barely know, asking to stay for an indefinite period. Eat their food, borrow their clothes, and follow them into the bathroom to [...]

“I’ve got to commit to this relationship or end it,” said Tessa, sounding a little desperate. “I can’t go one more day without making the decision.” It was clear that she really meant this…just as she had the first time I heard her say it, eight years earlier.

Tessa is prone to ambivalence, a torturous condition that simultaneously pulls and crushes us between incompatible alternatives. Though it can make us say laughably absurd things (“I’ve known for eight years that this can’t go on one more day!”), ambivalence feels anything but funny. If you tend toward indecision or face a [...]