Dr. Heidi Grant

FOCUS Pre-order Giveaway!!

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In today’s market, pre-orders are incredibly important for the success of any book.  So to reward those who chose to pre-order my new book, FOCUS, I’m giving away some custom-created companions to FOCUS that won’t be available to anyone else.   
These include:
  • A link to a free one-hour video webinar, in which I’ll explain the key concepts of FOCUSand how you can use them to be happier and more successful in your own life.

  • A downloadable PDF workbook to help you put the lessons of FOCUS into practice.

  • A chance to win a copy of my new forthcoming e-book, The 8 Motivational Types: A Short Guide to Lighting a Fire Under Anyone – Including Yourself

To receive the webinar and PDF, as well as the chance to win my new e-book, simply preorder FOCUS before April 17, 2013.  Then, send a copy of your electronic receipt to:
FocusPreorder@gmail.com
Both the PDF and webinar will be ready to distribute in February.
Want to learn more about FOCUS?  Here’s the book trailer:

Thank you so much!

Heidi

The Surprising Reason We Break Promises

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 Recently, my friend Jane (not her real name, for reasons that will become obvious) sat with me over a long lunch, and listened patiently to tales of how my children were slowly driving me crazy.  “You know what,” said Jane, touching my hand and clearly filled with sympathy, “I’m going to come over sometime next week and take the kids off your hands for a few hours so you can go have some fun.” 

“Thanks Jane,” I replied, with zero enthusiasm, and changed the subject.  You see, despite my fondness for Jane, I knew there was no way in hell she was going to do anything of the kind.  I’d heard it all before.  It’s not that she didn’t mean what she was saying, that the offer wasn’t genuine.  In her mind, she had every intention of coming over to watch the kids.   Jane is the kind of person who sees herself as a Good Friend, and would be outraged if I replied to her generous gesture with what I was really thinking:  “I won’t hold my breath.”
For some people, I’ve noticed, saying you are going to do something feels just as good as actually doing it.   Jane is one of those people – she had a visible aura of satisfaction about her after she made her offer to babysit.  You could practically hear her inner voice doling out the compliments. You are so generous, Jane.  What a wonderful friend you are.   
Indeed, why actually follow through on the offer to watch the kids, with all the hassle that entails, when simply expressing your intention to do so feels so good in its own right?
How can we understand these promise-breakers like Jane, whose intentions start out both genuine and admirable, but who never seem to act on them?  And just as important, how can we keep from becoming one of them?
Most people assume, with good reason, that making your intention to do something public makes you more likely to actually follow through with it.   This should be true for (at least) two reasons. First, going public commits you to a view of yourself that you want to try to be consistent with.  If I tell my boss that I’ll have a project finished by the end of the week, then I’m thinking of myself as the Kind of Person Who Gets Things Done Quickly, and I want to live up to that image in my own mind.  Second, going public makes you feel accountable to someone else.  If I don’t have the project finished by Friday, then my boss will likely think I am the Kind of Person Who He Should Fire.
Telling others about your intention to do something does make you more likely to actually do it, but this is only true when the actual behavior you are committing to is desirable for its own sake.   For instance, telling your friends that you intend to watch less TV and read more is a good idea if you’re doing it because you want more time to read.

But Jane wasn’t offering to babysit because she wanted to spend time with my kids – she was doing it to be a Good Friend.   Much of the time, the actions we intend to take are desirable to us because they validate some important aspect of our identity, of how we like to think of ourselves.  And it turns out, that’s where the trouble lies.
According to Self-Completion Theory (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982), when we are committed to particular identity goals, like being a good parent, a talented artist, or a successful business person, we engage in a variety of activities in order to prove to ourselves (and to others) that we are in fact good parents, talented artists, or successful business people. 
Some of these activities are essential to the identity – an artist isn’t really an artist if she doesn’t at least occasionally create some art.  Other activities are purely symbolic – like self-praise (“Look at that brushwork. I am so good!”), or dressing the part by walking around in a paint-spattered smock.  When we fail at some task that is relevant to our identity (a rejection from an art gallery, a bad review from an art critic), we feel a sense of incompleteness – saddened and anxious that we aren’t living up to our mental image of who and what we are supposed to be. 
To restore our sense of completeness, we try to engage in activities or show off status symbols related to the damaged identity.  A doctor who loses a patient may put in extra hours at the office, reflect on some of the patients he has healed, or spend a little extra time in his white lab coat and stethoscope. 
Completeness is also enhanced by an audience.  When other people notice our symbols – like an intention to do something a doctor, and artist, or a Good Friend would do – it gives you the same completeness-boost you’d get from actually doing it.  In other words, when other people hear us talk about our identity-related intentions, we get a sense of completeness from just talking about it.  And since talking is usually easier than doing, why bother with the latter?
Recent research shows that when our identity-based intentions are noticed by other people, we are indeed less likely to translate them into action.  Ironically, the more important the aspect of your identity is to you, the less likely you are to go through with it.  In a sense, Jane may be such a lousy friend precisely because it’s so important to her to see herself as a good one.
In one study, undergraduates who were on the path to one day become psychologists were asked to write down their two most important study intentions for the coming week (e.g., “I intend to study more statistics” or “I will take my reading assignments more seriously.”)  Half of the participants watched as their intentions were read by an experimenter– the other half were told that the intention questions weren’t supposed to be in the experiment at all and would just be discarded, unread.
One week later, the students were asked whether or not they had acted on their intentions.  Just having their intentions read by the experimenter actually decreased their likelihood of acting by 30%!
 In a second study, groups of second-year law students wrote about their three most important intentions with respect to becoming a lawyer (e.g., “I will read law periodicals regularly.”)   Half of the law students then made their intentions known to the rest of the group, while the others kept them privately to themselves.  Later, to measure their sense of completeness, each student was asked how much they felt like a lawyer right now, on a scale from 1 to 5.   Sharing their intention to do lawyerly things bumped completeness scores up a full point, from an average of 3 to 4.  So just telling people you are going to do some lawyer stuff makes you feel almostlike an actual lawyer!
At this point, you might be wondering what you can do to keep yourself from falling into this trap.  How can you stop being a promise-breaker, someone who talks plenty but rarely bothers with the walking part?
Well, one obvious solution is to keep your intentions to yourself.   Without an audience, intentions alone won’t give you the sense of identity-completeness you’re looking for.
If you can’t do that, the next best thing would be to make sure that you think about and express your intentions in ways that emphasize how what you’re going to do is valuable in its own right, not just as a way to bolster your identity.  The father who vows in front of his pals to spend more quality time with his kids has probably just made himself feel like a Good Dad, but just reduced his chances of actually being one.  If instead, he vows “to spend more time with my kids, because they really need me right now,” or “because I love being with them,” he’s made it clear to everyone, including himself, that it’s not just about being a Good Dad – it’s about time with the kids, for its own sake.   You will get beyond the talk when you make a point of remembering why it’s worth taking the trouble to walk.

Gollwitzer, P., Sheeran, P., Michalski, V., & Seifert, A. (2009) When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap?  Psychological Science, 20, 612-618.
Wicklund, R. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (1982) Symbolic self-completion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Avoid The Mistake That Derails Your Resolutions Every Year

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Have you ever tried to lose weight by not thinking about food? How about trying to play it cool and stop yourself from calling (or emailing, or texting) your love interest by blocking out all thoughts about that person? Ever try to quit smoking by trying not to think about smoking?
Did it work? I’ll bet it didn’t. And it’s really not your fault that it didn’t.
Thought suppression is a tricky business. On the one hand, it intuitively seems like it should work, which is why it is one of the most common strategies we use to tackle our New Year’s resolutions – people often try to block out or put the lid on unwanted thoughts and feelings, in order to control their influence. Dieters try to suppress thoughts of tempting snacks, alcoholics suppress their desire to drink, stressed-out workers suppress their feelings of anxiety, and smokers suppress the thought of cigarettes when trying to quit.
On the other hand, thought suppression is not only very, very difficult, but it works only very briefly, and has some very nasty unintended consequences. Suppression has often been shown to increase the frequency of the unwanted thoughts you were trying to rid yourself of, once the period of active suppression is over. Suppress thoughts of smoking, and the thoughts come rushing back with even greater force once you let your guard down.
But does this unintended consequence actually lead to more smoking? Are you actually worse off in terms of quitting than when you started?
Yes, you are. In a recent study, undergrads who smoked at least a half-pack a day on average were asked to keep track of their smoking for several weeks. For all of Week 2, some of the students were asked to try to suppress any and all thoughts about smoking. Not surprisingly, they smoked significantly fewer cigarettes during Week 2 than non-suppressers. But during Week 3, when these students were no longer required to suppress thoughts of smoking, they smoked significantly more cigarettes than non-suppressors!
While they were at it, the researchers who conducted this study looked at students’ stress levels across all three weeks. Thought suppressors reported a dramatic rise in stress during the week they were suppressing (while non-suppressors stress levels remained unchanged). So not only does the thought-suppression strategy backfire, it feels terrible while you are doing it.
How can we deal with unwanted thoughts more successfully, in ways that don’t end up actually diminishing the willpower we need to reach our goals? I’ve written about this in previous posts, but here are two suggestions:
1. Don’t suppress, replace. Decide in advance what you will think about when a thought about smoking, snacking, or hitting “redial” pops into your mind. When you find yourself thinking about how yummy a candy bar would be right now, try replacing that thought with one that focuses on your health and weight-loss goals (e.g., “It feels better to fit into my skinny jeans than it does to wolf down chocolate-covered nougat.”)
2. Don’t suppress, plan. Creating an if-then plan is an easy and effective way to deal with temptations. You don’t actually need to block out the thoughts – what you really need is to learn how not to act on them. By planning exactly what you will do, in advance, when the tempting thought occurs, it becomes far easier to stick to your goals. For instance, when thoughts about smoking occur, plan to chew gum, or step outside for several long deep breaths of fresh air. Whatever you plan to do, it will disrupt the connection between the thought and the giving-in to the temptation, and consequently, over time the thoughts will fade all on their own.
It’s almost never a good idea to put a lid on your thoughts and feelings. It may feel like it’s working in the short term, but soon you’ll find yourself right back where you started – surrounded by candy wrappers, and wondering why he hasn’t returned your three dozen phone calls. To reach your goals in 2013, try dealing with those thoughts and feelings in a more productive and less stressful way – and make this the year you finally make a lasting change.

3 Tips for Minimizing Holiday Weight Gain

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The holidays are a difficult time for those of us who both enjoy eating and worry about our waistlines.  Chances are good that if you overindulged a bit at Thanksgiving, you are now looking ahead to the month of December with a wary eye – only too aware of the minefield of cookie platters, holiday parties, family dinners, and gift baskets that you will have to somehow navigate.

You know from experience that you cannot get through these trying times on willpower alone.  So here are three very simple and proven-effective motivational strategies for remaining in your current pant size.

Tip 1:  Acknowledge That You Probably Can’t Have Just One. According to the laws of physics, bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something acts to stop them.  Well, the same thing can be said about human behavior, too – including eating.

Your actions have a kind of inertia – once you start doing something, it often takes more self-control to stop than it does to just avoid doing it in the first place.  And it gets harder to stop the longer the behavior goes on.  So it’s easier to be abstinent if you stop at the first kiss, rather than letting things get hot and heavy.  And it’s a lot easier to pass on the potato chips entirely, rather than just eat one or two.

Stopping before you start is an excellent strategy to keep your need for willpower to a minimum.  Consider cutting out all between-meal snacking over the holidays.  The fewer times you start eating each day, the less you’ll have to worry about stopping.

Tip 2:  Set VERY Specific Limits. Before you get anywhere near the cookie platter, the fruit cake, or the cheese plate, think about how much you can afford to eat without over-indulging.  Decide, in advance, exactly how much of any particular holiday treat you will allow yourself for dessert, or at the Christmas party.

The problem with most plans, including diet plans, is that they are not nearly specific enough.  We plan to “be good,” or “not eat too much,” but what does that mean, exactly?  When will I know if I’ve had too much?  When you are staring at a table overflowing with delicious snacks, you are not going to be a good judge of what “too much” is.

An effective plan is one that is made before you stare temptation in the face, and that allows no wiggle room.   Studies show that when people plan out exactly what they will do when temptation arises (e.g., I will have no more than 3 cookies and nothing else), are 2-3 times more likely to achieve their dietary goals.

Tip 3:  Savor.   Savoring is a way of increasing and prolonging our positive experiences.  Taking time to experience the subtle flavors in a piece of dark chocolate, the pungency of a full-flavored cheese, the buttery goodness of a Christmas cookie – these are all acts of savoring, and they help us to squeeze every bit of joy out of the good things that happen to us.

Avoid eating anything in one bite – you get all the calories, but only a fraction of the taste. Also, try not to eat while you are socializing.  When you are focused on conversation, odds are good that you will barely even register what you are putting in your mouth.

Eating slowly and mindfully, taking small bites instead of swallowing that bacon-wrapped scallop or stuffed mushroom whole, not only satisfies your hunger, but actually leaves you feeling happier. 

And that, ideally, is what holiday feasting is all about.

Your Misery Has Company

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The holidays can be really, really hard.    We struggle to find the right gifts, and to find the money in our budgets to pay for them.  All the preparation – decorating, shopping, wrapping, cooking, cleaning – takes time and effort, and it’s not as if you can put the rest of your life on hold to get it all done.

And then there are the guests.  Playing host to family and friends may be the most difficult part of all, particularly when there is so much pressure to make the experience a joyous one.  (And if you are the guest rather than the host, holiday travel is no picnic, either.)

It’s not at all unusual for people to feel more anxious, exhausted, frustrated, or depressed at this time of year than they typically do.  As if that’s not bad enough, many of us routinely add insult to injury by feeling guilty or ashamed that we aren’t bursting with happiness like we “should” be.  After all, isn’t this the season to be jolly?

And what’s more, we feel like we are alone in our unhappiness – as if everyone else is making merry while we are making misery.  This common misperception only adds to our pain.

So why don’t we notice that other people are struggling as we are?  New research suggests that the answer is fairly straightforward: People are, generally speaking, more private when it comes to their negative emotions.

As a society, we are taught (often implicitly) to be embarrassed by feelings like sadness and anxiety, which suggest vulnerability.  Consequently, we are more likely to try to keep them hidden – the net result being that others assume us to be happier than we really are, even when they know us well.

In addition, the researchers found that people routinely underestimate how often their peers are faced with the negative experiences they themselves endure.  In one study, undergraduates underestimated how frequently their fellow students were rejected by a romantic interest, received a low grade, or felt homesick for distant friends and families by 10-30%.

They also overestimated the frequency of others’ enjoyable experiences, like going out with friends or attending parties, by 10-20%!  So not only do we think other people are happier than we are, but we assume their lives are better, too.

Our ignorance has serious consequences.  Research shows that the more you underestimate the emotional pain of others, the more isolated and lonely you feel. You are also more likely to brood and ruminate on your bad experiences, and feel less satisfied with your life.  When our perceptions of other people’s lives are distorted, we may feel sorrier for ourselves than we really should, and ashamed of our anxiety and sadness when we really needn’t be.

They say that misery loves company, and there’s good reason for it.  There is comfort, and wisdom, in knowing that other people share our difficulties and understand our experiences.  If you can’t take all the headache and stress out of your holidays (and I’ve yet to meet the person who could), then you can at least do yourself a favor this year, and embrace the very real truth that you are not alone.

Nine Ways Successful People Defeat Stress

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From my HBR blog:
Feeling stressed?  Of course you are. You have too much on your plate, deadlines are looming, people are counting on you, and to top it all off, you still have holiday shopping to do.  You are under a lot of pressure – so much that at times, you suspect the quality of your work suffers for it.  You find yourself forgetting things, your thinking lacks clarity, and your creative juices refuse to flow.
This is life in the modern workplace.  It is more or less impossible to be any kind of professional these days and not experience frequent bouts of intense stress.   The difference between those who are successful and those who aren’t is not whether or not you suffer from stress, but how you deal with it when you do.  In the spirit of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently, here are nine scientifically-proven strategies for defeating stress whenever it strikes.
1.  Have self-compassion
Self-compassionis, in essence, cutting yourself some slack.  It’s being willing to look at your mistakes or failures with kindness and understanding – without harsh criticism or defensiveness.  Studies show that people who are self-compassionate are happier, more optimistic, and less anxious and depressed.  That’s probably not surprising.  But here’s the kicker: they are more successful, too.   Most of us believe that we need to be hard on ourselves to perform at our best, but it turns out that’s 100 percent wrong.  A dose of self-compassion when things are at their most difficult can reduce your stress and improve your performance, by making it easier for you to learn from your mistakes.  So remember that to err is human, and give yourself a break.
2. Think about the “Big Picture”
Anything you need or want to do can be thought of in more than one way.  For instance, “exercising” can be described in Big Picture terms, like “getting healthier” – the why of exercising – or it can be described in more concrete terms, like “running two miles” – the how of exercising.   Thinking Big Picture about the work you do can be very energizingin the face of stress and challenge, because you are linking one particular, often small action to a greater meaning or purpose.  Something that may not seem important or valuable on its own gets cast in a whole new light.  So when staying that extra hour at work at the end of an exhausting day is thought of as “helping my career” rather than “answering emails for 60 more minutes,” you’ll be much more likely to want to stay put and work hard.
3. Rely on routines 
            If I ask you to name the major causes of stress in your work life, you would probably say things like deadlines, a heavy workload, bureaucracy, or your terrible boss.  You probably wouldn’t say “having to make so many decisions,” because most people aren’t aware that this is a powerful and pervasive cause of stress in their lives.  Every time you make a decision – whether it’s about hiring a new employee, about when to schedule a meeting with your supervisor, or about choosing rye or whole wheat for your egg salad – you create a state of mental tension that is, in fact, stressful.  (This is why shopping is so exhausting – it’s not the horrible concrete floors, it’s all that deciding.)
            The solution is to reduce the number of decisions you need to make, by utilizing routines. If there’s something you need to do every day, do it at the same time every day.  Have a routine for preparing for your day in the morning, and packing up to go home at night. Simple routines can dramatically reduce your experience of stress.  In fact, President Obama, who assuredly knows a great deal about stress, mentioned using this strategy himself in a recent interview:
You need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day… You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.
                                                – President Obama, Vanity Fair
4. Take five (or ten) minutes to do something you find interesting
If there were something you could add to your car’s engine, so that after driving it a hundred miles, you’d end up with moregas in the tank than you started with, wouldn’t you use it?  Even if nothing like that exists for your car just yet, there is something you can do for yourself that will have the same effect… something interesting.  It doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it interests you.  Recent research shows that interest doesn’t just keep you going despite fatigue, it actually replenishes your energy.   And then that replenished energy flows into whatever you do next. 
            Keep these two very important points in mind:  First, interesting is not the same thing as pleasant, fun, or relaxing (though they are certainly not mutually exclusive.) Taking a lunch break might be relaxing, and if the food is good it will probably be pleasant.  But unless you are eating at the hot new molecular gastronomy restaurant, it probably won’t be interesting.  So it won’t replenish your energy.
            Second, interesting does not have to mean effortless.  The same studies that showed that interest replenished energy showed that it did so even when the interesting task was difficult and required effort.  So you actually don’t have to “take it easy” to refill your tank.
5.  Add whereand when to your To Do List
Do you have a To Do list?  (If you have a “Task” bar on the side of your calendar, and you use it, then the answer is “yes.”)  And do you find that a day or a week (or sometimes longer) will frequently pass by without a single item getting checked off?   Stressful, isn’t it?  What you need is a way to get the things done that you set out to do in a timely manner.  What you need is if-then planning (or what psychologists call implementation intentions).
 This particular form of planning is a really powerful way to help you achieve any goal.  Nearly 200 studies, on everything from diet and exercise to negotiation and time management, have shown that deciding in advance when and where you will complete a task (e.g., “If it is 4pm, then I will return any phone calls I should return today”) can double or triple your chances of actually doing it.  
So take the tasks on your To Do list, and add a specific when and where to each.  For example, “Remember to call Bob” becomes “If it is Tuesday after lunch, then I’ll call Bob.”  Now that you’ve created an if-then plan for calling Bob, your unconscious brain will start scanning the environment, searching for the situation in the “if” part of your plan.  This enables you to seize the critical moment and make the call, even when you are busy doing other things.  And what better way is there to cut down on your stress than crossing things off your To Do list?
6.      Use if-thens for positive self-talk
Another way to combat stress using if-thenplans is to direct them at the experience of stress itself, rather than at its causes.  Recent studiesshow that if-then plans can help us to control our emotional responses to situations in which we feel fear, sadness, fatigue, self-doubt, or even disgust.  Simply decide what kind of response you would like to have instead of feeling stress, and make a plan that links your desired response to the situations that tend to raise your blood pressure.  For instance, If I see lots of emails in my Inbox, then I will stay calm and relaxed, or, If a deadline is approaching, then I will keep a cool head.
7.  See your work in terms of progress, not perfection
We all approach the goals we pursue with one of two mindsets: what I call the Be-Good mindset, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and that you already know what you’re doing, and the Get-Bettermindset, where the focus is on developingyour ability and learning new skills.  You can think of it as the difference between wanting to show that you are smart versus wanting to get smarter.
When you have a Be-Good mindset, you expect to be able to everything perfectlyright out of the gate, and you constantly (often unconsciously) compare yourself to other people, to see how you “size up.”  You quickly start to doubt your ability when things don’t go smoothly, and this creates a lot of stress and anxiety.  Ironically, worrying about your ability makes you much more likely to ultimately fail. 
A Get-Better mindset, on the other hand, leads instead to self-comparison and a concern with making progress– how well are you doing today, compared with how you did yesterday, last month, or last year?  When you think about what you are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that you may make some mistakes along the way, you experience far less stress, and you stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur. 
8.  Think about the progress that you’ve already made
“ Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.”  This is what Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer refer to as the Progress Principle – the idea is that it’s the “small wins” that keep us going, particularly in the face of stressors. 
Psychologically, it’s often not whether we’ve reached our goal, but the rate at which we are closing the gap between where we are now and where we want to end up that determines how we feel.  It can be enormously helpful to take a moment and reflect on what you’ve accomplished so far before turning your attention to the challenges that remain ahead.
9. Know whether optimism or defensive pessimism works for you
For many of us, it’s hard to stay positive when we’ve got assignments up to our eyeballs.  For others, it isn’t just hard – it feels wrong.  And as it turns out, they are perfectly correct – optimism doesn’t work for them. 
It is stressful enough to try to juggle as many projects and goals as we do, but we add a layer of stress without realizing it when we try to reach them using strategies that don’t feel right – that don’t mesh with our own motivational style.  So what’s your motivational style, and is “staying positive” right for you?
Some people think of their jobs as opportunities for achievement and accomplishment – they have what psychologists call a promotion focus.  In the language of economics, promotion focus is all about maximizing gainsand avoiding missed opportunities.   For others, doing a job well is about security, about not losing the positions they’ve worked so hard for.  This prevention focus places the emphasis on avoiding danger, fulfilling responsibilities, and doing what feel you ought to do.  In economic terms, it’s about minimizing losses, trying to hang on to what you’ve got.
Understanding promotion and prevention motivation helps us understand why people can work so differently to reach the same goal.  Promotion motivation feels like eagerness – the desire to really go for it – and this eagerness is sustained and enhanced by optimism.  Believing that everything is going to work out great is essential for promotion-focused performance.  Prevention motivation, on the other hand, feels like vigilance – the need to keep danger at bay – and it is sustained not by optimism, but by a kind of defensive pessimism.  In other words, the prevention-minded actually work best when they think about what might go wrong, and what they can do to keep that from happening.
So, do you spend your life pursuing accomplishments and accolades, reaching for the stars? Or are you busy fulfilling your duties and responsibilities – being the person everyone can count on? Start by identifying your focus, and then embrace either the sunny outlook or the hearty skepticism that will reduce your stress and keep you performing at your best.
Put some or all of these strategies for fighting stress, and you will see real changes not only in the workplace, but in every area of your life.  With the holidays around the corner, you might want to work on creating a few if-thensfor dealing with the relatives, too.  If I’m about to lose my mind, then I’ll have some more eggnog works wonders for me.