Balance during the holidays (part 1)

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During the holidays there are often dozens of additional tasks that need to get done. And even though we want things to run smoothly, what we really desire is to be present. The holidays are a time of laughter, cozy conversations, good food and a warm house but often that need to get it “just right” takes away from our ability to be present. In this two part series I will breakdown the 3 most common things that create imbalance during the holidays and teach you how to overcome each of them with ease.

Topics in this episode:

  • Top 3 “needs” that create imbalance during the holidays

  • What everyone craves during the holiday season (no, it’s not a food)

  • Why perfectionism actually takes away from being present

  • How holiday movies steer us wrong and what it takes to create that same warm and cozy holiday movie feel in our own life

  • What you need to be thinking about the holidays in order to be satisfied and present

  • A 2-part exercise to help you feel balanced during the holidays

Show Notes:

  • The “Be present and calm this holiday season challenge” is starting in the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Collective. This challenge will ensure you create a present and calm holiday season with daily emails, special audio reflections and additional coaching support starting December 6th. Learn more at: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/collective.

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Transcription


Intro

During the holidays, there are often dozens of additional tasks to be done. There is shopping, cleaning, cooking, and wrapping. Even though we want things to run smoothly, what we really desire is to feel present and satisfied during the holiday season. The holidays are a time of laughter and cozy conversations, good food, a warm house and family. But often, the need to get it just right kinda takes away from our ability to be present and balanced. In this two-part series, I will break down the 3 most common things that create imbalance during the holidays and teach you how to overcome each of them with ease. You ready? Let’s get to it.


Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it! 


Hey working moms. It’s Thanksgiving week and I hope your home is feeling cozy and warm as the holidays approach. The holidays are a time when most working moms I speak with say they just want to be able to shut down their work brain – take a true break and be present. And their work-brain is not just their paid work – it’s their unpaid work too – shopping, cooking, planning, cleaning, wrapping…we all want to get to the end of the holidays and have this feeling of being satisfied and filled with joy from time spent with our families and friends. 


Now, I just want you to take a moment and imagine the upcoming holidays. For me, what I see is laughter, I see me actually sitting down, I see my kids, husband and I watching holiday movies…I see the fireplace going and games on the floor next to it. I don’t have the internal script going that is telling me I should do this or that or that my floor is a mess and I should vacuum…internally I feel joy – I feel balanced. 


Be Present this Holiday Season Challenge!

This is the experience I want every working mom to have this holiday season, this is the experience I know is available to everyone and so to help support you in creating a balanced and present holiday season, for the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas in my group coaching program, The Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Collective I am running a challenge to help every single mom in the group create a present and calm holiday. Besides the usual 5 step process and weekly coaching, there will be daily emails, 5-minute audio prompts and additional coaching opportunities for those INSIDE the program. The challenge starts, Monday, December 6th and you have to join by then to get access to the additional support through the holidays. Doors to the Collective opened back up today so that is www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/collective and that will go in the show notes. Ok, can’t wait to see you inside The Collective. 


Ok, so in preparation for this “be present during the holidays” challenge, I want to talk about the holidays and balance in today’s and next week’s episode. So this will be a little 2-part series. 


Because if you are someone that struggles with balance generally in life then the holidays just magnify the problem, because the same reasons why you are feeling imbalanced in life are the same reasons you feel imbalanced during the holidays. 


Now, for ambitious women the three main things that get in the way of balance in life and during the holidays – because as I said, they are very similar…are…


The need for things to be just right. (perfectionism)

The need to meet everyone else’s expectations. (people-pleasing)

The need to do it all. (hyper-doing)


Now, for today’s episode, I am going to focus on the first one. The need for things to be just right. And then next week I am going to tackle the other two. 


Now I don't know about you but I devour holiday movies. We actually have already started watching them in our family, because it never feels like there's enough time to watch them all, so we start as soon as November comes around. Even now as I sit here and I think about holiday movies I get this warm, fuzzy feeling inside because pretty much every holiday movie ends with a happy resolution, often times the ending scene is a family gathering over a meal and then usually it takes place in some cold, snowy part of the states so there is frost on the windows and roaring fire inside…


So I watch all these movies and my brain starts thinking this is what the holidays are supposed to look like. Yes they are chaotic but you're surrounded by all of your family, a warm fireplace, Christmas carols being sung, everyone helping out doing the cooking and clean-up, mounds of presents under the tree, hours of lingering family time … but in reality, It often feels like we're going from one activity to the next, my kids are exhausted because they're not getting to bed at their usual time, they're getting extra screen time so that I can get more things done, I'm in charge of most of the gift buying so my brain is constantly consumed with that. On Christmas morning, there's wrapping paper everywhere and somebody's gotta clean that up, there is Christmas breakfast, there is Christmas dinner…got to make sure it feels magical to the kids… the reality of the holidays just doesn't seem to match the good feelings of the holiday movies. So then there is sorta this let-down after the holidays because you don’t feel the way you want to feel…the way it’s depicted in all these holiday movies 


It feels like there is a right way to do the holidays and if I do it right then that magical holiday feeling will be there and if I do it wrong, it won’t. 


And if we're really honest, when it comes to the holidays, we really are just chasing a feeling. We want the holidays to feel a certain way. Take a moment and even consider what feeling you want to walk away with after the holidays. Like, put a label on it. For me it's satisfied. For others, it might be calm or peaceful or joyful.


These are all words we use to describe a balanced life. In a balanced life you’re feeling satisfied. When you're feeling balanced you’re feeling calm. When you're feeling balanced you're experiencing joy.


Feelings come from our thoughts…not from our circumstances. 

In needing the holidays to be “just right” all you are really saying is you want the holidays to feel a certain way. And our feelings come from our thoughts…not from our circumstances. 


There isn't a perfect way to do the holidays that is going to make you feel balanced – that will make you feel calm and peaceful and filled with joy. 


There will be a range of holiday experiences for people this year. Some, due to COVID, are likely going to keep it small. There could be a lot of division between vaccinated and unvaccinated family members. There have been a lot of lives lost over the last year and so there will be sadness at family members who are no longer with us. And then for some there's always been some division, maybe you don't talk to your mom or your dad or your siblings these days, maybe you don't have any extended family. There are literally hundreds of different circumstances that people will be in this holiday season and none of them are going to be perfect. 


And here's my guess, you would much rather a holiday where things are a bit messy, and not everything goes according to plan, and maybe even you forgot to bring something or do something, but there was still moments of laughter and you enjoyed the company of your family vs. A holiday that is perfectly executed with no hiccups but you didn't feel very present for. You missed the laughter and the connection with your family because you were too busy executing.


So if you think there is a perfect way, then you are going to be obsessing about how to get it just right, when in reality a perfectly executed or planned holiday is likely going to pull you away from the very experience you want, so that just isn’t useful. 


Focus on what you can control.

So rather than thinking about trying to create some perfect circumstance where your family all gets along and everyone gets together and everyone pitches in, and your spouse helps out in the way you want…instead I want you to focus on what you can actually control…which is you and your thoughts. 


What do you need to be thinking about the holidays for you to feel balanced or satisfied or calm…whatever emotion you chose? What would you need to be thinking? 


Use Thanksgiving, since it is coming up in a few days. In order to feel balanced at Thanksgiving, what would you need to think? Here are a few of my thoughts, but I want you to take some time to really consider this question and come up with your own thoughts:


This is exactly what I wanted. 

I love my family. 

I am so loved. 

I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else…

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else…

I’m lucky. 

This is enough. 


These thoughts make me feel very satisfied and full. And as I imagine Thanksgiving Day and I think – this is exactly what I want and I feel satisfied – what I imagine myself doing is sitting and talking to my family – not stuck in the kitchen doing all the cooking. I imagine a game being played so that my 4 year old and my 68 year old father can all participate in an activity together. I imagine lingering around the dinner table – messy plates left for a few minutes and listening to the conversation. I imagine a very laid-back feel – kinda roll with the punches. I see myself sitting and watching the Thanksgiving day parade with my kiddos. 


Those images feel very clear to me…I can literally see myself and my Thanksgiving day and what it looks like through the lens of feeling satisfied. 


Now…in this image of Thanksgiving…there are some things I am NOT doing. I do NOT imagine myself needing to refill everyone’s glass. I do not imagine myself on my feet the whole time. I do not imagine a perfectly clean house. I do not imagine myself in the kitchen tending to the meal by myself. I do not imagine a perfectly executed – to the minute planned out day. I do not imagine myself or my kids tethered to my phone. I do not imagine getting up in the morning and cooking/cleaning all day. None of these things come to my mind when I think about a satisfied experience at Thanksgiving. 


Now I have a bit of an action plan. I know what I need to be thinking, feeling and doing (or not doing) in order to create the Thanksgiving I want. You can do this same exercise yourself. 


What I want you to notice though, is that in order to create that “just right” feeling, that satisfied, calm, peaceful feeling I spoke of earlier, that feeling we all want when we think about the holidays…it starts with your thoughts. 


It is exactly the same as when we talk about creating work-life balance. 


Balance is a feeling, and it comes from the way you think. The thoughts that pass through your brain either make you feel good or they don’t. 


The thoughts you have about the upcoming holidays are either going to make you feel calm and satisfied or frantic and exhausted. 


So, I want you to take 5 minutes to sit down and write out your current thoughts about either Thanksgiving or just the upcoming holiday season generally. I call this a thought download…just getting all your thoughts down on paper. 


Then take 5 minutes and write down what you WANT to think about Thanksgiving or the holiday’s. Make sure to focus on thoughts you can believe right now. So you can’t be writing down thoughts like, I have the greatest family in the world if you loathe them…that’s a little extreme…but you could be thinking…this is a great opportunity to reconnect. See what I mean. You want to write thoughts that your brain can actually grasp right now.


The experience of balance during the holidays, that experience of being satisfied...that comes from the way that you are thinking about the holidays. So you want to spend some time getting cozy with your thoughts and starting to direct your thoughts to things that are much more useful in helping to create that holiday experience you want.


Next week in the podcast I will focus on the other two things that generate imbalance during holidays:


I need to meet everyone’s expectations.

I need to do it all.


Until then…let’s get to it. 

Rebecca Olson