Holiday mistake #5: Not having a plan for when things get off track

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There are 6 common mistakes that create stress and overwhelm for working moms during the holiday season. During this mini-series I will cover each mistake and teach you how to correct it. In today’s episode I dive into mistake #5: not having a plan for when you feel stressed and overwhelmed. Things will not always go according to plan during the holidays. At some point you will find yourself off-track feeling stressed out in ways you don’t want. This is to be expected and it’s not a big deal as long as you anticipate it and have a plan to get yourself back on track.

Topics in this episode:

  • It’s not a big deal if you find yourself stressed out and overwhelmed – it’s to be expected.

  • Why it’s important to anticipate things getting off track

  • You can’t make everything go perfectly over the holidays, but you can have a plan to get yourself back on track

  • A good plan has 2 parts: handling your default thoughts and emotions and getting your head and heart in alignment with your vision for the holidays

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Hey, working moms. If you're just picking up the podcast this week, you'll notice that we're in the middle of a series called The Top Six Mistakes that Create Unnecessary Stress and Overwhelm during the Holiday Season. 

This is a six part miniseries to help you create a calm present and restful holiday season. These short, ten minute episodes drop Mondays and Wednesdays, so there's a few bonus episodes during the series. 

And today we're diving into mistake number five. You ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms 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. 

Hello, working moms. How's everybody doing today? 

All right, let's jump right into talking about mistake number five. 

Now, we're in the middle of a six part miniseries covering the top six mistakes that I see working moms make that cause really unnecessary stress and overwhelm. 

And today we're talking about mistake number five, which is not expecting or anticipating things to go wrong and not having a reset plan for it. 

So let's talk for a moment about the importance of anticipation or kind of expecting things to go wrong. 

Because a life that feels balanced and where you feel in control is not necessarily a life where everything goes according to plan all the time, right? 

It's not a life where you never feel overwhelmed and you never feel stressed out. That would be nearly impossible to create because life just happens, right? 

And the holidays are busy and they're stressful and there's just more things to do and there's more expectations. We're not going to change those facts. 

All we can really do is anticipate that sometimes we're going to get off track a little bit and things aren't going to go according to plan. And we can anticipate big feelings during these times. And we can anticipate kind of last minute things coming up and throwing us off or triggering us, right? 

We can anticipate that our family members are probably going to say something that's going to be offensive in some way and that's going to cause a trigger within you, right? 

We can anticipate that your kids are going to probably get a little bit more irritated and they're going to be off schedule and you're going to be a little bit more snappy at them at times, right? 

We can anticipate these things. 

Creating a plan.

Of course we're going to do our best to mitigate these moments so that they don't happen so often. It's one of the reasons why we spend time creating a plan and getting really clear on the vision that you want this holiday season to look like. 

But of course, there's going to be moments when things don't go according to plan. And when you anticipate that that's going to happen, you don't feel as thrown off by it, right? 

Instead of going, oh my gosh, why is this happening? This shouldn't be happening. Why are my kids having meltdowns? Why can't my mom just keep her opinions to herself? Why can't we just hold it all together? Why am I getting so upset? Why is this all on me? Right? 

Can you just feel the judgment in all of these thoughts? 

And these are the kinds of things that you'll think if you're not anticipating big emotions from you and other people this holiday season, or if you're not anticipating last minute things coming up and needing to reprioritize, maybe even for the 10th time. 

Or if you're not anticipating that your brain is going to have a hard time shutting down from work, or you're not anticipating that it's going to feel like you are doing absolutely everything and your husband isn't helping out as much as he should, or your family's not helping in the way that you want them to. 

These are the kinds of thoughts that we're trying to ultimately get rid of this holiday season. 

And let me give you two reasons why it's really important that we let these thoughts go and we learn how to anticipate and expect things to go wrong. 

One is that it just feels bad, right? It's terrible. 

All of these judgmental feelings kind of pile on top of each other and then you start feeling even more behind and even more not good enough and even more inadequate. 

Judgmental thoughts.

These judgmental thoughts, they're connected to a whole bunch of feelings that we just ultimately don't want to experience this holiday season. 

The second reason why it's so important to anticipate things not going according to plan is because it's really hard to get yourself back on track and to sort of reset when you're experiencing a whole lot of judgment. 

The judgment becomes another layer of emotions and thoughts that you need to deal with in order to get back on track. And so you have a lot of wasted energy there. 

Let me give you an example of this. 

In a coaching session recently with one of my clients, we were discussing her husband and the way that her husband handles their son when he's in the middle of a meltdown. 

And to be honest, she didn't really like the way he was handling these moments. He wasn't handling it in the sort of calm, controlled, sturdy way that she would want. 

She really wanted to talk to him about this and to kind of correct the situation. She wanted to talk about how to handle this, how to sort of get him to do things her way. 

But before we could even discuss how to have this conversation with her husband, the first thing that she needed to do was accept his way of doing things. 

And so I asked her, why is it not a problem that your husband handles things in the way he handles them. Why is this a non issue? And she saw it is an issue. 

That's why we're talking about it. This is not the way that I want to raise our children and we need to get on the same page. 

And I said, yes. I know that you want things to be different, but you have made your differences like a really big issue. And when things feel like a really big issue, they're a lot harder to fix, right? 

A bigger problem is harder to fix. 

When things don't feel like such a big issue or a big deal, then addressing it is going to get a lot easier. 

And so I asked her again, why is this not a big deal? 

And after a lot of thinking, she was able to come up with several answers that included thinking about his upbringing and the fact that he was really never taught tools to handle kids like this. 

And through that conversation, she was really able to see how she was judging him as being a bad parent. And in reality, that wasn't true at all. 

She didn't believe that he was a bad parent. In fact, she had nothing but wonderful things to say about him as a parent. 

And so the result of us being able to talk about it in this way and to kind of get out of the judgmental thoughts that she had about him and their parenting situation, it sort of softened her and the whole conversation, which allowed her to see a lot more different perspectives, which then helped her come up with a much more effective and compassionate solution for how she was going to ultimately approach her husband about this. 

When you anticipate this holiday season that things are going to go awry and emotions are going to happen and things will need to get reprioritized, you get yourself out of judgment, which makes moving forward and problem solving a whole lot easier. 

Anticipate things are not going to go exactly the way you want them to. 

And it's okay. It doesn't mean anything's gone wrong. It's not a big deal or a big problem. It's going to happen. Of course it's going to happen. It's life, it’s the holidays now. 

The second part of this is really important though. You need to have a plan for how you're going to handle those moments when your kids are having a meltdown because they're overstimulated and they're out of rhythm and there's so many extra things going on in the holiday season. 

How do you want to handle that moment? 

You're feeling super stressed out because you haven't gotten enough done. And there's just so much more to do, more planning to do, more shopping to do. 

When you're feeling that high level of stress, it's really hard to think clearly and to prioritize the way that you want because you're so stressed out. You need a plan when you're in the height of emotion, of being off track. 

Taking a step back.

It's really hard to stop yourself and take a step back and really come up with how you want to calmly reset yourself and get yourself back on track towards the overall vision of what you want this holiday season, unless you have already pre thought a plan out. 

Now, a good plan always has two parts. 

The first part is dealing with all of the default thoughts and emotions that are coming up. 

How do you want to deal with the feelings of stress and overwhelm, or feeling behind, or being irritated or angry, or feeling like you have to keep working and you're having a hard time shutting down because you're thinking you're so far behind and everything's on you and you just need to get this all done. 

Dealing with the tough emotions.

The first part is dealing with all of those stressed out, overwhelmed thoughts and emotions. And it could be really simple. 

  • You could speak these thoughts out loud to yourself. 

  • You could put your hand over your heart and breathe deeply as you think about them or you let them go. 

  • You could get out a piece of paper and a pen and write all your thoughts and emotions down to just kind of get them out of your head and your body. 

  • You can go for a walk and talk yourself through it, or find a friend to talk to however you want to handle it. 

The point is that you have all of these stressed out, overwhelming emotions that are going on and your goal in this first part is to make them not so big and overwhelming anymore in the simplest of ways. 

Feeling your feelings.

I like to call this feeling your emotions or feeling your feelings. I actually did an interview with a client of mine not that long ago, Skyler on this podcast and it was called Feeling Your Feelings. 

So I will link to that in the show notes as well if you need some ideas on kind of the practices of actually feeling your feelings and letting your stressed out, overwhelming, not good enough types of feelings and thoughts, kind of learning how to kind of ride the wave of emotion and let them go. 

So that's the first part. 

Intentional way of thinking.

The second part of the plan is to move into a more intentional way of thinking and feeling. And this is the moment where you remember the vision that you have created for yourself this holiday season, where you remember and imagine your calm self doing all of the shopping and the cooking and the prepping, where you see yourself handling your kids and their big emotions in a really calm, connected and strong way. 

Now, there's a lot of ways to get yourself into this intentional head and heart space. It could be as simple as revisualizing how you want the holidays to go. 

Just like we talked about in that very first episode. You could literally go back and redo the visualization exercise I gave you. 

“What is most important to me during this holiday season.”

Or you could get a pen and paper out and you could write down what is most important to me during this holiday season just to kind of get your brain back on board with the idea that the priority is probably not getting absolutely everything done on your to do list. 

In fact, it's enjoying and being more present and joy filled this holiday season. 

Getting into an intentional head and heart space could look like reminding yourself of who you are, that you are the kind, loving, connected, wonderful mom and human being. 

It could look like writing a phrase down like, I can handle this, I can handle this, I can handle this. This isn't a big deal, this isn't a big deal. Over and over and over again, 20 times, right? 

Until your brain really fully gets on board, you're getting your head and your heart into a more intentional space that's in alignment with the kind of holiday season vision that you have for yourself. 

So two parts: handle with a lot of love and compassion for yourself. 

All of the default swirly, overwhelming, stressed out thoughts and emotions. When you sort of realize that you're off track and that you're not having the holiday experience that you want, when you realize that that's happening, that is the moment that you stop. 

And you very lovingly handle all of those thoughts and emotions however you've decided to do it, this is you actually making a plan and committing to it, right? 

Remember your priorities.

And then the second thing once you've done that is to get yourself back on track into a much more intentional way of thinking, by remembering your priorities, by revisualizing, by grounding yourself in who you are and how you want to show up. 

What's important as you leave this episode, to actually make your own plan. Or maybe there were some ideas that I threw out here that you want to take for yourself. 

It's up to you to decide what exactly you're going to do, to not just have this in the back of your mind like, okay, I got to handle all of those swirly emotions, and then I got to get myself into intentional brain space. 

No, I want you to actually decide here's exactly what I'm going to do. 

When I notice all of the swirly thoughts and I'm feeling really stressed out, or I notice that I'm snapping at my kids, or I notice that I'm working later than I want to, here's exactly what I'm going to do. 

I'm going to stop, notice, I'm going to write all these things down, and then I'm going to take two minutes and I'm going to breathe, and I'm going to remember the holiday season that I have visualized for myself, remember that I am perfectly capable of creating this holiday season, and I'm going to write it down. 

I'm going to write exactly that on a piece of paper. That's how specific I want to get because when we're in the moment, it's going to be really hard for your brain to remember exactly what it needs to do if you haven't predetermined and committed to doing it. 

All right, working moms. That is what I have for you today to anticipate things are not going to go according to plan. 

You don't need to make it a big deal, judge yourself or anyone else for it happening. It's just going to happen. It's okay. 

And then to create a plan for yourself, a two part plan in how to get yourself back into a much more intentional head and heart space this holiday season. 

All right, working Moms, I will see you in the next episode. Until then, let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson