Holiday mistake #6: Not scheduling times for rest and fun

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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 #6: not scheduling times for rest and fun. Without time set aside to rest, your “free time” during the holidays will be snatched up with doing more and checking one more thing off your list. The best way to ensure you have the rest and fun you want this season is to literally calendar it in. In today’s episode I will offer 2 types of rest you should put in your calendar as well as some ideas for what to do with that time.

Topics in this episode:

  • Why you don’t want to be booked from morning to night

  • What happens when you don’t schedule in rest time

  • Why you should schedule rest DURING your workday

  • Ideas of how to spend your rest time

Show Notes & References:

  • Learn how to process and let go of stress and overwhelm all year long? Click here to schedule a free call to discuss coaching and how to stop reacting to life: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com

  • Want ongoing support as a working mom? Sign up for the free 19-day audio series: How to be a present and connected mom. Each day you will receive an email with a downloadable audio of 5 minutes or less that will teach you a tool or strategy for being more present and in the moment. Click here to sign up and receive the first audio: https://www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/be-present-optin

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Transcript

Intro

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

And this six part miniseries is meant 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 is our last day and we're covering mistake number six. 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. 

All right, working moms. We are in our last episode of this six part miniseries where we've been covering the top six mistakes that I see working moms make during the holiday season that cause unnecessary stress and overwhelm. 

And this last mistake is not having enough unplanned or unscheduled time during the holiday season. I like to call this white space. 

Okay, I want you to imagine a lined piece of paper. I know we're going like, way back now. If you think about a lined piece of paper, there is a margin on the paper, right? 

It usually is about an inch or so on the left and an inch or even more a couple of inches at the top. There's literally white space that is intended to be left blank. And it's very intentional in the design of a white piece of paper. 

There's a reason for it, our brains would have a really difficult time effectively reading words from one corner to the other corner of a piece of paper. 

I want you to imagine somebody starting at the very top left corner of a piece of paper and writing all the way to the top right corner and then filling the entire page with words. Your brain would get really overwhelmed by that. 

Reading that would take a long time. It would be really ineffective. But if you create margin around the outside of the paper and there's good spacing between your lines, your brain can read that a whole lot faster and take in the information in a much more effective way. 

Our brains need white space or they need margin in order to effectively and productively operate. 

Now, when we're talking about your life as a metaphor, we're talking about having white space and margin in your life in your schedule. Meaning you're not scheduled back to back to back to back all day long. You're not in doing mode from the moment you get up to the moment you go to sleep. 

Creating space in your day for enjoyment and rest.

There's literally space in your day for rest and for enjoyment. There's emotional margin to handle things when they don't go according to plan. And there's times of fun and leisure. 

So often what I see for particularly high achieving women is they're busy from the moment they open their eyes to the moment that they close them. 

They're in constant motion, constantly doing things, constantly checking things off the list, particularly during the holidays, because there's just so many more things to do and so many more emotions and expectations. 

Having a really clear vision of success.

But if you remember in the very first episode of this miniseries, I talked about having a really clear vision of success for the holiday season. 

And I walked you through a visualization so that your brain could really start to see, can literally paint a picture on what is most important for you during the holidays. 

And if you did that exercise, or even if you didn't, my guess is that the kind of holiday you want is not one that is a constant go, go, go, busy, busy, busy, do, do, do, fill every moment from morning till evening.

Slowing down.

It's a holiday season where you're prioritizing, where you're slowing down and connecting with your family and your friends and the people that you love and you're present for conversation and you're not thinking about the next thing you need to do or what needs to come out of the oven, right? 

It's a holiday season where there's more laughter, there's more downtime, there's games, there's fun activities, there's rest. 

And the only way you are going to be able to have that kind of holiday experience is to not be booked from morning till night to have some space, some margin in your day, some white space, so that if your kids want to play with you, you can say yes. 

Or if you realize you haven't had a really good conversation with your partner in a while, rather than do one more thing and check one more thing off the list tonight, there's space to just sit and to talk. 

Unscheduled, unplanned time that literally needs to be in your calendar. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a client and we were talking about how busy the season of her job was. 

It's obviously very busy during the holidays itself, but in her job in particular, because she's in marketing, there's holiday sales that go on during this time. There's just a lot more to do and a lot more stress. 

And she finds that she doesn't take care of herself in the ways that she really wants to, and she doesn't make space for her family. 

And as we were developing a plan for her this busy holiday season, one of the things that she brought up was that she needed to have at least three nights during the work week that were unplanned, where she didn't have anything scheduled, and she was not anticipating doing any productive work during that time. 

She wasn't going to check one more thing off the list. She was going to leave it open and unscheduled, and she needed to have it in her calendar. 

And we talked a little bit about this in the second episode of this miniseries where we were talking about actually calendaring out your plan for the holiday seasons. 

Schedule in down time.

And one of the things I said is that you need to actually calendar in rest time and fun time, because if you don't do that, the most likely thing for you to do is fill that time with more things to do. 

And so my client, in this case, literally blocked out three evenings in her calendar and labeled it busy season rest period. I think that's almost exactly what she said, and that's exactly what I want you to do, to look at your calendar and block out rest times. 

Not too long ago, I had a conversation with one of my clients that was really struggling with feeling exhausted at the end of her work days where she just didn't have anything left over for her kids. 

And I challenged her to schedule in rest time during her workday to actually take a break and do something restful that was just for her in the middle of her day so that she wasn't feeling so run down by the end of the day. 

We came up with a long list of options. Everything from going on a walk or a run or reading a book or taking a bath all during the middle of her workday. Sounds luxurious, doesn't it? 

But maybe that's something you need to do as well. You perhaps need to mark off in your calendar some rest time, some times for fun, even if it's just 15 minutes. 

Giving our brain a break. 

What this does is it gives your brain sort of a break from the act of having to do and to be productive, which just allows for a more restful experience during your day. 

Okay, so I can hear some of you saying, I'm not even sure what I would do with that time if I set aside time to rest. And I know this is true for a lot of women that I work with that have just thrown all of themselves into their work and into their kids. 

Like they just don't have any hobbies anymore because being a worker and being a mom just seems to take up all of the time. Right? 

Feeling lost in who you are.

I know it's really common when women come to me for coaching. They feel just really lost in who they are and what brings them joy and just sort of what makes them tick anymore. 

And it's such a delightful experience for me as a coach to help my clients put words to some of these things, to really describe who they are, what they're all about, what brings them life, to help them rediscover fun and adventure and belly laughs, right? 

Life looks different after having kids.

In this current season of life, whatever that looks like for them. Because, to their point, it might not look like what it was before they had kids. 

Rest for them, hobbies for them. Times of joy and delight probably look very different today than they did ten years ago, and particularly before kids. 

So if you're one of these women that when you think about scheduling in time for rest, just kind of go, oh, my gosh, I don't even know what I would do with that time. And that feels really overwhelming to you. Here's what I want you to do. 

I want you to create a list. 

  • What sounds relaxing to you? 

  • What sounds like fun? 

  • What sort of activity would you look forward to or anticipate? 

  • What sounds restful to you? 

I wouldn't overthink it, I wouldn't go too far into it. 

It's just those first things that pop up and say, yeah, those are the kinds of things I enjoy. 

  • Cooking

  • Reading

  • Going for a walk

  • Calling a friend

  • Movie night with the family

  • Baking

  • Rreading a magazine

  • Taking a bath by candlelights 

  • Stargazing 

  • Taking a nap

  • Making something with your hands

  • Looking at old videos on your phone

  • Putting together a photo book

I remember I had a client that had that one on their particular rest list, making a photo book because it was sort of her creative outlet. 

She looked forward to the idea of making the photo book. It gave her energy, it gave her life, because making photo books was not something that she did in her normal day to day life. It didn't feel like a normal chore. It felt like something fun and outside of her norm. 

So you can even have some of those activities on your list as well. 

I think so often people don't like the idea of scheduling in their rest and their fun time because it feels like something that should be spontaneous. 

And yet, for many of us, if it doesn't make it onto the calendar, then it doesn't happen. 

Working moms, an ambitious and balanced holiday season is one where there is both work and there's play, where there is both productivity and there is rest. 

But it's likely not going to happen if you don't schedule it in right now, where you don't decide ahead of time, because there will always be one more thing to do, there will always be something that you can check off your list these holidays. 

And so by scheduling in your rest time, you are committing that time to fun and adventure and belly laughter, which is much more in alignment with the vision you have of the holiday season. 

All right, working moms. That concludes our six part miniseries, where we have covered six mistakes that working moms make that cause unnecessary stress and overwhelm during the holiday season. 

If you found this series helpful, would you mind taking two minutes to rate and review this podcast? 

This is still the number one way that you can help get this resource into the hands of other ambitious working moms just like yourself. 

Thank you for being a part of this community. 

I believe in you, and I know that you can have exactly the holiday experience you want this year. Until next week. Let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson