How to Radically Change Your Holidays

[Intro] Hello, welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I'm an intuitive mentor and I help people pleasers to find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind. But say you're not a people pleaser and you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen? Then I'm here to help. 

In this space, you're going to find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience. We'll talk all things inner wellness. And because I'm a mom, we'll throw in some knock-knock jokes. Just kidding. We'll talk mom hacks and parenting sometimes. 

Whether it's your first time here or you listen week after week, I am wanting you to know, as I'm always wanting you to know, that your life is so significant. You are so valuable.

And I, for one, am happy that you are alive. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. And would you do me a favor? Would you go ahead and subscribe to my podcast? Give me a good rating and write a written review? Any of those three things would help me so very much and I would appreciate it.

Enjoy the episode. 

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Hello, friends. It's so good to be back with you.

And today I want to talk about holidays and how you can radically change your holidays. We all experience those emotions externally and internally. There are challenges around holidays.

There are interactions with family members or friends, some that we don't see that often and we wish we didn't see at all. And then there are those moments that are beautiful and full of bliss. They're euphoric.

And we think on those and we know why some of us love the holidays. But there's not only the upside to holidays. There's the stress and the downsides.

So I want to open up conversation and help you to be able to feel like you can go through this holiday season that's approaching in a lighter way. I want to create ease for you. And I'm going to give you some practical ways that you can start to lighten the load around your holidays.

I want to begin by making it clear that you will have to make a choice to unlearn familiar patterns and to change mindsets in order to radically change yourself and your life. Across the board, everything that I talk about, interwoven into that is always going to be us needing to unlearn familiar patterns that may be toxic and changing mindsets in order to open ourselves up to what all is available. 

There's so much more than we've been currently experiencing. That's the beauty of it. There's always more. So one of the things I'd like you to think about is this.

How did your parents or caregivers live out life around the holidays? Did they perhaps enjoy the celebrations and the preparations? Or were they stressed, overwhelmed? Maybe you're like me, and you have holidays that you can remember where there was outright trauma. 

There was arguments or fistfights, yelling, and so much tension and stress that you just felt the anxiety around the holiday. Now, I don't wish that on you, but I know that I'm not the only one who's experienced that.

I also know that as a parent, I want to create holidays for my children that don't carry the same trauma that I experienced when I was a child. But how do I do that? It's through unlearning familiar patterns and changing the mindsets that the beliefs that I've carried because of my own experiences. We all carry beliefs around our own experiences.

We look at life with a set of lenses that's been given to us through our childhood experiences. So it's natural that you're going to absorb the beliefs of your parents and your caregivers. Start to think through and determine what some of those beliefs are.

And when I say beliefs, I really mean the reason why you do the things you do. And in this instance, surrounding your holiday celebrations, you may want to think through these following questions. Are you concerned with what others think of you? Do you wonder how they perceive you? If you are, what are the perceived ideas you have? Because that is going to determine in any given situation why you either say yes or why you say no.

With holidays comes the enormous to-do list, the set of expectations, the events that are happening, and there are many things you either have to say yes or no to. You're going to help yourself out by looking deeper within to determine why you say yes or no to what is presented to you. And for each one of you, there could be a variation of reasons.

So you're going to know yourself best and you're going to actually learn who you are more through this process. But be aware of what your subconscious thoughts and beliefs are so that you allow them to surface. And that's going to help you understand yourself better.

So as we bring what is subconscious to a conscious level, we then empower ourselves. We can start to look at things differently. We can analyze things.

We can come to understand more. But only you can do the inner work for yourself. As you know, I am here to help you and be a support.

So if you're coming to a block when you start to think and you're not sure why, then I'd encourage you to set up a coaching session where we can discuss it. And we will together discover answers. The answers are within you.

And sometimes it's just needing a safe place and needing someone to ask you those good questions to help you pull out what is already within you. 

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I'm going to encourage you to start listing what are the holidays you celebrate in the course of a year. Around those holidays, what are your responsibilities? Now you can just focus on the holidays that are approaching right now. 

But when you think about the responsibilities you have around any certain holiday, why do you do those things? Would you like to keep doing all the same things? And when I ask that, I'm wondering do those things you're doing feel light and easy? Or are they something that creates stress and overwhelms you? 

If you really do want to stop doing any one of those things, is there hesitation? If yes, then why? Look deeper into why is the hesitation there. Now if you want to keep doing all that you're already doing, my next question is, is that best not just for you but also for the people closest to you? Because when we are stressed or even when we are very occupied, it means that those closest to us feel the effect of it.

Now sometimes it's necessary and it's okay for other people to get less of us because we are very preoccupied with what we have to do in that moment. Other times we need to slow down our pace, change our perspective, so that everyone around us is able to have more of us than they've been having. You're going to know within yourself.

If you already have a tendency to be too much for everyone else and not enough for yourself, then I'm going to always encourage you, no, no, put yourself first, start thinking about what you need and then meet the needs of the others near you. But if your tendency is to usually focus on yourself, what you want, and disregard the others around you, then I'm going to ask you to start looking at the other people that are closest to you, asking them what they need. How could you be more of a help to them? Life is to be done together with supports, companionship, connection.

In no way should you have to do life only on your own or where everybody else feels like you don't even need them, you don't want them around. So there's a way to interact with people throughout life and in your holidays where you can create connection and depth and you can actually create a feeling within your relationships that are warm and full of love. As I describe this, I am not saying the perfect relationships.

Relationships will always be messy, they will be complicated, but you can have beauty and connection, depth and intimacy within those relationships, even in the midst of the messiness and the confusion and the misunderstanding that will be a part of relationships. So basically, go through those questions, re-listen to this episode, and start to list. Grab your journal, do some of that inner work so you can figure out why you walk through holidays the way you do and how you can start to develop a new mindset and way of living that's actually creating lightness and ease for you.

That's my hope, that you're going to start to enjoy your holidays more because you're doing some of this inner work. As you know, I am right here, I am rooting for you, and I'm ready to support you. So please reach out if I can be a further help.

And until next week, wishing you the very best. 

[Ending] Here we are, we've made it to the end. What'd you think about what you heard today? Is there something you heard that you know you need to take action on? I'm one of those people who loves to not just sit and hear something, but to sit and hear and then go ahead and start implementing, taking action on what I hear, what was stirred up in me.

And I encourage you to do the same. If you enjoyed today's episode, or perhaps you heard an episode in the past that really stuck with you, would you go ahead and share that with some of your friends and your family? It would mean so much to me. And also, if you want to connect with me, remember you can always find me throughout the week on Instagram.

I'm @corinne_changeradically⁠. Or you can email me anytime, corinne@changeradically.com. I'd love to be in touch. And if there's any way that I can help you, please seek me out.

Until we speak again next week, I hope that you will remember in the moments that are loud and busy, and in the moments that are quiet and still, that who you are is super important. You are valuable. And I am so glad that you're alive.