How do I get rid of holiday stress?

[Intro] Hello and welcome to Empowered to Thrive. I am your host, Corinne Powell, and it's my pleasure, my delight truly, to be here with you. Thank you for tuning in. You have a lot of options and I feel honored that you are choosing to be here with me and I hope that you feel very welcomed as you sit with me because I take out this time and bring this content to you because you are worth it. You deserve it. You are special. 

Corinne Powell: You deserve to be loved well. You deserve to be taken good care of. And you know, throughout life, we all have experience where we don't receive that. We get the opposite of that. We aren't taken care of well. We aren't loved well. We certainly aren't sent the message that we're special. And in this space, I hope you always get to feel the opposite. 

So with Christmas upon us. And for those of you that don't celebrate Christmas, perhaps you celebrate another something around this time of year, or you can just take what I say and implement it into your get togethers, because I'm going to give you practical tips on what you can do to support yourself during the holidays. But you're going to find these are very useful all year round in just supporting yourself and interacting also with people that are difficult and uncomfortable to be around. Firstly, evaluate your limitations. Some people can do a lot more than others. And I don't mean that you're not capable of doing as much.

Oftentimes, if we have put out a lot in the past and we've been the parentified child taking care of people that we shouldn't have taken care of or we were asked to take care of at too early an age, we've depleted ourselves of a lot. And in turn, that might mean at this present stage of your life, you feel like I'm just not able to do as much as some of the other people I see or I get worn out or I get irritable or frustrated. I feel resentful. 

And that's okay. Really, it's all an indicator of your inner world and your inner world is communicating with you so that you can affect your outer world because your outer world is the manifestation of your inner world. So if you feel that tug to say no to something, listen, because if you agree to it and you dismiss that nudge that said no don't do this you might find you feel more depleted, you feel resentful, you're frustrated, you're exhausted and you don't have what you need for the next thing coming up.

We don't have to think ahead, but basically it's important to recognize that what we do presently is gonna impact the future. So depending on how we want the future experience to be, we need to make a decision now that's wise and supportive to ourselves because the future will thank us. So it might feel disappointing to say no to something today, but then tomorrow you get to say yes to something because of the no you said today. 

So evaluate what limitations are best for you to set. What do you want during this season? Because if you want connection with people, you may need to ensure that you get proper rest. It can be much easier to get triggered when you're tired. Connection is very relational. So if you want to connect with someone else, you want to be able to manage your inner world and feel more regulated. Be able to navigate through your triggers. I can guarantee you a thousand percent getting rest will help that. 

If say, your goal isn't connection, it's to really enjoy all that's offered around this time of year. The parties, the events, the sights to see. Well, in that case, you made it, you might need to say no to certain things that aren't gonna align with that, so that you have the time and the space. You will know for yourself. So take some time to sit and reflect on what is important for me, what feels really aligned. And it doesn't need to be with last year, just this year. It can be different for next year, just this year. We live in seasons. I think even why I carry on seasons within Empower to Thrive is because that's just how I organically do life. And it feels like sometimes one thing ends and another starts. I don't plan it. And so I don't know what season you're in, but I know for myself, I'm in a different season than I was a year ago. So how I navigate this time of year needs to be different.

Knowing what's aligned, knowing what your goals are, your desires for this particular season allows you to know what to say yes to and what to say no to. Of course, you can consider your family members, the people closest to you, whoever lives with you, whoever you're in close relationship with, and that might impact what you say yes and no to. Then also, you're going to be able to place boundaries around your time, around your energy, based off of the desired outcome.

So again, if connection is your goal, I think connection is very important within relationships to know somebody, go deep, to be present both ways for them and them for you - then rest is going to be important. That will help you to set boundaries because there's going to be times you're going to have to say no to something or you're going to need to say, yes, I can do that for this amount of time or until this time or on this date. You're going to play some sort of boundary because you know you're protecting that rest. You're figuring out when you can get it.

Around the holidays, I know me and my family are invited to numerous events. We have the option to just schedule regular get-togethers that we try to make a point of having throughout the year because in keeping up with relationships, spending time together is important. Well, I have to evaluate when I look at the calendar and note that I don't want every weekend to be jam packed. And I don't want every afternoon after school to be jam packed.

So what is that going to mean? Where can I slow down? What do I want to plan and what do want to push off to later on, maybe in January or February? And it's an evaluation regularly. It's not just I figured it out and I know how to go through the whole month or through the whole season. Sometimes you're going to have to pause and just take an inventory. How's this working out for me? Is this going well? How am I doing? How is my family or the people close to me doing? And do I need to make an adjustment?

And I think we should always give ourselves permission for that. And yeah, people will misunderstand. We might feel disappointed about some of the adjustments that need to made, but big picture. It's all funneling down into supporting ourselves. How can we go about supporting ourselves? We've lived so much of our life doing the opposite of that. It's time now to prioritize ourselves. We're always going to prioritize other people. We've already been doing that.

We have to include ourselves in the priority list, and we've been so uncomfortable disappointing people. We’ve got to get comfortable with that, which takes practice. It literally means you're going to have to do the things that you were afraid of will make, will disappoint somebody. Or you might experience it truly does disappoint somebody. But as you go about practicing that and the practice of it is just the repetition of it. It's allowing something to become a new normal. It does get easier. It is less scary and it might take a while. But at some point it gets easier and it's less scary.

So knowing the limitations you need to set, having boundaries in place, honoring yourself through this process, evaluating as you go, knowing what you want from this season, what is aligned, will help you in making your decisions. And then again, with family members, with the people you're gonna have to be around during this holiday season. You get to decide how often you're around them, for how long you're around them. And I understand even that may come across as harsh. Certainly it could feel painful. You might feel like, my gosh, I'm going to disappoint somebody. I'm going to crush them. I don't know if this is the last year we have together. And to all of that, my heart understands. I get that these are very real thoughts. These are very real realities.

And I'm not trying to say don't care about people. Remember, we've cared too much for too long. When you care about everybody else and you forget to take care of yourself, it is important, it is time to bring yourself into the circle, to start caring about yourself as well. Don't put it off another year. Don't say, don't know if they're not going to be here next year. Guys, there's always somebody who may not be here next year. Even the people we think, they've got a long time with us. We don't know what tomorrow brings. We don't know what this afternoon will hold. It sometimes seems like this is the person who might not be with us. But for all we know, they could live much longer and another person who we thought would live a while doesn't.

And so this is the reality. We have to, at some point, so why not today, start to prioritize ourselves, start to bring ourselves into the circle and to include ourselves and to say, you matter, I matter, because you always have. But at some point, you experienced and learned that it seemed like your needs didn't matter not as much as somebody else's, not as much as your parents, not as much as your caregivers. They had more physical demands. They had more emotional needs. So yours were neglected, yours were overlooked. They weren't noticed. And you figured out how to survive and how to make it through. And you're an amazing human. You're resilient. You could keep on doing it that way. 

But is that the point? Is it to figure out how much we can manage or to finally say, you know what, I know I could do it all, but I'm choosing to not do it all because I deserve that. Because I shouldn't have to always figure it out. You shouldn't have to always figure it out. You shouldn't have to always make it through. It is okay to drop the ball. It is okay to say, I'm too tired and to sit down. It is okay to look at other people and say, but they're able to do it. Why can't I? Why do I physically not feel up to it? Your body has carried you through so much. Your body has been so good to you. It deserves a break. It deserves rest. It deserves your loving support and your care. So how can you offer it to yourself? 

I want to highlight a resource that I have available because I'm touching on something. There's a lot more that could be said about this and I've created a course that you - it's a self-paced course, you walk through the audio lessons on your own, they're video lessons, you listen to them, watch them. There's a workbook that comes along with it where you can reflect and journal. I give you questions to consider, to allow you to go deeper. Radically Change Your Holidays is not just about changing your holidays because I'm giving you core points that will help you change your inner world, which will impact, your holidays, but it will impact all of your life. This course is available to you that I'm gonna include the link in the show notes. It is a resource worth purchasing because you have lifetime access. If you listen to these audio lessons before you get into the holidays this year, they're going to impact and help you out this year. 

But if you continue to listen to them, like you re-listen, or you take to heart what you hear the one time and you start to implement things, it's going to impact you throughout this next year and throughout your years to come. It's high time you don't just make it through another season. You deserve to be able to go through this season more supported and you deserve to go through the future with more ease. So I'm going to share with you ways you can minimize all the things you might be doing that you're starting to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or frustrated about. I'm going to help you understand how you can set limitations very practically with family members, with other people in your life. I'm going to get really practical about how can you even spend less around the holidays? We're gonna look at why you've been doing everything you've been doing. Where is it originating? What's at the root? How can we touch the root to impact your life from the root up? Because that's where the lasting effect is when we get to the root of things. 

So take a look, link through the show notes, check out Radically Change Your Holidays. It's worth the money. It's not overly expensive, though that's all relative, you know, that's my opinion of it. But I try to make it something that is a manageable purchase that will also give you lasting change, lasting impact. So I hope you'll check it out. And what is the one thing you've heard today that you can start to implement to positively impact this season you're in. How can you go about supporting yourself just a little bit more? Don't try to change five things at once. What is one thing you can take from what I've been saying that especially hit home for you and start to put it into practice? I hope that this holiday season feels a little bit easier for you.

I understand not everything's gonna change overnight, everything's not going to be incredibly better somehow, but even if it's a little bit better, isn't that worth a lot? Even if it's a little bit easier, it's all worth so much.

[Outro] Life is not meant to be tolerated as I often say, it's meant to be enjoyed. and so much is up to you. The power is in your hands. There's a lot you can do to impact change in your life. And I say that not to weigh you down, but to remind you that you've got this. You are capable of creating change in your life. Sending much love your way and looking forward to chatting again with you next week.