Episode 13: Holiday Planning Starts Now: Avoid Burnout and Enjoy the Season
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
If you want a more relaxed, enjoyable holiday season, it's time to start planning now. I'm excited to bring back my Stress Less This Holiday workshop on November 7, 2024. Regardless of what you celebrate, there are so many activities, events, and things to do those last two months of the year. If you set aside 90 minutes now to think through your calendar, your tasks, and your decisions, you'll save yourself hours of time, energy, and stress later on.
I want you to not only have a plan and a list, but to also know what your priorities are for this season. What's important to you? What memories do you want to make? How do you want to feel? You can have the best plan and the most beautiful calendar, but if you don't know why you're doing any of it, you'll end up feeling dissatisfied and exhausted. I want you to end the year feeling at peace and like you still have the energy to reflect on this beautiful life you're creating!
Get your ticket today at www.themothernurture.com/holidays.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
00:10 Reflecting on the final quarter of the year
02:18 Common seasonal stressors
03:50 Introducing the Stress Less This Holiday Workshop
04:55 Workshop details
07:54 The step so many of us skip when planning
09:37 The importance of deciding in advance
12:15 The benefits of planning in community
16:15 What I wish for your end-of-the-year
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
Get your ticket for Stress Less This Holiday workshop
Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
Sign up to receive Katelyn's Working Mom Wednesday emails
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I have a super exciting announcement today, and I can't wait to share what that is in just a couple of minutes. But first, can you believe it's the second week of October?
We are in the final quarter of the year. I can't help but think of the year in quarters was ingrained in me from Way back in the day when I worked, at a marketing agency and we supported a consumer packaged goods company where everything was an acronym. JFM, AMJ, JAS, OND. That was how they referred to all of the quarters.
So we have entered OND, October, November, December. What is coming up for you right now? I can tell you what's coming up for me. . I have noticed in the last week, something happened when I turned the calendar page from September to October, when I saw the Halloween countdown on our little display board at home, that there's this little bit of anxiety that's starting to creep in. I have this urge to start planning and making decisions and getting ahead.
It feels like I am sitting at the top of a really big roller coaster, right at the tip top of that hill, just before you go over the edge and swoosh down to the bottom at top speed. Right as the ride really gets rocking and rolling. That's where I feel like I'm sitting right now.
Yeah. It's been coming up also in coaching sessions lately. just last week I had two separate sessions where clients wanted to start to think ahead and to create some of those lists and break down their projects to see what they actually have time for between now and the end of the year, knowing everything else that's coming.
Because here's what I know from experience. Pretty soon, not to scare you, but pretty soon, your calendar will start to fill up. If it hasn't already, pretty soon, you will be in the thick of
planning menus and family get togethers, trying to make sure that the season is fun and magical, that everyone's having a good time, that everyone is where they are supposed to be, that you didn't forget things for all of the different school activities and celebrations, that everyone stays healthy, and that you're doing enough.
It will be Or could be a mad dash from one celebration to the next while you just try to stay one step ahead. And I don't know about you, but I have had my fair share of seasons like that. And you get to the end and are just so relieved that it's over. You're tired, exhausted. You're done with the to do list.
You are wiped out. There was so much to do that you missed so many moments of just being present, of just being in the moment with whatever was happening. And I remember looking back on those seasons thinking, well, what was it all for? If I couldn't enjoy it, if I didn't enjoy it.
So this brings me to my exciting announcement, and that is that I am bringing back the Stress Less This Holiday workshop. If any of you have joined me in the past, I've run this now for maybe four years, and it is a game changer.
Especially for parents, especially for working moms, as we head into this last quarter, these final couple of months at the end of the year. So I want you to mark your calendar now. It's happening Thursday, November 7th from 12 to 1 30 PM Eastern. That's what nine to 10 30 AM Pacific. And you can get your ticket right now at themothernurture.
com forward slash. holidays. And I'll have the link to this in the show notes. You'll be hearing much more about it, but I wanted to get it on your calendar now because like we just said, it's already starting to fill up. So hold that time.
Stress less this holiday is A 90 minute training that will give you the dedicated time that you need to look holistically at everything that's coming up. It's called stress less this holiday, but we take anything and everything into account that happens in these final couple of months. If you have family birthdays, if you have, of course, holidays, but other traditions, school breaks, the fall and the end of the year, it seems like there is no week where the kids are actually in school five days a week.
Potentially, you have some sort of teacher appreciation or gifts in that regard that you want to get. Anniversaries. Anything that happens between the date of the workshop and the end of the year, we are putting it on the calendar and making a plan.
It's a time for you to think about and understand what needs to be done. What decisions do you need to make? And then create a plan for how it's going to fit.
I think of it as 90 minutes that you set aside now to save yourself hours of time, energy, and stress throughout the rest of the year. You'll walk away with a plan so that you feel prepared. I'm not going to be able to take things off of your plate, though I can certainly and will challenge you to do that where it makes sense.
The lists are full. This time of year is full. But when you have a plan, you feel prepared, you go into the season with your eyes wide open, you set your priorities so that you know what is worth taking on and what is not. And that preparation allows you to relax. From that point on, you just have to work your plan instead of always worrying that you're forgetting something or wondering if you're doing enough.
You're going to make all of those decisions in advance so you don't have to wonder.
When I first started running this workshop, I created it out of a need that I had. It was so hard for me to set aside the time and follow through on the time that I set aside to actually think about the season, to make those decisions in advance. And so I created the workshop to give myself some external accountability.
And I know there are so many of you who will join because you need that as well. But I also realized that there was one critical step that I was skipping and that I've seen so many clients and so many women skip as well. I skipped it because. Time feels short and you tell yourself, Oh, I don't have the time to pause, to look at the big picture, to really consider what I want out of this season.
But when you go into a season, especially one as busy as the end of the year, with an intention, with an idea of what it is that you want to experience, how you want the season to feel, what's actually important to you. When you don't do that. You will fall back on your defaults. You'll fall back on old patterns and habits.
You'll do what you've always done just because it's what you've always done. You'll say yes because you don't have a better idea of what you could or should be doing with that time instead. And you'll have loose, if any, boundaries because you haven't decided in advance what those boundaries are. You could have the best to do list.
The most organized to do list with all of its categories, you could have the most beautiful color coordinated schedule. But if you don't know what you want out of the season, how you want to feel throughout, you'll likely end up dissatisfied and exhausted. It's not much different from creating a daily plan or to do list.
You have to set the finish line for yourself. You have to know what enough is. You have to know what you're working towards so that when you cross it off, when you complete your plan for the day, you know it and you feel it, it's enough. You did what you set out to do. Well, the same is true for this season.
What is it that you want? Then the planning piece, the lists, and we will create lots of lists. We will think about, again, meals and family gatherings and gifts and things that you need to decide, things that you need to research, or maybe have a conversation with a partner or other family members about.
You will have so many lists. But then the planning piece, the execution of the lists, simply becomes about honoring the intention that you set.
You will be creating moments, sinking into being present for moments that you decided were important to you while making sure that gifts get purchased and you have child care for that school break and you purchase enough pumpkin to be able to bake that pie or whatever else is on your list. In Stress Less This Holiday, the workshop, I teach you and guide you through both.
Both setting your intention, your priorities for the season, and creating your plan.
You will walk away knowing what you're creating in terms of the intention, but you'll also make some decisions about what fits. You'll create a list of your action items to take care of between now and the end of the year, and a map of your calendar so you know what goes where. When do you need to start some of these things?
Do you actually have time to do all of the things that you think you have time to do? It's where the rubber meets the road. And you can do all of that in advance so that you can course correct now, as opposed to in the moment when it feels like you can't change course. And so instead you just power through or push through taking on too much, doing too much and getting to the end of the season being completely wiped out.
I promise you this 90 minutes feels, I can't even describe it, but it feels so good. It always does. I've had women join me year after year because it's so helpful to have this dedicated time to plan. Like I said, this is hard to do. We've got so much on our plates. Our calendars are so full as it is. This will be the first thing that gets bumped.
But signing up for this workshop is your external accountability. You will have some skin in the game to actually show up, set aside this time, and use it for the exact purpose of creating your plan for the season. Plus, it's so much more fun to do it in community. To be in a Zoom room full of other working moms who are creating their own lists and thinking about their own end of the year and what they want out of this season.
The ideas that I walk away with each year, just from the chat that is buzzing, with all sorts of comments and questions and encouragement throughout, it's gold. In fact, last year, I, and I'll probably do it again this year, I turned the chat into a PDF and shared that as well afterwards because so many of the participants were asking for the chat because there was so much in there that they wanted to go back and read and learn from the other women who were there at the workshop.
You can ask questions, brainstorm, hear how other people make their decisions.
In fact, the chat is where I learned! Years ago that target does a sale every year on gift cards at the start of the holiday season. Did you know that? I didn't know that at the time. Maybe you already know that, but we put those dates on our calendar as well, that and so many other things so that. When the sale pops up, I think it's usually early December, at least here in the States, you've got your list already made.
You know which teachers or which family member or which gift exchange you need a Target gift card for. You make your list, you know your amounts, and then all you have to do is go and purchase them at a discount. How good does that feel? You can create your lists ahead of time to take advantage of sales or anything else just to prep yourself bit by bit to make it easier.
Another big piece of this is thinking about sharing this load. When you are feeling behind and you're in the moment just trying to stay a step ahead, if that, it's so much faster and easier to just do it yourself. I mean, we've all said it. I know you've said it.
I've said it, thought it. It'll just be faster. I'll just do it. And that's because when you're in the moment, that's, that feels true. It is faster. It is easier. But if you think ahead of time, if you plan in advance, you can get support. You can ask for help. And we have some really creative ways to think about what does delegation look like?
I recently completed This could be a whole other episode, but I'll just toss it or slide it in here quickly here. I recently completed the Fair Play Facilitator Certification Training. So I am now a certified Fair Play Facilitator. And if you don't know about Fair Play, I'll put links to the book and the cards and the philosophy in the show notes.
But it was a book written originally by Eve Rodsky and is now A program or an idea of how to make the invisible work of running a household, the mental load, how to make that visible and how to facilitate and start conversations to share that load more equitably in our homes. So that is a big piece of this workshop as well.
Thinking through, thinking in advance, what can you share? It doesn't have to be all on you. There are creative ways to make things easier, even if you don't have someone to share the load with. I could go on and on, but I think you can hear my excitement for this workshop. I absolutely love it. And I would love to have you join me, join us, join this group of working moms who are going to be setting aside 90 minutes on Thursday, November 7th, to come together, to think about, to share in a community and create our plans for those last couple of months of the year so that we can enjoy the season.
I know this time of year comes with, lots of emotions, and it means and feels different to everyone, but the reality is there is a lot to be done. There is a lot to be done this time of year, and at the very least, I want you to get to the end of the year and not feel so depleted. I want you to have some reserves left in your tank.
I want you to feel at peace and have the energy to reflect on what an amazing year you just had, what an amazing life you are creating, and you'll have the capacity to do that. When you think through your plan, simplify what you're doing and make sure that it honors your priorities for this season.
All right. I'll say the link again, jump right over there, grab your ticket. Now put a hold on your calendar, Thursday, November 7th, 12 to one 30. Get your ticket at the mother nurture. com forward slash holidays. And I can't wait to see you there. All right. Take care and talk soon.
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