Less Stress for the Holidays

And it’s always been like this, and this is how everyone else does it. So I should probably do it that way.  And instead, I want you to know that you really do get to choose how you live the holiday season and there’s. You know, big themes. There’s like, Black Friday, you don’t have to participate in that at all. 

There’s Thanksgiving. You can make all the things, all the things, and you can have a very simple Thanksgiving that looks like a very simple dinner. You can go out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving. If you want, you can have totally non traditional food. You can host people or not host people. So many things.  You can dress up or be casual.  You can run a 5k race, watch football or not do those things, right. 

You just really get to choose. So then there’s participating in all the things. Are you going to make gingerbread houses? Are you going to. Read about the O antiphons this year. Aren’t you going to do the Jesse tree? Oh my goodness. Are well-intentioned Jesse tree goals. You guys, we just want so badly to do it.  Are you going to remember to order the advent candles early enough? 

Right. There’s just so much. And I just think, honestly, it gets a little worse every year. Like, I just think it’s worse than it was 10 years ago. Certainly sales and the timing of when we’re talking about things in the stores is so much earlier, it feels like there’s so much more noise and pressure. 

And then.  I think with social media, there’s just more and more cool things to do. I mean, the things do seem cool, but it just feels overwhelming to decide what we’re going to do. So.  I am just the queen.  Of pushing all of that out. Away from my family.  And like creating this protective bubble. Around my mind and my heart. And my home.  

Where I just say culture. You do not get my family. You do not get me. You do not get my family.  You will not steal my peace.  

I refuse to be stressed out during November and December, particularly December. I just really love having a quiet advent. And I just want you to know that that’s really possible, but it requires a little bit of planning on the front end.  And managing your mind. And that’s what we’re going to talk about.  Today, because I want to show you some of the real life, mind drama that comes from real moms.  And the coaching that I gave them so that you can see how we think about a situation, really changes how we experience it.  So.  Bless this mom, I love that she was brave enough to bring this to coaching. 

She said, I want to buy a sparkly dress for Christmas.  It was so cute. I was like, what a sparkly dress? Why is this a problem? She said, I always buy a boring dress.  I always buy address it’s on sale or that’s practical or that’s good for nursing. And I want to buy a sparkling dress for Christmas, but I just, I feel terrible about it.  And so that’s what we ended up coaching on is.  Just buying some amount of things that make us happy and I’m not talking about reckless spending.  But moms. We sometimes get really in our heads about buying practical things. 

And then another thing we talked about. Was how confusing it is to buy like cheap Carter’s jammies versus. Hanna Andersson jammies that might last for a really long time and be passed down.  Buying, you know, prints that might be trendy right now, but might not be trending in three years just being good stewards of the money that we spend, but because we want to steward the money. 

Well, we end up being crazy ladies.  So these two things were kind of mixed. She was talking about the dress that she want to buy for herself, but then also this idea about.  

Any of the things that we purchase, jammies toys, all the things around Christmas. And it was, it was so sweet because.  She said, you know what, honestly, I just think all the other moms.  Are really calm when they do their online shopping. And I laughed. I said, for sure know, for sure the moms are not calm. When they’re doing online shopping because the environment is so crazy now, and it’s designed to really mess with your mind.  With the things like free shipping or points. And then you’re trying to, to buy things you weren’t even planning on buying to get the free shipping, to save money, to be a good steward of things. 

But now we have extra things. It’s maddening you guys.So the first thing to do for yourself, and I at least do this in coaching is to just slow everything down. And so we just slowed down the sparkly dress. I said, can you afford. $150 sparkly dress. She said yes. Is that okay.  Do you want it? She said, yes.  I said, do you think that it’s imprudent, it will hurt your family? She said, no.  So I said, listen, there’s a little girl inside of you.  Who wants to wear a sparkly dress and twirl around.  

And she had talked about how she used to really enjoy.  Things like sparkly dresses before she had kids, but then she ended up being so practical in her clothing choices after having kids, but that no one really made her do that.  She kind of did that to herself.  Now there are some times where we want a dress. 

That’s good for nursing. And that’s an important practical decision. To make, but. I think we end up being a little. Bit of a fuddy-duddy about all of our clothes and everything that we buy for ourselves.  And mom’s really.  Put themselves last or don’t buy themselves anything or don’t buy what they really want. 

They’re like, yeah, that’s fine. That bathrobe is fine. And so don’t be afraid. To one things to express what you want. And, you know, I’m a big fan of buying what I want or sending very specific links to my husband and saying, this is what I want. This is the size. This is the color.  And not putting pressure on the people around me to guess, or no.  

Now my dad. Does not play that game. He wants to guess he wants to just pick a gift and send it to you.  And so I don’t get to tell him what to do and that’s fine.  I get to think whatever I want about that too. So when it comes to.  Clothing presence.  So much of the holiday stresses around that, but I want you to tell yourself one, you are existing in a crazy buying environment.  Like, if you really think about.  Your mom might have gone to the mall where she could go in and just pick a couple things from.  Some specialty stores. Maybe went to toys, R us came home. 

That was it. She didn’t see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of options of things like we do on Amazon now. And then her mom.  Had Sears. Right. Your mom went to Sears in the kid section was like, do you want a wooden rocking horse or a Dolly?  Like that was, there were so. So many fewer choices back then.  And so if you feel crazy, I want you to know. Yeah, it’s a crazy. Buying environment.  

And so you can navigate it however you want. You can create strategies. You can play the game. You could just buck everything and be like, I’m not doing any of that.  You get to choose, but just start from the place of the buying environment is crazy.  

And then.  We do live in a fast fashion world. Where the clothes and the toys, a lot of them are very cheap and we know they won’t even last six months and I feel. Terribly about that.  I hate that. I feel terribly about that, but it also doesn’t mean. That I suddenly have $150 to buy hand painted, you know? Heirloom wooden toys. So we do have to find a balance, knowing that we live in this kind of crazy environment.  

So as I was doing coaching.  And holding this mom’s heart. Should I watched her stress just kind of melt away.  And I never tell people what to do. I just lead them to what they want to do and help them feel so calm and peaceful about it. And we always bring in the Lord.  We’re praying and discerning what he wants us to do, but.  Usually the thing that the Lord wants us to do is the thing that brings us the most peace. And sometimes girl, he wants you to go buy a sparkly dress for Christmas.  

Right. Sometimes we put God in this box where we think he’s just very serious all the time.  But he’s a father and just like we delight. In buying Christmas gifts for our kids. He delights. And doing wonderful things for us.  

So I want you to ask yourself, what do you want? What do you want?  Spend a little time thinking about that. I love books and puzzles and T. I actually don’t like sparkly dresses. I am not team sparkly dress. Um, I don’t, I they’re kind of like scratchy uncomfortable to me. I have kind of some sensory preferences about dresses. So I would not like that. And that’s totally fine. But this holiday season, I want you just to really slow things down. And ask yourself, what do you want?  And then just decide what you’re going to buy. It’s a crazy buying environment, but stay calm as you go through it.  

Just stay calm. You can buy the cheap Carter’s jammies. You can buy the expensive Hanna Andersson jammies. We did not buy jammies. One or two years in a row.  I really, I sat the kids down. I prep them cause I normally do get jammies. And I said, listen, you guys all have so many jammies. You don’t, nobody needs any more jammies. We’re not doing that this year.  And we just didn’t do it.  Just because you’ve done something even for the last five years doesn’t mean.  That you need to do it this year.  

So.  Take a deep breath.  And know that.  You get to choose. We’re going to talk more about choosing throughout this episode.  Okay. The next one that I coached, um,  She was older. I think her children were grown, maybe one high schooler at home. A couple of college kids and her husband really wanted her to host. Thanksgiving and Christmas too, but we were coaching around Thanksgiving time.  And.  I don’t know if it was her parents or the in-laws or both, but a lot of people.  Maybe even sister or aunt, it seemed like a lot of people showed up to her house. I  complained a lot. 

Didn’t help.  And didn’t respect some of the things that she said, like she would say, Hey, can you please not come until Wednesday? And they would just come on Monday or Tuesday anyway.  And then they would complain. From the couch, but no one would help her. And I think someone brought their dog. It was just a lot.  And then she was saying, I’m so busy doing all these things, cleaning, cooking, hosting all these people. 

I don’t even get to hang out with my kids who are home for the holiday. And she was actually feeling. A lot of guilt and shame, even bringing this to coaching, right. She just felt so bad. Like she was complaining about the situation. And so in coaching, when I’m coaching someone, the first thing I do is kind of validate what they’re going through. Like, yeah, that seems really hard to have a bunch of people come over. And not help you. But be really judgy about how you’re doing everything.  And then it’d be so busy cooking and cleaning that you don’t even get to hang out with your own kids.  

That seems really hard.  I would be frustrated about that too. So often we don’t want to allow ourselves to have any feelings about things, especially negative ones. Because we’re scared of negative feelings or we feel bad about that. But the truth is resisting. Those feelings always makes them bigger. So then it spirals into bitterness and resentment. And that causes way more problems than just acknowledging, huh? 

I feel kind of.  Unappreciated and taken advantage of here. So she calmed down. I also said you seem like an amazing person. I think it’s amazing that you love everyone. She actually, I think had a really good relationship with her husband and this made him so happy.  And she was just. Doing it for him really?  And I said, that’s such a beautiful gift. Such a beautiful gift that your husband wants this all, all these people to come over.  And you are willing to do that for him. I think he helped her to, he didn’t say you have to host Thanksgiving and then complaint. He wasn’t one of the couch. Complainer’s.  

And so we want to see. The goodness in the situation, we can always find something beautiful. Even in something difficult. And so then she was calm.  And I said, okay.  You get to do whatever you want to do here. Let’s just brainstorm some things.  So we talked about setting boundaries.  And a boundary might be, Hey, you can come early, but you’re going to find that the door is locked and we’re not going to let you in.  And that sounds pretty extreme, but. That is a boundary that you could set.  You could say you guys are totally welcome to come. Um, but we’re not going to make dinner. 

You can order a pizza. You can have it at our house for sure.  We have some paper plates.  Guys are welcome to do that. I’m not going to be cooking though. On Tuesday. Because when we don’t feel bad,  Like it makes us a bad person to not want to host people in our homes. Then we can say things with so much love.  Like it can be so loving to say I’m definitely not cooking dinner on Tuesday.  I love you guys. You’re welcome to come, but I’m not cooking dinner.  

And that is the opposite of bitterness and resentment is when we really just sit. In love for them, for ourselves. And tell the truth. And then we talked about continuing to do all the things, all the things. But to give it as a gift that is given freely. Maybe you still want to host everyone and let them come early and let them bring their dog. Right.  But give it freely. Just know that no one. Is making you do that.  

You want to do it in this example? She, I think she, she liked parts of it. And then she really loved. Giving this gift to her husband.  But to say, no, one’s making me do this. I give it completely of my own free. Will I give it freely? And it really changes the experience.  And I find that sometimes if we just make small tweaks, like, Hey, we’re doing pizza on Tuesday. 

I’m not cooking. And.  Giving the gift freely. All of a sudden we have so much more fun. Because we’re not stewing in the kitchen, you know, like, Cutting up the onions for tacos thinking. Oh no, one’s helping me. And then feeling bad that you feel bad. So just decide. Side what you want to do and, and give it freely. Then I coach a different mom and. Her family. I can’t remember if it was her.  Immediate family.  Or if it was her immediate family and also her extended family and her older kids basically. They. Ended up doing.  Friends things on Christmas Eve. So they went and did things with their friends.  And maybe they were family, friends, like maybe even her immediate family went to a different person’s house. And so it was like family, friends.  But whatever it was in her mind, she really wanted her family to be at their house, doing Christmas Eve together as a unit. And instead.  They were somewhere else with friends.  

And. She said, I just feel so bad about this. I feel like other people have been picked over me. And I said, yeah, Of course, it feels like that. There’s a part of us that has this, like. I don’t want to be voted off of the island and stranded alone, and then I’m going to die feeling. Thank you. Reality television for now helping us have extra fears about being voted off and no one liking us. Right.  But there’s a very hard wired desire in us to fit in and to be loved and to be chosen.  Because it makes us feel safe.  

And so whether your kids want to hang out with their friends or whether, you know, let’s say you’re your own parents.  Can come visit you I’ll just use our states. Like let’s say my husband’s parents could come visit us here in Idaho. Or they could go visit his sister in Wisconsin.  And they choose the sister. I could just have so many thoughts about that. They have never done that by the way, but I could have so many thoughts about, they love her more. She’s more fun.  

The truth is they just live closer to her and we live very far away from them.  But let’s say you didn’t, let’s say you were equal distant. It was four hours to sister’s house, four hours to your house. Parents decide to go to your sister’s house. Just sit with whatever. Feelings come up around that. Do you feel.  Disappointed. Do you feel not chosen?  

Just sit with those feelings first. Cause again, when we resist our feelings, they end up getting a lot bigger. But then when you can calm down and find real love for everyone in the story. Look for the goodness. Right? So. With this other woman, I want to say, how amazing is it that you have friends that are such good friends, that they want to hang out with you on Christmas Eve? That sounds pretty dreamy to me, even if I wanted to be home.  The level of friendship that you have to have with another family to spend Christmas Eve with them. It’s so high. That’s amazing. 

And if your parents are going to go spend Christmas with your sister and you’re feeling a little bit slighted about that.  I want you just to look for evidence that they love you so much. There’s probably a good reason that they’re choosing that. And maybe they spent last Christmas with you. It’s really just.  Very equitable, but maybe it’s not, and maybe they have a larger house and a guest room, and it’s just easier for them to stay there. And you can think. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. And that doesn’t mean that they don’t want me or they don’t love me.  

Look for the goodness. And then just remind yourself, oh, our brains are wired to fit in. That’s why this feels like such a big deal. But I’m so safe right now. I am not being kicked out of the club. It is not a problem. And you could be really proud of them for knowing what they want and making decisions.  For themselves and not being people pleasers.  I’m really proud of people who do that. I mean, I would prefer that people do that with charity. And being kind about it, but.  I’m proud of people. Telling the truth and saying what they want. I want to be one of those people. So.  Just know that. Relationship jockeying, where there’s kind of who gets chosen. And, you know, sister is preferred to me or everyone loves her house more for hosting. So they never come here or. We just had a baby and  everyone’s expecting us to travel really far, even though that’s not really reasonable. 

Just all these thoughts about people in relationships. Just validate the feelings first, sit with your feelings first. Feel your feelings. So they don’t get bigger. And then drop into love for yourself and for them, I promise you can find it. And then you get to choose. You get to choose. What you do, you get to choose where you spend your time.  Are we going to a friend’s house for Christmas Eve?  So we get to choose.  What we eat, how we spend our time, but we also get to choose how we think about things. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be sitting around in my living room. Just chewing on thoughts about other people.  I want to read a book or do a puzzle or hang out with my kids.  Or I want to call my mom.  

You know, it’s so interesting that sometimes. We feel rejected and unloved. And so we don’t even think about contacting the people we do really enjoy and love who are also probably lonely. Because we’re just so consumed with our thoughts about ourselves.  So you get to choose every holiday episode I’ve done. It’s just basically one giant theme about you get to choose. And then another thing I want to say is let people be wrong about you.  Let people be wrong about you. They may think that you are so uppity or so particular or so fussy.  

Let’s go back to, maybe you just had a baby. And you don’t want to drive very far with a new baby. And they’re like, Ugh, can’t believe she’s not. Bucking up and coming to Thanksgiving.  And they have thoughts about you and they’re judging you and they’re wrong.  Let them be wrong. Let people.  Be wrong about you. everyone is going to meet.  Jesus at the end and we will be held accountable for how we lived.  

And I think we will be held accountable for our. Just massive amounts of stress and our lack of peace. And not wanting people to have the wrong idea about us. Can.  Work us up into such a frenzy.  Like, I really need them to understand what I mean.  I don’t want them to have the wrong idea about me. You know that like gripping, desperate feeling, let them be wrong about you.  Okay. God knows the truth.  He knows your heart.  He knows your intentions. It’s okay. 

If people are wrong about you. And then a lot of times for the holidays, I will tell you, you just need to be brave for two minutes. You just need to be brave for two minutes saying, no, we’re not coming. You guys can come over, but we’ll do pizza for dinner.  We’re not hosting this year. Being brave. Takes about two minutes to send an email, a text message, or have a conversation with someone that says, Hey, we’re just, we’re not doing that. And then it buys you so much peace for the rest of the season or the event or the, you know, Weeks leading up to Christmas.  And that’s what I tell myself. I’m like Sterling, you can do this. You can be brave for two minutes.  Aye.  Have this deep. The Pope for all of you. That you experienced more peace. That you push out the culture. You do not let it take you. You do not let it take your family.  

And you have a peaceful November and December. Our lives are short. We are going to die. We are going to be held accountable for how we lived. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have.  Three hours or three days of emotional drama about Carter’s jammies versus Hannah Anderson jammies, which I totally as a mom, I totally get it. So, I’m not saying it’s not a real thing, but you could also just decide in five minutes. Just decide it is not a salvation issue.  

So.  If you would like to decide. All the holiday things with me.  I want you to come join us for less stress for the holidays.  We do this every year.  I made this amazing, very short by the way workbook, where we just make all the decisions.  And we write ourselves some pep talks about the hard things we might encounter.  We do things like.  Order advent candles early and decide if we’re going to do Christmas jammies or not.  

And we just, we decide from this place of peace and love.  And it makes the holidays so much less stressful. And then I will coach you. I will coach you on whatever your specific thing is.  And we have hundreds and hundreds of people who will come join us for less stressful the holidays and maybe. Five or six people will get coached.  A week.  But the five or six people will get coached on something. That you will relate to.  So, I don’t want you to think that.  You have to come and raise your hand and come on a zoom call and talk about your family. Some of them will be willing to do that. 

And then you.  We’ll hear the same coaching that I give them.  And you can. Look through the calls that we’ve done for past years, too. It is.  Such a powerful program.  It is totally worth it. I know it seems really cliche to say this is such an important present to buy yourself, but I really, really think so. You do not want to be a crazy mom over the holidays.  So the less stress for the holidays program. Is this workbook and some short videos telling you how to do what’s in the workbook so that you can just take a Saturday morning and plan. November and December and knock that out. And then it also includes my.  New advent book that’s coming out. 

So I wrote an advent book and it has, and then I did it as an audio book too.  And it’s so beautiful. Every episode is 15 minutes and it has this beautiful music and I do a prayer and it’s. Pulling from.  The imitation of Christ by Thomas compass. So I pull quotes from there and then I give you a really lovely reflection. So it includes that. And then it also includes, we do a lot of really fun, um, advent and Christmas printables and activities. For your kids, because as soon as the end of December comes, you just need something to do with them. 

So,  It includes that too. So. Come join us.  It’s $59. For less stress for the holidays, which includes the plan at the front end of November. The advent program.  I think, I don’t know, six to eight coaching calls in that time, I’m going to hold your hearts.  

Prayers. I do daily prayers. It’s just.  It’s a bundle of peace is what it is. It’s a bundle of don’t let the culture come get us. Do this instead.  So, if you want to check that out, Go to Catholic mom, calm.com. Slash less stress, but I’ll also put it in the show notes and. I just want you to know that you have so much more control over how your life feels. Then you think you do.  

It just feels like life is happening to us and it really isn’t. We get to decide.  And again, we can do all the things, all the things, but give it as a totally freely given gift, which feels amazing. Or we can say no.  Right. You get to choose.  

And that I think is the holy version of control that we’re looking for.  It’s just controlling how we show up and what we think about things. And it is a beautiful thing when you learn how to do that. And I receive messages every year from people who say this was the best holiday season I’ve ever had. Like they’re shocked that they actually had fun and it wasn’t as stressful.  And part of that is front-loading the planning, but then the other part is managing your mind as things happen. So I would love for you to come join me for less stress for the holidays. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. 

Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.

My friends, I am praying for you! Please pray for me, and have a blessed day