Holiday Tip #2: Make a Plan
I created the Holiday Tips series for ambitious high achieving women trying to juggle everything this holiday season -- closing out the fiscal year at work, coordinating holiday events, hosting, cooking, cleaning, communicating, shopping, wrapping. The mental load is extra heavy this time of year, and I'm hopeful these holiday tips will help make things a little lighter for you.
Connect with me on Instagram @execcoachleanna or LinkedIn to tune into the full series and join us for the Seasonal Support Sessions.
Hi everyone. Coach Leanna, the executive coach for moms here with another holiday tip. So one thing that I know we love as high achieving ambitious moms is we love to feel in control and there is nothing that feels more out of control when it feels like there are tons of things happening to us when we are at the affect of someone else or something else.
And I think around the holiday season especially, it can feel like this because it can feel like there's this event that we have to attend and there's this thing that we have to wrap up at work. There's these tasks and so many different things to do. And so a lot of times we just feel out of control.
One thing that I recommend at the beginning of every holiday season is to get really clear on what are the priorities, especially when it comes to the calendar. So if you look at the calendar [00:01:00] and you put all the options on there, so the concerts for the kids and the Nutcracker and the light display, and
the Polar Express or whatever activities you like to do, put all of them on there and look at, what the calendar would look like, and then get really clear about what's most important. Because there's so many different things that we could be doing and that we would love to do as a family for this magical time of year, but also let's be realistic about what is going to bring me joy and bring our family joy and not completely wear us out so that we can't really even enjoy it.
I also think that it's really important to consult with the other people involved. I think a lot of times we feel like we have to make all the decisions because we are the ones who are the makers of the magic, and I [00:02:00] think that when we check in with our kids, we might find that actually they don't want to go to all of these different things that we think that they wanna go to.
They might want to sit around and watch a favorite Christmas movie together, or they might want to just have a nice day like putting on some music and decorating the house. And so it's really important to get clear on what the other people want as well.
It is a fast recipe to resentment whenever we spend all this time and energy setting something up and then people are complaining or saying like, I didn't even wanna do this. And we're like. Well, I, I just spent all that time, and energy and you're not even appreciative. And so the best way to figure that out upfront and avoid all of that is to have some conversations upfront to sit down, to look at what are the most important things that we wanna do this holiday season, [00:03:00] and what are the things that we can let go of?
Follow me at @execcoachleanna on Instagram for more holiday tips. Thanks everyone!