Enjoy More Joy, Less Stress This Holiday Season | Ep 95

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wait for your wake up call. Welcome back to another episode of The don't wait for your wake up call podcast. I am Melissa Deally your host. And today I am bringing to you and an episode wrapped around allowing you to have more joy and less stress this Christmas, my theme for the month of December is peace. And of course, when we have less stress, we can open ourselves up to feeling more peace. And of course, the holiday times are very exciting for the children in our lives, they're can be very exciting for adults, and then they can also be very stressful for adults. And my answer to that is to simply consider planning. Now some people might think well, that's too structured, I don't want to plan but here's the thing, you've heard this before, we don't plan to fail, we fail to plan. And when we fail to plan, it allows a significant, significantly more stress to come into our lives. Because we're scrambling to pull it all together at the 11th hour, we're scrambling to make it all happen. When we plan it gives us structure that doesn't mean you're you know tied up in chains and confined and you can only live by what's been planned and that you're restricted and you feel like you can just enjoy it doesn't mean that at all. But it does give you structure to fall back on. And to utilize as needed in order to allow yourselves to move through this busy holiday season with much more flow and ease. And I think that's what everybody wants. So let's just start out with something that I love to share and very often is an aha for people. And so my first tip that I want to share is to consider and start saying yes to yourself and no to others more often. We very often use those words backwards. And we say yes to others. And in the moment of saying yes to others that will do something for them will attend their event, et cetera. We are saying no to ourselves in that moment. And at this time of year where there are so many things in our calendar from invitations from family invitations from friend, there's work parties, cocktail parties, Christmas parties, there's events happening at the school, there's all sorts of you know, with my kids, when they were in school, we have course had the holiday concert, we also had you know letter writing to Santa, there was all sorts of different events in the school. So you know, there's all this extra stuff coming into your calendar. And if you say yes to everything, you are going to feel stressed, you are going to feel exhausted. But if you start to choose what really matters to me, and saying yes to those things and saying no to others, you're going to be able to weed out some of the things and give yourself more space in your calendar and it is okay to say no to others. You can also if you really feel like you can't say no because it's an a family event you have to go. You can also say, you know I'm back to back that day. I'm sorry, I can't be there for you know, the start to the end, I'll be arriving late or I have to leave early because I have somewhere else I need to be whether or not you have to be somewhere else doesn't matter. It gives you the out so that you're not at this event for four hours. Maybe you're only there for one hour you showed up you saw some people and then you were able to leave and give yourself time to maybe go Armand, just get in an Epsom salt bath, and relax and unwind before getting yourself into bed. So really think about that. That is okay. It is absolutely okay. Give yourself permission to say yes to yourself and say no to others. It's not always easy to do, especially if you've never done it before, your brain will wonder what you're doing. And it'll be like, Why are you saying no, even as you're saying no, and encourage you to say, yes, I've been there, I experienced that. But I also had the frontal cortex of my brain saying, no, no, you're saying no, for a reason? Because you're saying yes to yourself. And that spoke to me more loudly than the back of my brain going, why are you saying no, You never say no. And so that allowed me to start practicing saying no to others, so I could be more protective of my time. And we all have the same amount of time, and we can't get more time, we say we'd love to have, you know, 28 hours in the day, that's never gonna happen. So we have to be more protective of the time that we have. And in saying no, to others, and yes to ourselves, we are absolutely doing that. So that's a starting point. But then that's after that. We're also planning so by saying no to others, we're creating a little bit more space in our calendar. But what else can we be doing to create more joy and less stress this holiday season? Well, start planning your meals. You know, when you're, you know, having family over, or when you might be having a holiday party for friends. Plan those meals, plan your shopping list, so that you can get to the store, get what you need, and get out or even order online. Because we can do that now. Have it delivered or pick it up. So that you're allowing the system to work for you, you don't even have to go to the store. Because we know how busy the stores are, at this time of year everybody's out shopping, we also know how busy it can be in the parking lots and driving, all of that is taking your time. So how can you reduce the time that it takes. And again, it can be stressful when it's crowded in parking lots, finding a parking spot people walking in front of you and all of that stuff. So reduce your stress by potentially if you can in your area, not even having to go make the shopping list habit delivered or make the shopping list, pick it up, and that planning your meals so that you know exactly what you need. So that you can make that shopping list is a huge starting point for that. You also can be planning visiting the malls. So again, super crowded during the holiday season in December, even late November it can get really crowded. But this episode's coming out December 3, plan when you're visiting them all. So if you can visit the mall, as soon as it opens, go on a weekday, take a day off work, go on a weekday work on the weekend if you need to, because you know you're good, there's going to be less people, right when the mall opens, and on a weekday, and also plan what stores you're going to visit. So if you know certain gifts, that you're picking up for people, and you know what stores they're in, make a plan of how you're going to do that in the most economical ways so that you're not walking back and forth back and forth from either in the mall to the other because malls can be pretty big these days, right? That's a lot of wasted time might be good exercise, but it is wasted time. And if time is more important, I plan to do it in a sensible order. I'm sure you're still going to get your steps in that day. And I want you to on top of that, once you've got all of those things done that you need to get done, the gifts that you know you need to buy, you've planned it, you've gone to those stores in the most efficient order, you've got what you needed. And then after that, you can allow yourself some time to browse because maybe you've got some other people that you want to buy for. And you don't really know what you want to get them. And so you're looking for inspiration. I want to suggest bookstores can be amazing places of inspiration for people. So head there, that's where I always go whether it's buying someone a beautiful journal journal, whether it's buying a game because often bookstores have games, whether it's buying a you know a fuzzy, warm blanket that somebody can wrap them up selves up in or a candle or a coffee mug. bookstores have so much more than just books and yes, books are wonderful gifts as well. And I love buying books. I also love buying calendars for people so they have those two. So you can get a lot of ideas in one store like that instead of having to go to five or six different stores looking for ideas. And so that's how I navigate them all. And I find it to be a much more efficient and therefore much less stressful way to do my Christmas shopping. The other thing To that I do more of now because we can is order on line ahead of time. So I was doing a little bit of that yesterday. So and you can do that anytime if you're ideally you want to be doing your gift shopping for birthdays for Christmas throughout the year, don't wait and leave it all until the last minute because again, that puts a lot of pressure on you. But if you've done that for this year, and you still have to do all of your Christmas shopping, hopefully those tips around the mall and then online shopping help you it will lower your stress significantly. If you're doing it from home, playing some Christmas music, just playing some relaxing music, and just searching what you need and ordering it and not even having to go into the masses that are in the mall, all the pushing and shoving that happens because it just gets crowded and you bump into people.

Another recommendation is to plan your self care, you do need to look after yourself and you need to look after yourself. First. regular listeners have all heard me say this before, but I continue to say it because it's so important. Self Care is the most selfless act as it allows you to show up and give the world the best of you instead of what's left of you. And don't you want to do that you want to show up and give your loved ones the best of you. You don't want to be taking out your irritation on them. And yet, that tends to be what happens when we are stressed and depleted of energy. We counter that stress and energy depletion by looking after ourselves first. So what is that for you? What do you truly enjoy? What do you do, and you just lose track of time? What do you do that just makes you feel better, more energized when you've finished doing that thing. There's so many options to self care. And it's different for each and every single one of us. Some people think of self care is just treating themselves to a massage once a month. But self care is something that we can do every single day. And we can do it in 15 minute increments to start, especially on busy days if we don't have time. But we can build up to creating more time in our calendar for self care. Because when we truly do care for ourselves, we are sleeping better, we are feeling less stressed, we are therefore more focused. And we can get more done in our day, which allows us more time for self care. So some of my favorite things for self care are an Epsom salt bath at the end of the day reading a book it's a great way just time for me to chill out, leave the world behind and immerse myself in the story. As well as going for walks in nature. But sometimes it's just a matter of getting fresh air and getting outside and walking around the block. Putting on favorite tunes and dancing around the kitchen while I'm cooking dinners and just enjoying that and having fun with it. So many things for me. I mean, I'm I live in nature. So I have a lot of access to nature in the summer, it's paddleboarding in the winter, it's skiing, but what is it for you it could be calling a friend. And just having a wonderful conversation catching up with a friend that you haven't talked to in a while. It could be cuddling with your kids, your pets, your spouse, it could be, you know, curling up in front of a fire and watching a movie. That's obviously a bigger commitment than just something that's 15 minutes. But you could also take 15 minutes to just meditate to stretch your body to listen to some binaural beats to just kind of calm the mind and center the nervous system to go outside and just stand in your garden and face up to the sun and let the sun shine on your face. And with your eyes closed, just that alone starts to calm the nervous system. So there's many, many options for self care, what is it that you enjoy, and build that in in 15 minute increments in your day. And make sure that you're doing that every day through the month of December. Because as you do that, you will notice that your nervous system calms that you feel better, and you are much less irritable, much less feeling like you're ready to snap at the slightest thing that goes wrong or messes with your schedule or traffic delays, et cetera, et cetera. And you'll be able to move through the season with more ease and flow. If you're enjoying my content and someone that wants to step into being proactive in your health and learning more, I would love to invite you to join my membership community. There's a link in the show notes for only 1999 a month you get access to all of my content and there's a lot as well as weekly calls knows that you can come and get your health questions answered. It's truly priceless. I'd love to see you join the community, check out the link in the show notes. Another one that's super important is planning family events. Family is one of those things, we don't get to choose our family, right. And many people have fabulous families, and they love everyone in their family. And then there's other families that come from, you know, more difficult families, and they struggle with certain personalities in their family. And so getting together at holiday events can be difficult for some people. And if that's you, again, you want to be planning those events. If there's more than one event, I'll make it to this one, I can't make it to that one. Or if it is one event, and it's you know, several hours long, perhaps you don't want to be there the whole time. Again, you can say I'm going to arrive late because of this, this and this or I need, I will come here, but I need to leave early because of this dissonance. So that you're giving yourself that leeway to spend less time in an environment that isn't necessarily a stressless environment for you, it can be very stressful to have to put up with personalities that you aren't jiving with. But something else that I want to share with you that can be very beneficial. And that is the idea of donning if you're female, you're going to draw on your red love bra. And if you're male, you're going to draw on your red love cape. And your bra or your cape, that you were to this family event where you struggle with different personalities there is to remind you that you only let love in and it only lets love out. It's like a shield. And so no matter what someone says to you, you that doesn't have to come pass that shield, if it isn't loving, it can be repelled back out. And you too are only going to let love out. When you take that approach and you're protected by your love bra so that anything that isn't loving towards you negative comments, negative gestures, feelings, etc. They're just not going to get inside, they're just going to repel off the love bra the love cape. And then that allows you to be in a space where you can only let love out as well. And that can be very, very beneficial. So if you haven't heard of that before, and you're that person that has difficult relatives, and you struggle to go to family events, because you don't want to have to deal with the attitude of so and so you can do on your love bra, Dawn, your love Kate, protect yourself and go to the event for the limited amount of time that you've set up for yourself, by letting them know you're going to arrive late or you're going to depart early. If you're traveling at Christmas time, that's something else that it's really important to plan. Because of course, there's so much travel during the holiday season and it gets really busy in the airports. And so you need to plan ahead in many ways in terms of packing just to make sure that you're not leaving the packing to the last minute and you're staying up late the night before and you got to get up early in the morning and you haven't done the packing. And now you're packing and you're not getting enough sleep and you're going traveling and just that is going to make the travel harder because you're tired, depleted and stressed. So pack slowly over a few days, make a list for what you need to pack in advance, just sit down and take 10 minutes and just write it all out and then have that list handy. So when you think of more things you need to add because you're not going to get everything in that first sit down, you can add them quickly. And then that makes packing so much easier when you do come to pack because you've got your list, you can just cross everything off. The other thing too, is planning to be at the airport earlier than usual. Because of course those security lines are long, the check in lines are long, etcetera. And if you're there earlier, it doesn't matter if they're long, you're still going to make your flight but if you're there running late and you don't have enough time then you're standing in line waiting to check in looking at your watch going am I even going to make my flight and that's building up the stress inside your body and it doesn't feel good. You're stressed as you go through security still wondering if you're going to make it to your flight. You get on your flight and you sit in your seat and yes you have that relief of stress at that point because you made your flight if you didn't make your flight you're still stressed because now you're trying to get on another flight which is really hard to do because all the flights are sold out at Christmas time and now you're trying to get somewhere by a certain date you might not be able to how stressful is that? Nobody wants that but I guarantee it happens to people every single holiday season. Don't let it happen to you by planning to be at the airport extra early so even if there's lines doesn't matter you can stand in them you got nothing better to do have a book with you read the book while you stand in line. I have books on my phone when I I travel. So I'll just Dan read my phone, I don't care how long the line takes. And he gets through the line get to your plane, and you just don't have that cortisol running through your body, making you feel hopped up. Because you've got time, you're already on vacation, and you're gonna get there. The other thing to think about when you are

in terms of achieving a more joy, less stress holiday season is to actually plan your sleep. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but when we get more sleep, we are much more stress resilient, it's also very good for our health. For a number of reasons. I've done workshops on that I've got courses on that I've done a few episodes on that, in this podcast, if you go back to I think it's episodes, five and seven, I specifically talked about the benefits of sleep. But when you plan your sleep, you are in a much better place to get the sleep that your body needs in order to be able to cope with the stress more efficiently. And as adults, we truly do need between seven to nine hours of sleep every single night, if you're getting sick, you want more towards the nine hour range, if you're not getting sick, and you're healthy, and you're doing well and you have good energy, then you can get away with more to the seven hour level. But again, during the holiday season, there's so many invitations, so many events going on that there can be a lot of late nights. So how do you plan your sleep will you know when the late nights are going to be and you're going to have less less sleep those nights. And so on the other nights plan to get to bed earlier plan to get off devices earlier. So you can get better sleep as a result of getting off the devices and getting into bed sooner and plan your sleep by the time you have to get up the next day. And back that away by at least eight hours so that you're in bed eight hours before you have to get up, maybe you're reading a book, etc. And by the time you actually fall asleep, you're going to be guaranteeing yourself seven to seven and a half hours of sleep that night. And that will just again that will lead to more joy, less stress, I promise you. And then there's also what are you eating over the holiday season? What are you drinking over the holiday season. These are huge factors to and what we're putting into our body is definitely a contributing factor to our stress levels. Because our digestive system has to deal with it. What we put in our body is feeding ourselves. It's impacting our hormones, it's impacting our gut health, it's impacting everything. And if we're fueling our body, well, we are going to be in a much happier state A and our body will be less stressed than if we're not fueling our body well. And of course over the holiday season, there's always desserts and sugars and treats. And if you can be just aware of that, and cut back on the amount of your sugar intake, enjoy the meal. And then maybe you don't need dessert, choose a salad instead of dessert, if you're having dessert, maybe you have a little bite sized piece of dessert, and instead of a huge piece of cake, etc. or multiple desserts. Because when we're fueling the body on empty calories that come from sugar, etc, we're burning through that quickly. That is just not sustainable over the course of the entire holiday season. Our body needs to be fed far more efficiently than that with nutrient dense meals that give the body what it truly needs. And on top of that, there's a lot of drinking that goes on over the holiday season. And yes, it's a reason to celebrate. And that's wonderful. But can you mix that drinking, have a drink have a glass of water or maybe I'm only going to drink two nights this week and the other nights I'm going to go dry, whatever it is for you to allow you to cut back on the drinking so that you're not consuming so much alcohol over the holidays. Because of course that is negatively impacting your liver. And now you're drinking your calories, you're getting more sugar from all of that alcohol. And it's all going to put your body slightly out of balance and have you not feeling your best if you wake up in the morning with a headache as a hangover you are not feeling your best. And you're not feeling very stressed resilient at that time either. You know the kids come in and talk to you or yell something because they're excited about something and it splits your head and then you're yelling back at them. That is not the joyful holiday season experience. So you can mitigate that by consciously choosing to cut back choose to be the designated driver. And then you have a very valid reason for not drinking or simply don't drink and if people ask you why aren't you drinking you can say you know what I've planned out over this holiday season which nice I'm drinking and wish nice I'm not that I don't overdo it. A great answer, maybe more people could follow you for having done that. And you are going to feel much, much better as a result. And then lastly, come January, you might want to plan a detox. Because even though you're choosing to drink less and avoid sugar, we're still getting so much in during that time with the socializing that happens. It's available, it's everywhere. And sometimes you're not even aware of it. And hey, if you haven't done a detox in the last year, five years, 10 years, you're due for one anyway. And I will, of course, be running my health, kickstart, and detox program, it starts January the 10th. And I'd love to invite you to it. It's a great program that will kick your 2023 off on the right foot from a health perspective, and give you the learning and the knowledge that you will then have for a lifetime. I don't teach this is just one detox and you're good for life. I teach this as this is how we make detoxing a lifestyle, why we need to do it, how we do it, I hold your hand through it, I make it fun. And I know you probably think well detoxing isn't fun, but true. Truly, I make it fun. And get you through that to success while coaching you around nutrition and the right way to eat for your unique body. Understanding digestion, because you are not just what you eat, but you are what you absorb, is your digestive system turned on when you eat your food are the nutrients getting to the cells that need them? Or is your body and your digestive system not very happy right now and you're struggling with gas and bloating, constipation or diarrhea, because we need to resolve that that's not normal. That's a sign of an unhappy gut. And we can resolve that. So all that lesson is based around that. I also share with you how not to retox after your detox because we don't want to go back to the way things were after we've cleaned ourselves up, got all those toxins out feeling good inflammations down, aches and pains are gone. mental clarity is here. We're sleeping better. We've had all of these positive results, we don't want to go back to the way things were. So that's a really important session. And then I do a session on sugar because even outside the holiday season, it is a problem all year long. And so understanding where sugars sneaking into your diet, even if you're trying to be really conscious, and what you can do about that, and other food choices you can be making instead is a really great session for everybody to learn. So it's five weeks, I set you up for success on the detox, we talk nutrition, we talk digestion, we talk sugar, and then how not to reach ox after the detox starting January 10 fabulous way to start out 2023 Something else I'm bringing to the table in December and continuing throughout 2023 is I am about to complete my hypnotherapy teacher training, which allows me to teach self hypnosis as well as train people in hypnotherapy. And hypnosis is a very powerful tool that can help you with motivation, but also coping with the stress coping with family relationships, etc. Coping with the kids and you know, just having some time some calm in your day, being able to put yourself into a hypnotic trance while you take a little bit of time for yourself. It is another form of self care once you learn how to do it that is incredibly powerful, and easy to do. So these are tools that I'm offering to help you on your health journey on your life journey and creating more joy less stress, not only during the holidays, but all year long. So if you'd like to know more about that, please reach out email me and I want to wish you a wonderful December filled with peace. Include your planning, it gives you the structure within which you can work without chaining you down. It instead leads you to success, the success of having more joy and less stress. So thanks for tuning in. Please share this episode with anybody that you feel may benefit. And next week I will have guests another guest on the show and Anita Adams here to share her story. And as we continue the theme of peace thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing

thank you for investing this time with me on the don't wait for your wake up call Podcast. I'm so glad you joined in. If you can take two minutes to share this episode with someone you think can benefit and have a positive impact put on their life. That would be wonderful. Please leave a review by going to your favorite podcast listening app,