How To Manage Holiday Emotions, Energy & Relationships

Join Kelly as she speaks to a group of clients on building a personalized"toolbox" to help manage emotions, energy and relationships during the holiday season. Identifying specific tools for before, during, and after gatherings can help you focus on your mental and emotional well-being, ensuring the holidays are filled with joy and love instead of exhaustion. 

Main points: . 

• Simplicity is key: It’s better to have a few effective tools than a large, overwhelming set that you can't remember to use. 
• As you plan, consider each occasion’s unique theme and adjust your tools accordingly. 
  • Ex. Choose different tools for hosting vs being a guest.
• Decide on purpose what thoughts you want to keep on repeat. 
• Recognize your energy limits.
• Practice accepting what you cannot change, especially what others think, feel and do! 
• Make sure to incorporate rest and recovery time & make time for joy filled moments. 

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

0:01

Hey, friends, as we get ready for the holiday, I wanted to share a little bit from one of my recent coaching calls in my group coaching program. What we're talking about in this session is how to create a toolbox. Which is a way for you to remember the things that you want to do on repeat that serve you. It could be having a way to say something when you're with a certain person who kind of crosses your boundaries and you have that phrase prepared in advance. It could be deciding on purpose that every time you go and spend time with family who you love, but who emotionally exhaust you, that you'll know in advance how you're going to recover your energy. I hope that this conversation serves you. And if you'd like to learn more, I'd love to have you join my group coaching program. Head over to Kellytibbitts.Com to learn more. Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Tibbitts and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Welcome today we're gonna be talking about creating tools for your toolbox. Have you ever been like, and then you realize I feel overwhelmed, I have racing thoughts and your body just intuitively new to breathe deeply and to exhale and to move some of that energy out. So we know it's the holiday season. We know it's busy. We know you probably have lots of thoughts and feelings and action items. So let's do that for a moment. Close your eyes. Take a breath in and sigh. Big breath out. Do that a couple of times. See if you notice anything. And again, one of the gifts you can give is just gently patting on your heart. Help your body connect to your body, right? Like, make sure you know, okay, I'm here and it is well, everything in this moment. It is well, we just want to notice how are you doing mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. We want to decide on purpose what thoughts to keep. If you've had a conversation lately with anybody, you might notice that two people can have the same exact circumstances of living in this day and age at this time and have completely different thoughts about it and find all the evidence that they need to think completely differently than you do. That's how powerful our thoughts are. So before we decide our toolbox today, I want you to know that your thoughts are powerful. And one of the most important tools in your toolbox is your power thought. What do you want to be thinking on repeat? It is better to have a small toolbox of tools that you use than a large toolbox of tools that become overwhelming and you can't use it. It's better to have one tool for the holiday season for the next sprint. And that tool could be as simple as here's my power thought. And I noticed that I'm not thinking it because my body is not feeling aligned. Maybe my tool is to sigh, to take a few breaths. Whatever it is, smaller is better than bigger. Something that is accessible and repeatable is going to serve you more than having every tool that I talk about today in your toolbox and then not using any of them. So we're creating targeted toolboxes. We're using all the information that you've learned from me, that you've learned from your Bible study, that you've learned from different podcasts and books. We're going to. Take them now, and we're going to say what's one specific or two or three specific decisions I want to make. I want to apply these tools, and I want to have small practice steps. How are you going to access your tools? If you don't use your Notes app, I really, really do recommend it. You can voice text into it, you can just take notes whenever you want to. I love going on Instagram and just learning from other leaders and I'll snapshot some of the pictures that they put up. And so we've talked about the fact that the holiday is not one thing. There's so many small things. It could be lunch with a friend, it could be a big group of people coming to your home. So we've been trying to notice what are all the specific events, we're naming them as an event, that you need to notice your energy and have a toolbox for. And so it's not always the big things. It could be there's a Friday coming up and you have to be at four places within three hours. What's your toolbox for that day? Maybe you're deciding I'm not cooking dinner on that day. That's a really good toolbox. It can be that simple. So when you think about the next few events coming up. People are coming to your home. You're traveling. It could be just preparing for a big presentation at work. Not everything is holiday related. We want to think about your theme of focus for each of those events. So coming up for me, my children are coming home from the Saturday before Christmas, and they're leaving the day after Christmas. I have to prepare the spaces. I have to have meals that I normally don't cook anymore. There's different people who want to see us. So having a theme of focus for each of those days is better than me trying to say, here's my theme for five days, because they're all going to be very, very different. You might want a toolbox for when you're a guest and a different one for when you're a host. The reason it's important to notice your emotional energy is it's not something that many people teach us and it's Absolutely a real part of being a human you have a limit to your mental emotional physical and spiritual energy Just like you have a limit to your financial resources None of us have billions of dollars to spend at Christmas and none of us have billions of dollars of energy to spend coming up either. You might really notice I have about a hundred dollars of mental energy left. This is not the time for me to think about really hard things because I'm tired and I'm probably going to make some mistakes if I have to fill out very complicated forms this week. Some of us are noticing our physical energy is not where we would like it to be. Well, there's a lot of resources these days that we didn't have access to 10 years ago that explains that as humans, we were not intended to live each season like they're the same. We are getting close to the deep part of winter. This is the resting season. So if you're feeling tired, that's probably the appropriate thing to be feeling as a human. And this is the time when we're supposed to rest more. So notice that. If you're physically, mentally, emotionally tired, what do you need? I like to use this little pretend equation. We talk about it a lot in the summer, but it's for all year long. You first want to notice if you need to rest. That might be a great place to start with your toolbox. How do I rest mentally? How do I rest emotionally, spiritually, physically? Once you've noticed how you rest and you have that scheduled and you make sure that you're resting on a regular basis, the next thing you want to notice is what brings you joy. Now I think it's so human of us to want to skip the rest and go over to joy, especially during the holiday season. I'll rest later. But what happens is we say so many yeses. And some of those should be no, we end up exhausted and depleted and then we show up for those events of joy and we don't have aligned energy for it, whether it's time with people we love or going to an activity. So see if your toolbox contains rest, and joy. And then once you've rested well and you feel like you have your energy aligned and you have that joy that brings joy and peace and enthusiasm, then we want to think about your purpose filled work. And it does not look like anyone else's, whether your mother in law or your best friend does things one way, you might not do it that way. And that's perfectly fine. So what are you noticing? Do you need a tool for resting? Do you need some tools to bring joy back to your life? Do you need some tools for doing your purpose filled work? Try not to do all three things at once. I'm one. If you feel pretty rested and you know this is a season where you really want to lean into your joy, let's focus there. If it's really important to you to show up In the activities and the responsibilities that you've already said yes to from a place of love, from a place of enthusiasm, from a place of connection, then let's focus on those one at a time. You are 100 percent valuable, 100 percent loved. Don't keep putting energy into relationships where they don't want to show up and honor that light in you. So, if somebody is intent on not seeing the beauty and the value of you, you don't have to keep showing up to those experiences. You can, but you don't have to. What would you like to think? How would you like to feel? What would you like to say yes and no to? It's okay to take a break. Say you made a really great plan for an event and you get there and there's more people and it's really hot and there's not enough food and the people you keep talking to are draining your energy. It's okay to take a break. Maybe you leave the space. Maybe you go to your car. Maybe just in your body you take a few breaths in and take a few breaths out and you align your energy. That might be your tool. It's okay to take a break, writing that down, believing it, knowing how you're going to take a break. That's fantastic. That's a great tool. Another tool might be specifically having a recovery plan. Okay, you know that there's something important to you. It's a little bit draining to drive wherever you're driving to be with the people you'll be with. What's your recovery plan? How are you going to get your energy back after you gave it at an event that's important to you? All you're asking yourself, is this something you want? If it is, you want to notice it and then you want to decide how will you implement it. What if you're going to have Christmas dinner at someone's home? Maybe it's your parents, maybe it's your children, maybe it's an aunt's house. Let's just take a moment and notice. Before you go there, do you need to think about the event in a way that serves you? You have to go to Christmas dinner, and just by pausing and realizing, okay, my mother is actually more focused on the past, so when I get to her home, I think she's going to think about last year, think about five years ago, think about ten years ago. I'm accepting the things that cannot change. She's more past focused than I am. And so when I show up, I'm not going to try to change her mind and get her to focus on the present. That's just not what I'm gonna use my energy for. I'm going to decide how I want to show up. If I want to show up in love, then every time I look at her, I'm going to think the thought, I love you. And she's going to have all her thoughts about how wonderful the past was and the right way to do things. And I'm giving none of my energy to changing her mind. That's a pretty powerful tool to have in our pocket when we go to someone else's home. You might also decide, if I'm going to someone else's home and bringing something, it's going to be uncomplicated and easy. For me, that feels like an aligned thought. And I would think of several people for whom that's not an aligned thought. They want to take the time and make something beautiful and complicated. So you need to know what your decision is before the event. I know my power thought I'm 100 percent valuable. I deserve to be treated that way. When someone is dishonoring to me, I will excuse myself from the space. I will not stay there and receive that because I'm 100 percent valuable, but I'm not going to change their thoughts. So I'm not going to put any energy there. They get to keep their thoughts. Their words reflect something about them, not me. This is a hundred percent true. The thoughts that come out of other people is always about them, because their thoughts are created by their own brain. It's not created by you or any circumstance. If two people you know start arguing about politics, very possible this holiday season, I'm going to practice stepping away, either emotionally in my head and I'm not going to engage, or I'm literally physically going to leave the space. And I'll remind myself that some people with one to one intensity, the Enneagram gives us such good information, actually enjoy this kind of conflict. It feels really good for some people and feels really uncomfortable for others. We're not going to go into their box. They can think, feel, and do anything. I'm just going to take my energy and notice what I want. I want to feel joy and peace, and this is not filling me with joy and peace. I'm going to step away. How about after any event? You've been with the people you love, they're having their human experiences, there are things you've enjoyed, there are things that are depleting. How about a power thought like, I'm going to commit now to spending intentional time alone, either right after the event, a day or two after the event, when my physical energy has returned. How powerful could that be? I'm going to decide now to have some intentional quiet time alone after these events that may take some of my energy. Or, every single day I'm going to linger over my coffee with my book, with my journal, simply because I enjoy it. So I would love if you took one moment right now, you could take a journal, you could write it on your phone. You can just think it, but it actually does serve you to some way. Capture it, write it down so that you can remember it. There's so many things we're trying to carry in our brain. Our brain wants to solve problems, not store information. So think of one upcoming event. It could be a work project. It could be time with family that you love. It could be getting responsibilities done, like cleaning the house, decorating a tree, sending cards, baking a meal. Pick one thing. What's your tool before that allows you to stay focused on you? Your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your tool might be, I want to make sure before I do anything else this week, I have five minutes to journal. I want to notice what I'm thinking and make a decision. Your tool before might be, I need to connect with somebody who helps my energy rise. I want to have coffee with somebody. I want to call them. It might be, I want to go for a run or do some kind of physical activity. What's your tool before that event? Your tool during the event. And again, remember the power of the side when you start to feel overwhelmed, and it's interesting, right? As humans, we all kind of connect with each other. One person sighs or yawns and the next person does. You're releasing some of that energy on purpose. And then how about after from a place of love for yourself? What's your decision? I'm going to buy myself a book and I'm going to gift myself 30 minutes to read it every single day. Whatever you're noticing, is there a before, a during, and an after tool that you can apply just to one of the upcoming events. Obviously, if you had the time and energy, you would do this with everything. Let's start small enough that it can help us actually apply it. Thank you for joining the live a vibrant life podcast. I hope our time together encourage you and we'll equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave creative. Purpose filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly Tibbetts life coach, or visit my website, kelly tibbetts. com. I look forward to connecting again soon.