164. How to Enjoy the Holidays
What does your most ideal, dreamy AF holiday season look like?
Even if you can’t make it come to life 100%, how can you get as close to it as possible?
And no matter the choices you make, how can you tell a powerful story about your holiday experience?
How can you talk to yourself in a way that feels empowering, celebrates your courage, and praises your hard work?
This is my tried-and-true formula for enjoying the holidays, and the great news is that it also applies to any situation you’re facing.
If you’re ready to cultivate more of what you want this holiday season and savor the yumminess of what’s working while navigating all the various things that aren’t, tune in this week.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
My two-pronged approach to enjoying the Holidays.
How to tell a powerful story about the Holidays, no matter what happens.
Questions to ask yourself about your ideal Holiday experience.
Why you must question the spoken and unspoken rules you’re following around the Holidays.
How to create an enjoyable Holiday season.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how to enjoy the holidays, and really how to enjoy any day.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. Before we get started, I just want to take a moment to remind you that if you love the podcast and want to support the work I’m doing here, it would be so helpful to me if you would follow, rate and review the show. And if you feel so called, you could also share the show either on social media or just directly to family and friends.
I really want to get the show in front of as many people as possible so we can help more people live wildly satisfying lives. And I would love your help and support in doing that because while I tell people about the podcast all the time, I think it’s really meaningful when people hear about it from other listeners. So if you would take the time to do that, or have taken the time to do that, I super duper appreciate you. Thank you so, so much.
Okay, without further ado, let’s get into how to enjoy the holidays. Okay, so I’m going to tell you right now, I’m going to take a pretty simple approach to this. But just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to implement. Sorry about that. And just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly powerful.
Okay, so basically my approach here is, there’s two prongs. Prong one is what do you actually want the holidays to be like? And how can we make them as much like that as possible? And prong two is, how can we tell a joyful, empowering, yummy story about whatever is happening? Not in a way where we’re lying to ourselves, but in a way where we’re focusing on the things that do feel good and savoring and delighting in what’s working.
Okay, prong one, I figure it’s great to be able to tell a powerful story, but we may as well change as many things as we can that we want to if they’re within our power to change. So take a minute to think about it. There are a lot of holiday stressors, and how many of yours could be eliminated?
So for a lot of people the holidays might be stressful because maybe they have to buy a bunch of gifts. They might be stressful because maybe they’re going to see family members that either maybe they don’t get along with, maybe it’s a really emotionally fraught relationship, maybe something else.
There might be travel involved. There might be going to different locales that have different weather patterns that you maybe like or don’t like. There could be kids being on break from school and so they’re around all the time. And that can be delightful, but it can also be kind of tiring and then we have to find things to do with the kids.
Some people find holidays to be really lonely. Maybe they grew up with a big family or crave having a big family, but for whatever reason in their current circumstances they’re either not able to connect with their family, they’re in a new city, they’re isolated in some way.
Maybe getting together with people means people want to talk about topics you don’t want to talk about, whether that’s hot button politics, the size of your body, the way you’re raising your kids, appearance, other things. There’s often a lot of topics that people don’t want to talk about. But the people they see at the holidays may bring those things up, even if they have expressed a preference against that.
There may be foods you know you’re going to be around that you have a hard time not overeating. Or maybe you don’t like the foods or maybe the events you go to have a lot of food that isn’t available for you. Like if you’re a vegan and people don’t make vegan dishes, that could be an example.
Those are just some that I see a lot online that I think are pretty common. But there’s lots more, right? I don’t know exactly what’s going on with your holidays. Or maybe you have actually really lovely holiday traditions that feel really good to you and there’s something else that’s getting in your way of enjoying that. Or maybe you already enjoy them and you just want to enjoy them a bunch more because wouldn’t that be fun?
So whatever it is that’s going on for you, I want you to take a minute, maybe get a piece of paper and get clear with yourself about what a really ideal, dreamy as fuck version of the holidays would look like. Would you travel? Would you not travel? Who would you travel to see? Maybe you usually go home to your family of origin but maybe you’d rather go to Hawaii.
Who would you see? Where would you go? What would you do? What would you be eating? What would you be drinking? What would your experiences be like? And then also, how do you want to feel? Write that down now, but that’s going to be kind of more in part two in this story we’re telling.
So whatever your vision is for what would make the holidays really enjoyable, maybe you can’t make it come to life 100%. I think the air date for this podcast is like December 13th, so if you don’t already have tickets to Hawaii it might be a little late to get them without them being super high.
But if that’s what you discover you’d rather do, is there a little piece of that Hawaiian experience you could give to yourself? I don’t know, could you go sit in a sauna? Which sounds like a strange suggestion maybe, but if you’re craving heat and sunshine and that kind of physical body experience, maybe you can give that to yourself, even if you happen to be in Minneapolis.
Or if there’s something else that you’re craving about Hawaii, like if you’re craving alone time, maybe you go to a hotel instead of staying with your family so that you can have some downtime, you can stay in a nice hotel room with nice, yummy sheets, and room service. And so if that’s the element of Hawaii that you wanted, maybe you can give yourself a little version of that, even if you’re not going to make the full shift.
So what do you want to have happen and how can we bring it into your reality, even if it can’t come in 100%? So those were some examples about the Hawaii thing. Maybe, again, you’re going to see people who are going to talk about topics you don’t want to talk about. Guess what? You get to have boundaries.
Like in your perfect world maybe you’d still get to see those people and have a nice time with them and they wouldn’t bring those up. We can’t control other people, so unfortunately we can’t necessarily make that happen. But we can decide what we do if people bring up the topics we don’t want to talk about.
And it could be as simple as walking away from the conversation. It could be something that is a little bit more of a firm no, like leaving. Leaving the situation. Leaving the house or the party. And that can feel very uncomfortable, and you’re also allowed to do it.
And you’re not allowed because I say you’re allowed, you’re allowed because you’re a human with freewill. And just like you can ask people not to bring up certain topics and they might still, they could ask you to be there for the whole party and you can still choose to leave if you want to, especially if people are bringing up topics you’ve expressly indicated that you don’t want to discuss or aren’t open to talking about.
Okay, if you’re going to a big event where there’s food that isn’t for you, like if you’re vegan, you can bring your own food dishes. I know that’s not maybe as fun, but I think it’s important to remember that you can create more of the experience you want, even if other people aren’t getting on board with that.
I think it’s always more fun when other people do get on board with it. Like I love to sell people into like, what if we do things this way? And can we all cooperate together? But the reality is humans don’t always cooperate. And just because they don’t cooperate doesn’t mean you can’t have an enjoyable and maybe even magical time. But you might need to be the one who creates that for yourself if others are not cooperating in helping you create that.
So this is the half where it’s like what circumstances can we change so that they’re more what we want them to be? And for this in particular, it’s also like do you have written or probably more likely unwritten rules about how you have to be at the holidays that you could change? And some of those rules, you can just change internally. You can just decide it’s going to be different because I say it is. And some of those rules, you might have a conversation with someone else about.
Like if you have a tradition of everyone getting everyone else presents, you could pitch to the group, whether it’s your small family or your big family or your friend group, like hey, can we draw names? Can we do white elephant? It doesn’t have to be the way it’s always been and you can be the one to invite it to be different. And if it doesn’t want to be different, you can decide if you’re going to participate or not.
I know for me, I asked Alex last year if we could do Christmas a little bit differently this year. So usually we get each other a few presents, including a big present. And last year, I was like instead of getting all these presents, could we each have a mason jar and into the mason jar, we put ideas for presidents and then on Christmas Day, we draw out all the ideas and then we pick the ones we want.
And that’s kind of a bizarre idea, I don’t even know how I came up with it. But sometimes you buy things for people and then it turns out those are not exactly the things that they wanted or would have chosen. And so I thought it was a really cool idea. And so for Alex’s jar, Alex would put in things she wants and I would also put in things I thought of for her. And then we would pull them all out and kind of reading them would be the ritual. And then we would decide what we were going to purchase.
And the same for me, right? So I have my mason jar and I put in ideas for me and Alex puts in ideas for me. And then I get to unravel all the ideas. I guess they’re not really unraveled, they’re probably just going to be folded in half because they’re paper, right? I get to unpack all the little ideas and delight in all of the potential presents, and then pick the ones that I actually really want to have in real life.
I just thought it would be a fun, different way of doing things where the lead-up to Christmas wouldn’t be so much about shopping and getting the perfect thing. Alex really likes the ritual of having a present on Christmas morning, so we’re also going to buy one present each. So I’ll get one for her and I’ll do her stocking. She’ll get one for me, and she’ll do my stocking.
And so we’ll still have that piece of the more traditional, but then we have this other thing, and we’re just going to try it out this year. And then next year she kind of gets to pick what we’re going to do. And then I will kind of add in my little pieces that matter to me.
So that’s just an example of it can be whatever you want. It doesn’t have to match those rules you’ve been following probably for your entire life. So if there were no rules, what would you want the holidays to be like? I’m talking about Christmas because that’s what we celebrate in a very secular way.
You may celebrate different holidays. And whatever the holidays you celebrate, what are the spoken and unspoken rules for those holidays that exist within your head, within your family structure, within whatever culture you belong to, whatever groups you belong to?
And then what do you want the rules to be? What do you want it to be like? And what changes could you make? And what changes matter enough for you to pursue? Like you could think through, like here’s my ideal and then be like, you know what? That’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers and I don’t actually care enough to do that. Or you could be like, that’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers and I guess feathers are getting ruffled, that’s what I want to do.
Again, there are no right answers. It’s just an envisioning of what would be delicious and then what of that envisioning do you want to actually bring into real life, knowing that you can and that visioning is half of it. And then all you have to do after that is make some choices, maybe talk to some people, and then follow through on whatever you’ve decided.
Which I’m making it sound very simple. But again, some of this may feel really uncomfortable if you’re pushing back against unwritten rules that you’ve been following your whole life. So it’s simple, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy.
Okay, so that’s like what actual changes am I going to make? Now the second part is, how am I going to tell a powerful story no matter what happens? So you might do the visioning project, the visioning/writing exercise and have a vision for a holiday season that’s very different than what you’ve done in a year. And then you might decide, I’m not going to do that.
I don’t want to do the effort of it. I don’t want to deal with the backlash, like whatever. If you know what you want and you’re not going to make the changes, I think that’s okay but don’t beat yourself up about it. And don’t beat reality up about being what it’s going to be if you’re going to choose not to make it different.
So if you’re going to choose to opt for the version you’ve always had, what kind of delicious story could you tell about that? If you’re choosing to opt for what it’s always been even though you know it can be different, there’s probably a reason why you’re doing that. So can you celebrate that reason? Can you delight in it? Can you find joy in your own choosing, even if you’re choosing something that isn’t your exact most perfect preference?
And I think this matters just as much if you are choosing to stop following the unwritten rules. So if you’re choosing to do something different than what’s expected of you or what you’ve always done, that’s probably going to feel massively uncomfortable and it might require a lot of courage.
Like, if you usually go home to your family of origin and you decide, guess what, I’m not. Or if you usually stay with them and that matters a lot to them and you decide, guess what, I’m going to get a hotel. Or if you usually get your kids 57 presents each and you decide this year you’re going to get three, there might be pushback from other people. People might be disappointed, they may have feelings.
And so in order to tolerate that and in order to cultivate powerfulness in your decision, I think it’s really helpful to just tell a powerful story of like, yeah, that was uncomfortable and it’s worth it. Or, yeah, I’m really brave. I’m demonstrating a lot of courage to be willing to change this. I’m doing something really powerful and really meaningful by choosing to cultivate more of what I want, rather than doing what everyone else wants and then resenting them for it.
Okay, so those are our two parts of this. Part one, what usually happens and what would you rather have happen instead? What actual changes would you like to commit to making this year? What changes would you like to fantasize about, but not commit to making this year? And then part two, no matter what you’ve chosen, how can you tell a powerful story about it? How can you celebrate yourself and your intentional choice, no matter what that intentional choice is?
And, obviously, this podcast is about enjoying the holidays, but this formula will work for literally anything. It’ll work for like, how do I enjoy my vacation? It’ll work for how do I handle it while my kitchen is being remodeled, right?
We take stock of what normally happens, we take stock of what the unwritten rules are. We decide which unwritten rules we’re going to continue to follow. We decide which unwritten rules we’re not going to continue to follow. We think about our ideal situation. We decide how we’re going to bring ourselves closer to it and create more of it, even if we can’t get all the way there for some reason.
And then no matter what we do we tell a story about it that feels empowering, that celebrates our courage, that praises us for our hard work and that focuses on and savors the ways we’ve made it delightful for ourselves.
And if you would like to have more of this influence in your life of understanding what are the unwritten rules I’m following? And what are the other options I could be doing? And how do I make my actual life closer to my dream life? And how do I tell a really powerful story, no matter what I’m choosing, I invite you to sign up for a consult call with me.
On the consult call we can talk through some of these concepts and what they would mean for your life, what you could achieve and accomplish the difference and how you could feel three months from now. And if it seems like a good fit, I’ll tell you about how I’m currently working with clients.
So you can find the link for that at korilinn.com and then go to the work with me tab and you can sign up for a consult call there. I so look forward to having a conversation with you about not just how to make your holidays more delightful, but how to make your whole life so delicious you can’t even believe it’s real.
All right, that’s what I have for you this week. Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. Before we get started, I just want to take a moment to remind you that if you love the podcast and want to support the work I’m doing here, it would be so helpful to me if you would follow, rate and review the show. And if you feel so called, you could also share the show either on social media or just directly to family and friends.
I really want to get the show in front of as many people as possible so we can help more people live wildly satisfying lives. And I would love your help and support in doing that because while I tell people about the podcast all the time, I think it’s really meaningful when people hear about it from other listeners. So if you would take the time to do that, or have taken the time to do that, I super duper appreciate you. Thank you so, so much.
Okay, without further ado, let’s get into how to enjoy the holidays. Okay, so I’m going to tell you right now, I’m going to take a pretty simple approach to this. But just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to implement. Sorry about that. And just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly powerful.
Okay, so basically my approach here is, there’s two prongs. Prong one is what do you actually want the holidays to be like? And how can we make them as much like that as possible? And prong two is, how can we tell a joyful, empowering, yummy story about whatever is happening? Not in a way where we’re lying to ourselves, but in a way where we’re focusing on the things that do feel good and savoring and delighting in what’s working.
Okay, prong one, I figure it’s great to be able to tell a powerful story, but we may as well change as many things as we can that we want to if they’re within our power to change. So take a minute to think about it. There are a lot of holiday stressors, and how many of yours could be eliminated?
So for a lot of people the holidays might be stressful because maybe they have to buy a bunch of gifts. They might be stressful because maybe they’re going to see family members that either maybe they don’t get along with, maybe it’s a really emotionally fraught relationship, maybe something else.
There might be travel involved. There might be going to different locales that have different weather patterns that you maybe like or don’t like. There could be kids being on break from school and so they’re around all the time. And that can be delightful, but it can also be kind of tiring and then we have to find things to do with the kids.
Some people find holidays to be really lonely. Maybe they grew up with a big family or crave having a big family, but for whatever reason in their current circumstances they’re either not able to connect with their family, they’re in a new city, they’re isolated in some way.
Maybe getting together with people means people want to talk about topics you don’t want to talk about, whether that’s hot button politics, the size of your body, the way you’re raising your kids, appearance, other things. There’s often a lot of topics that people don’t want to talk about. But the people they see at the holidays may bring those things up, even if they have expressed a preference against that.
There may be foods you know you’re going to be around that you have a hard time not overeating. Or maybe you don’t like the foods or maybe the events you go to have a lot of food that isn’t available for you. Like if you’re a vegan and people don’t make vegan dishes, that could be an example.
Those are just some that I see a lot online that I think are pretty common. But there’s lots more, right? I don’t know exactly what’s going on with your holidays. Or maybe you have actually really lovely holiday traditions that feel really good to you and there’s something else that’s getting in your way of enjoying that. Or maybe you already enjoy them and you just want to enjoy them a bunch more because wouldn’t that be fun?
So whatever it is that’s going on for you, I want you to take a minute, maybe get a piece of paper and get clear with yourself about what a really ideal, dreamy as fuck version of the holidays would look like. Would you travel? Would you not travel? Who would you travel to see? Maybe you usually go home to your family of origin but maybe you’d rather go to Hawaii.
Who would you see? Where would you go? What would you do? What would you be eating? What would you be drinking? What would your experiences be like? And then also, how do you want to feel? Write that down now, but that’s going to be kind of more in part two in this story we’re telling.
So whatever your vision is for what would make the holidays really enjoyable, maybe you can’t make it come to life 100%. I think the air date for this podcast is like December 13th, so if you don’t already have tickets to Hawaii it might be a little late to get them without them being super high.
But if that’s what you discover you’d rather do, is there a little piece of that Hawaiian experience you could give to yourself? I don’t know, could you go sit in a sauna? Which sounds like a strange suggestion maybe, but if you’re craving heat and sunshine and that kind of physical body experience, maybe you can give that to yourself, even if you happen to be in Minneapolis.
Or if there’s something else that you’re craving about Hawaii, like if you’re craving alone time, maybe you go to a hotel instead of staying with your family so that you can have some downtime, you can stay in a nice hotel room with nice, yummy sheets, and room service. And so if that’s the element of Hawaii that you wanted, maybe you can give yourself a little version of that, even if you’re not going to make the full shift.
So what do you want to have happen and how can we bring it into your reality, even if it can’t come in 100%? So those were some examples about the Hawaii thing. Maybe, again, you’re going to see people who are going to talk about topics you don’t want to talk about. Guess what? You get to have boundaries.
Like in your perfect world maybe you’d still get to see those people and have a nice time with them and they wouldn’t bring those up. We can’t control other people, so unfortunately we can’t necessarily make that happen. But we can decide what we do if people bring up the topics we don’t want to talk about.
And it could be as simple as walking away from the conversation. It could be something that is a little bit more of a firm no, like leaving. Leaving the situation. Leaving the house or the party. And that can feel very uncomfortable, and you’re also allowed to do it.
And you’re not allowed because I say you’re allowed, you’re allowed because you’re a human with freewill. And just like you can ask people not to bring up certain topics and they might still, they could ask you to be there for the whole party and you can still choose to leave if you want to, especially if people are bringing up topics you’ve expressly indicated that you don’t want to discuss or aren’t open to talking about.
Okay, if you’re going to a big event where there’s food that isn’t for you, like if you’re vegan, you can bring your own food dishes. I know that’s not maybe as fun, but I think it’s important to remember that you can create more of the experience you want, even if other people aren’t getting on board with that.
I think it’s always more fun when other people do get on board with it. Like I love to sell people into like, what if we do things this way? And can we all cooperate together? But the reality is humans don’t always cooperate. And just because they don’t cooperate doesn’t mean you can’t have an enjoyable and maybe even magical time. But you might need to be the one who creates that for yourself if others are not cooperating in helping you create that.
So this is the half where it’s like what circumstances can we change so that they’re more what we want them to be? And for this in particular, it’s also like do you have written or probably more likely unwritten rules about how you have to be at the holidays that you could change? And some of those rules, you can just change internally. You can just decide it’s going to be different because I say it is. And some of those rules, you might have a conversation with someone else about.
Like if you have a tradition of everyone getting everyone else presents, you could pitch to the group, whether it’s your small family or your big family or your friend group, like hey, can we draw names? Can we do white elephant? It doesn’t have to be the way it’s always been and you can be the one to invite it to be different. And if it doesn’t want to be different, you can decide if you’re going to participate or not.
I know for me, I asked Alex last year if we could do Christmas a little bit differently this year. So usually we get each other a few presents, including a big present. And last year, I was like instead of getting all these presents, could we each have a mason jar and into the mason jar, we put ideas for presidents and then on Christmas Day, we draw out all the ideas and then we pick the ones we want.
And that’s kind of a bizarre idea, I don’t even know how I came up with it. But sometimes you buy things for people and then it turns out those are not exactly the things that they wanted or would have chosen. And so I thought it was a really cool idea. And so for Alex’s jar, Alex would put in things she wants and I would also put in things I thought of for her. And then we would pull them all out and kind of reading them would be the ritual. And then we would decide what we were going to purchase.
And the same for me, right? So I have my mason jar and I put in ideas for me and Alex puts in ideas for me. And then I get to unravel all the ideas. I guess they’re not really unraveled, they’re probably just going to be folded in half because they’re paper, right? I get to unpack all the little ideas and delight in all of the potential presents, and then pick the ones that I actually really want to have in real life.
I just thought it would be a fun, different way of doing things where the lead-up to Christmas wouldn’t be so much about shopping and getting the perfect thing. Alex really likes the ritual of having a present on Christmas morning, so we’re also going to buy one present each. So I’ll get one for her and I’ll do her stocking. She’ll get one for me, and she’ll do my stocking.
And so we’ll still have that piece of the more traditional, but then we have this other thing, and we’re just going to try it out this year. And then next year she kind of gets to pick what we’re going to do. And then I will kind of add in my little pieces that matter to me.
So that’s just an example of it can be whatever you want. It doesn’t have to match those rules you’ve been following probably for your entire life. So if there were no rules, what would you want the holidays to be like? I’m talking about Christmas because that’s what we celebrate in a very secular way.
You may celebrate different holidays. And whatever the holidays you celebrate, what are the spoken and unspoken rules for those holidays that exist within your head, within your family structure, within whatever culture you belong to, whatever groups you belong to?
And then what do you want the rules to be? What do you want it to be like? And what changes could you make? And what changes matter enough for you to pursue? Like you could think through, like here’s my ideal and then be like, you know what? That’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers and I don’t actually care enough to do that. Or you could be like, that’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers and I guess feathers are getting ruffled, that’s what I want to do.
Again, there are no right answers. It’s just an envisioning of what would be delicious and then what of that envisioning do you want to actually bring into real life, knowing that you can and that visioning is half of it. And then all you have to do after that is make some choices, maybe talk to some people, and then follow through on whatever you’ve decided.
Which I’m making it sound very simple. But again, some of this may feel really uncomfortable if you’re pushing back against unwritten rules that you’ve been following your whole life. So it’s simple, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy.
Okay, so that’s like what actual changes am I going to make? Now the second part is, how am I going to tell a powerful story no matter what happens? So you might do the visioning project, the visioning/writing exercise and have a vision for a holiday season that’s very different than what you’ve done in a year. And then you might decide, I’m not going to do that.
I don’t want to do the effort of it. I don’t want to deal with the backlash, like whatever. If you know what you want and you’re not going to make the changes, I think that’s okay but don’t beat yourself up about it. And don’t beat reality up about being what it’s going to be if you’re going to choose not to make it different.
So if you’re going to choose to opt for the version you’ve always had, what kind of delicious story could you tell about that? If you’re choosing to opt for what it’s always been even though you know it can be different, there’s probably a reason why you’re doing that. So can you celebrate that reason? Can you delight in it? Can you find joy in your own choosing, even if you’re choosing something that isn’t your exact most perfect preference?
And I think this matters just as much if you are choosing to stop following the unwritten rules. So if you’re choosing to do something different than what’s expected of you or what you’ve always done, that’s probably going to feel massively uncomfortable and it might require a lot of courage.
Like, if you usually go home to your family of origin and you decide, guess what, I’m not. Or if you usually stay with them and that matters a lot to them and you decide, guess what, I’m going to get a hotel. Or if you usually get your kids 57 presents each and you decide this year you’re going to get three, there might be pushback from other people. People might be disappointed, they may have feelings.
And so in order to tolerate that and in order to cultivate powerfulness in your decision, I think it’s really helpful to just tell a powerful story of like, yeah, that was uncomfortable and it’s worth it. Or, yeah, I’m really brave. I’m demonstrating a lot of courage to be willing to change this. I’m doing something really powerful and really meaningful by choosing to cultivate more of what I want, rather than doing what everyone else wants and then resenting them for it.
Okay, so those are our two parts of this. Part one, what usually happens and what would you rather have happen instead? What actual changes would you like to commit to making this year? What changes would you like to fantasize about, but not commit to making this year? And then part two, no matter what you’ve chosen, how can you tell a powerful story about it? How can you celebrate yourself and your intentional choice, no matter what that intentional choice is?
And, obviously, this podcast is about enjoying the holidays, but this formula will work for literally anything. It’ll work for like, how do I enjoy my vacation? It’ll work for how do I handle it while my kitchen is being remodeled, right?
We take stock of what normally happens, we take stock of what the unwritten rules are. We decide which unwritten rules we’re going to continue to follow. We decide which unwritten rules we’re not going to continue to follow. We think about our ideal situation. We decide how we’re going to bring ourselves closer to it and create more of it, even if we can’t get all the way there for some reason.
And then no matter what we do we tell a story about it that feels empowering, that celebrates our courage, that praises us for our hard work and that focuses on and savors the ways we’ve made it delightful for ourselves.
And if you would like to have more of this influence in your life of understanding what are the unwritten rules I’m following? And what are the other options I could be doing? And how do I make my actual life closer to my dream life? And how do I tell a really powerful story, no matter what I’m choosing, I invite you to sign up for a consult call with me.
On the consult call we can talk through some of these concepts and what they would mean for your life, what you could achieve and accomplish the difference and how you could feel three months from now. And if it seems like a good fit, I’ll tell you about how I’m currently working with clients.
So you can find the link for that at korilinn.com and then go to the work with me tab and you can sign up for a consult call there. I so look forward to having a conversation with you about not just how to make your holidays more delightful, but how to make your whole life so delicious you can’t even believe it’s real.
All right, that’s what I have for you this week. Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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