Many of us look forward to December and holiday traditions, festivities and getting together. However, sometimes in our excitement, we overestimate our capacity; we add all sorts of things into a schedule that is already busy! It’s like trying to add 4 more hours a day to the the 24 hours a day we already have planned with our normal activities like sleeping, caring for our kids, doing work, caring for the house, and still hoping to get 24 hours! It’s bad math! The whole reason most of us look forward to these things is because we anticipate they will bring us and others joy! And when we try to cram too much in, we end up feeling overwhelmed, stressed out and disappointed….the exact opposite of why we wanted to do them in the first place. On the podcast, we’re going to help identify if you might have some bad math this holiday season. And, if so—how to improve your math so you can get the result you want.
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Ep. 70. Christmas and Bad math
Today on the podcast, we’re going to look at what I call our “bad math” when it comes to the holidays. If you are like me, you start getting excited as December approaches. I start thinking about all the things I love about the holiday season! Music, lights, magic, gifts, holiday parties, friends, family, hot chocolate! But, in our excitement about the holidays, I think sometimes we overestimate our capacity and how much we can actually fit in, in addition to all we already have going on. For some reason we thinking that we can fit decorating for the holidays, extra parties, volunteering in the kids classes for parties, sending holiday cards, buying gifts for family, friends, co-workers, quality time with our families over break, all our holiday baking, etc. all into the same month we already have 24 hours a day planned with our normal routines.
It’s like trying to add 4 more hours a day to the the 24 hours a day we already have planned with our normal activities like sleeping, caring for our kids, doing work, caring for the house, and still hoping to get 24 hours! It’s bad math!
Today on the podcast, we’re going to look at our Holiday Expectations and try to identify where we have “bad math” going on. And, we’ll look at how to improve our holiday math so that the result is something we are proud of enjoy instead of being disappointed.
One Minute-Wisdom
Too Much
I have a friend who bought a Christmas tree, as she walked through the aisles, she found the perfect one. She dreamed about exactly how it would look, how gorgeous it would be and how her family would decorate it. But when she got it home, it was way too tall and too large for the room. She couldn’t take it back, so she tried to cut it. But even with that , the tree was still so big it reached the ceiling, made a u-turn, and hung down! Eventually she cut off the top of the tree and all year it irritated her and looked so weird!
In her excitement, my friend overestimated the size of her room. I think sometimes in our excitement about the holidays, we might do something similar in overestimating our capacity to do all the extra things we bring into our lives in December. And, as a result we end up exhausted and disappointed instead of satisfied with the result of our holiday season.
Why
I think it’s important to step back and take a look at our why. Why are we adding all these extra things to our lives in December? If most of us get down to it, it’s some version of….because we want to feel happy, create happy memories for our kids and express love for others. Others of us may have religious motives—a time to reflect or worship.
If this is our why, isn’t it ironic that when we add too many extra things to our plate and exceed our capacity, these things intended to bring joy and peace create stress instead of the joy we intended to create? Our best efforts create the exact opposite of what we had hoped.
Today on the podcast I want to cover how to recognize if you are operating from bad math. Then I’ll discuss how to improve your math and how to actually create the joy and peace you’re hoping for during the holiday season.
Bad Math
How do you know if you are doing “bad math” for the holidays? One important indicator can be your emotions. If you feel overwhelmed, obligated, resentful, irritable, stressed out—you may be doing bad math. These type of emotions occur when our expectations are higher than our capacity.
Overwhelm and stress may be caused by trying to do more than we have time or energy for.
Obligation and resentment are caused by committing to do things we don’t really want to do.
Irritability can be caused by trying to do so much that we stop doing things that help us maintain our health—like getting enough sleep, having down time, or exercising.
If we feel emotions like loneliness, disappointment or isolation, we might not have planned enough! We may need to think outwards and create some opportunities to help others, or invite others to celebrate with.
We know we’re getting the math right when we feel more emotions like peace, calm, love, enjoyment, gratitude.
While we can’t increase the number of days we have or hours in the day, we can do 2 things to help improve the emotional math variables we are working with.
- Increase our capacity by increasing our stamina…sleep, exercise, healthy food, journaling etc. Ironically, this is often one of the first things to get cut when we are busy and overwhelmed. These things do take time, but ironically these things allow us to do more and enjoy what we do more! When we schedule ourselves, it’s important to schedule these things first.
- In addition to increasing our capacity, we can also modify our expectations
We can “measure” our capacity, time, energy and budget ahead of time in order to modify our expectations to what we are able to do. What if we thought about our time like a puzzle. There are a certain number of pieces that fit. What if we put in the most important pieces like sleeping, school, work, grocery shopping, cleaning, exercising etc. Realistically, how much time do we actually have left over after the must do’s?
Better Math
I find there are some questions that can help us do better math with our holiday decisions.
What is it I most want to accomplish this holiday season? Why?
Often we get clouded in our thinking relying on what we did last year or what everyone else is doing or what family members expect. We can collect holiday tasks and events like that _______ in Moana that collects junk all over his shell.
It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking, “I have to do so many things.” The truth is you don’t. You don’t have to send Holiday cards, or buy gifts or go to the party. You don’t have to do any of it. You get to choose all of it. But choose carefully, because there are more good things than we can do, give and attend every holiday season.
Sometimes things matter, some don’t. And, some things may matter to you that don’t to your family and vice versa. Different years, different things may matter more or less.
Taking a few minutes to really think through what you really want to do and what you don’t can eliminate some of the unnecessary expectations and stress.
Our family—maybe like some of yours did the Elf on the Shelf for several years. The kids loved it of course and it felt sort of magical. Over the years it evolved into my husband and I writing little letters from the elf in poems to give the kids clues and sometimes it delivered treats. As much as the kids loved it, my husband and I sometimes forgot and found ourselves dragging downstairs late at night or early in the morning to write a poem or hide the elf. We started to dread the elf. And, we noticed the excitement from the kids about the elf started to wane as well.
This year, my kids started asking about the elf in November. But as my husband and I really thought about what I wanted to accomplish this year, we decided in might be time to retire that tradition and use the time and energy to do other things. We wanted to create a spirit of service and thinking outward this year. And, we wanted to reduce the stress in the evenings so he and I could enjoy spending time together.
So, this year we decided to give the kids a chocolate advent calendar with a small service calendar attached. Before they ate the chocolate they would do a small service for someone. We held a fun “Light the World” dinner on December 1st and talked about some of our religious beliefs about the holiday season. We talked about how each of them can help others. Our fun this year has been wonderful—it has been less of squeels and excitement and more of thoughtful satisfaction as girls have made each other’s beds, called our great grandparents, helped our neighbors and done other small services. And, my husband and I have been less tired and less stressed and we’ve had more energy to plan other fun, magical things for our kids like attending the Nutcracker, designing a fun baking themed Christmas tree and other things.
Taking time to stop and consider what you want to do and why, can help make sure that the outcome of your effort yields the result you really want.
What will I need to cut out to fit in this new stuff?
Once you’ve decided what you want to do, it’s important to be honest with yourself about what you’ll need to cut out in order to fit in the new things. As much as it would be amazing if we could manufacture 4 or 8 more hours in the day, the length of the day is the same during the holiday season as it is other times of the year. We need to do certain things each day to eat, sleep, work, cook etc. In order to add more things into an already full schedule, we need to remove some of the things,
I like to draw the week on a piece of paper and block out the time. What’s left after you’ve put in the essentials? I like to think through what do I usually do with this time, and decide—am I will willing to give this up to put in this other thing?
It’s important to be honest with ourselves about what we’re willing to cut out. Maybe there are lots of hours of TV time we’d rather substitute out for Christmas shopping or party planning. Or we might discover there are only a few hours on the weekend we’d rather simplify and snuggle up with our kids to watch a Christmas movie.
When we add stuff to our routine that we don’t normally do, we will have to take away other things. It’s important to be honest about what need to take away from life to make this thing fit.
I love Christmas cards. In our transient lifestyle, Christmas cards are a fun way to stay connected with people we love from different places we’ve lived. But—Christmas cards take a lot of time—I figure around 10 hours. It takes time to design the card, track down addresses, stamp and address them, and mail them. That means, I may need to cut back on my work a little, or address cards instead of watching a show with my husband, or I might even need to let the laundry or dishes go some days to get it done. As I look at these trade-offs, I’ve decided this particular trade-off it worth it to me. However other trade offs might not be.
When we find that things don’t fit, we can decide if we’re willing to cut them out, simplify them, or get creative and find ways to incorporate these things into our holiday plans. Growing up our family put up elaborate lights outside our home. But, my husband I decided—we move so much, it’s not our thing. On Christmas Eve, we used to do a big dinner, but we decided our kids would be thrilled doing a simple Shepherd’s dinner or homemade pizzas.
Can I own my decisions?
Once you’ve made your decision about what to keep and what to cut, it can be easy to second guess ourselves. Maybe your family decided not to go to a community party in order to simplify the season and make time for what you did want to do. However, when it comes time for the party and people ask why you aren’t going or you see your kids feeling sad they are missing out, you might begin to doubt yourself. You might think, “Maybe I should go to the party,” or “I probably should have gone to that party after all.” Our brains are so tricky. When we look at things in context it might make sense that the party doesn’t fit in with our goals for the holiday season. But in the moment the disappointment of others may cloud the vision.
This is a great chance to get your own back. Of course you will feel a bit like you are missing out. But, when we second guess ourselves we add all sorts of negative drama. We can remind ourselves that we would be missing out either way. We either miss out on the party, or we miss out on the family time we had prioritized.
This year, our church asked my husband and I to plan our congregation’s party. We knew it would take some time, but we wanted to contribute and provide an opportunity to gather and for people to be able to celebrate the holiday.
We created a simple plan and had a wonderful committee who worked hard to help it come together. But as might have been expected it was much more complicated and took a lot more time than we had planned for. In addition, there were lots of different opinions about the party that complicated things. There were lots of moments I thought, I don’t want to do this!! I had to go back and get my own back and say—“I don’t want to, but I do. I’m choosing to do this, even though it’s hard.”
Regardless of what we choose, owning our decision helps us enjoy our choices so much more than second guessing ourselves.
Conclusion
Today we’ve talking about the holiday season and math. Sometimes with good intentions we think we can fit more things into a holiday season than there is time for. We talked about how this often backfires. The whole reason we want to do these things is to enjoy the season, enjoy others, and help others feel loved. When there is too much however, we often end up feeling stressed, frustrated and resentful and accomplishing the opposite of our intentions.
We discussed the power of increasing our stamina so we can handle more by making sure sleep, and exercise and nutrition are all a priority. And, we discussed managing our expectations so that they are realistic. We talked about 3 questions we can ask ourselves.
1. What do I want to accomplish this season? Why?
2. What will I have to cut out to do those?
3. Can I own my own decision?
Steven Covey said, “Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality.”
We minimize the disappointment when we adjust our expectations. Realistic expectations, higher stamina and loving ourselves regardless are a recipe for a magical holiday season.
Expat Exit Strategy
Take a minute and list out the things you want to do this holiday season. Then look at your schedule. What will you have to give up to fit these things in? Is it worth it? If so, what will you remind yourself when you doubt your decision?