How to Nurture Your Relationships During the Bustle of the Holiday Season
Welcome to another week of the What You Do Matters Podcast! This week I’m getting you into that holiday spirit. We’ve had out first snow here in Cleveland now, so I feel like we are just ready to be in full on holiday mode. In this week’s episode I’m going to tell you what has worked for me on how to plan for the holidays and see everybody that I want to spend time with, without allowing myself to fall in overwhelm or stress. I am going to help you plot a plan to see everyone you want to see and nurture the relationships that need to be nurtured, so that you don’t get to the other end of the holiday season feeling disappointed and burnt out. This time of year can be a time where we see friends that we haven’t seen in a while and spend that extra time with family but sometimes it ends up becoming a stressful time of year instead of what it should be; relaxing and joy filled. We’re not quite there yet with the holidays but we are right on the cusp of it, so you still have time to map out your plan and really get ahead of this so that you can experience all of the wonderful things that this season brings. Let’s dive in!
To listen to the full episode click here.
Step number one: Find Clarity
Before you jump into all of the logistics you need to find clarity. Instead I would recommend getting really, really honest with yourself on who it is that you want to spend time with the most in this season. Which relationship or relationship group do you feel like you have not been nurturing or that you love to have time with? It really starts with that self reflection.
If you’re drawing a blank, start to consider who you really miss. Have you been finding yourself saying, “I really miss my grandparents,” or “I really miss my best friend from college.”
This is where I would recommend that you do a relationship audit. I've created my own little relationship audit that I've used for myself and I'm going to walk you through it now. It consists of four different questions. Now the key here is that you don't want to just think of these questions. I want you to treat this as a journal exercise so you can deeply reflect on it.
So number one, the first question that you want to ask yourself is who have you been craving time with and why? And if you're not getting an answer there, reframe it for yourself and say, or who have you heard yourself saying you miss?
Question number two is if you had two extra hours to spend with someone this week, who would it be with and what would you do? This is a great question because it really shows your intentionality, like how do you want to actually spend time with a person?
Question number three is which of your relationship groups have you been neglecting? And we all feel this, we all know if there's a particular relationship group that we know we need to be spending more time on, whether that's more time with our kids, more time with our significant others, more time with our friends, like maybe haven't had a chance to text our friends back in a meaningful way.
And then the last question is how would your life change or how would your feelings change if you cultivated more connection with one of the individuals or groups that you mentioned in the previous questions?
Next Step: Determine your non-negotiables
Once you’ve done your relationship audit and you know who you need to prioritize this year, you need to identify your non-negotiables. After we identify our non-negotiables we will then pair it up with our significant others but I think it's really important that do this on your own first. The reason I say this is that sometimes when we are in a longterm relationship, I've found that we start losing our own individual voice if we don't make sure that we are having that time on our own to do that independent thinking and say what really is important to me? From a relationship side it's really easy to get into that group thing. And in this instance in an in so many instances, it is beyond important to have your own independent thinking, feeling and perspective on things. Once you have that, you can then bring it together. To me that's really the power of a relationship is having that independent thinking, feeling perspective and then having each of the individuals in the relationship come together with those unique perspectives, open each other up and then also learn from each other.
Next Step: Communication with your family and friends
So this is where you then are able to communicate with your family and your friends and say, “Hey, what do you have on your calendar? What are your plans for this time? What are you thinking? Send me all the information so that I can see what lines up with my calendar.” Communicate with your other family members. At this point you are only getting the information, you’re not committing to anything.
Next Step: Plot your plan
You're going to plot your plan. Now you have all your information, you have your own own information on who it is you want to spend time with, you know your non-negotiables and you know your significant others non-negotiables. You also know everybody's plans. Take all of the information you have, and decide what you’re going to do.
Next Step: Tell everyone what you’re doing
Once you have that plan mapped out and it's time to then communicate outward to your family and your friends what you've decided on. You cannot be wishy washy. This is what you're doing. You're very clear. You're not saying, I think I'm doing this on Thanksgiving. No, this is what the plan is. This is what's happening. And here's the thing guys, not everyone is going to be happy with your plotted plan. You know why? Because it isn't their plotted plan. It's your plotted plan and everybody has a different vision of what the holidays are going to look like and how they want it to go down.
Last Step: Enjoy it
The final step in all of this is to let it go and really enjoy it. You're not going to agonize over somebody being upset with you for a choice you made. You're going to feel confident in that decision and when you really enjoy it and when you stand strong and you stand confident in the decision that you made, your family and your friends will most likely start to follow suit. It's one year of wishy washy. It's when they don't really know what you're doing that it then causes confusion and hurt feelings and you know, misconceptions. But when you're really clear and you feel confident in the plan that you've made, they're going to see that and they're going to understand that.
So there you have it! Those are my tips on how to plan for the holidays without becoming stressed or overwhelmed. I hope this episode helps you to find more joy and peace around the holiday season and if it does, share it with a friend. If you think this episode will resonate with someone in your life, copy and paste the link to this episode into a text message. It’s a great way to support the podcast and get these conversations into the ears that need them. Thank you so much for listening and for your continued support.
If you want to follow along on social, you can find me on Instagram at @brittanyrneish.