Your Holiday Thrive-al Toolkit | ep133
Oh, the holidays. It’s honestly my favorite time of the year! However, I know this can also be an overwhelming and stressful time. It can leave us wondering how to survive the holidays.
Although this is truly the most wonderful time of year — the Mariah Carey of it all, the peppermint bark, re-watching Love Actually! — I know this can be a time where we have so many more demands on our time and energy. We’re having to spend more time with family, friends, and colleagues than we’re used to (or that we would like to).
So, in honor of the holidays and I am sharing 4 essential tools to help you thrive during the holiday season instead of just surviving and getting through the holidays.
Let’s talk about how we can thrive during the holiday season.
*Before we start, if you find your self care goes out the window during the holidays, I created a FREE 7-day guided journal with short and easy daily prompts to help you go deep. Click below to download it today!
The Prickly Porcupine
I want to share a parable with you. It was an incredibly cold winter and the porcupines had an amazing idea. They thought, “If we can all huddle together, we can keep warm with our collective body heat!” So, they decided to do this and their idea worked.
In the evenings, the porcupines would gather together and keep one another warm. However, as they were porcupines, they were also pricking and pocking one another, wounding the porcupine next to them.
So, while the warmth was wonderful, this pricking and wounding was really uncomfortable. They began to think that their wonderful idea was actually pretty terrible. They thought, “We can’t be this close to each other. We have to distance ourselves.” So, instead of huddling together, they kept their distance.
But, since it was so cold, some of the porcupines unfortunately started to die.
It became clear that they couldn’t be so distant from one another and that, in order to survive, they would have to deal with the discomfort of being poked and pricked by their companions. The porcupines learned to live with the little wounds caused by their closeness to their friends and family. They learned that in order to stay warm, they would have to put up with certain things.
We have a fundamental human need to be close to one another and connected, but that closeness can often cause us pain. I love my family, but damn if they don’t get on my nerves — especially during the holidays. The little porcupine needles that prick us end up being what our mothers says, what our sibling chooses to do, or how a friend doesn’t show up for us.
Being in community can be a beautiful thing, but it can also be triggering, difficult, and overwhelming at times. So, I want to introduce you to my Holiday Thrive-al Toolkit: 4 tools that will allow you to thrive instead of just survive during the holiday season.
The Holiday Thrive-al Toolkit
Tool 1: Non-Negotiables
During this time of year, I notice that the daily routines that help ground me can totally go out the window. These are the things that help to nourish me, like my daily walk.
During the holidays, it’s important to remember that our Non-Negotiables are foundational to our mental and spiritual well being and are what allow us to be our best selves during the holidays.
ACTION STEP: Think of your 2 to 3 non-negotiables.
What makes you feel grounded and nourished? Think of yourself as a little flower or plant. Imagine that, in your pot, there’s the little plastic insert that tells others how to properly take care of you. Do you need lots of sunlight? Maybe you need lots of water? Or daily meditation? What are the essential things that allow your plant or flower to blossom and bloom?
NOTE: Be realistic.
If you do a daily hour-long walk, maybe instead do a 30-minute walk while you’re home with your family. If you have a 30-minute morning routine, do 15 minutes. Remember that a little is a lot. Don’t make perfect the enemy of good.
When you figure out your non-negotiables, honor them. Don’t make your non-negotiables a request. We aren’t going to allow anyone or even ourselves to talk us out of honoring what we need to thrive.
Tool 2: Figure out your values
Decide how you want to feel this holiday season. Find the 3 to 5 feelings or values you want to create, cultivate for the next 6 weeks and really prioritize them.
During the holidays, we can easily fall victim to our expectations of how things should be and we can lose sight of what’s right in front of us.
I’ll never forget the first Christmas I had with my husband. I was so excited and I wanted to make it the most perfect Christmas of all time. I was going to make the perfect dinner, we would have perfect Christmas music playing, and the lights from the Christmas tree would shine and glisten just perfectly.
So, I’m in the kitchen preparing this perfect feast and our sink clogs up. My husband makes a run for some Drano and pours it into the sink. Nothing happens. I decide to Google a DIY that would totally fix this.
Online says to use baking soda and vinegar. Great! This will fix everything. I go to pour the vinegar into the drain and, I swear, I had the vinegar in hand and it began to slowly drip down into the drain when my husband came in and looked at me wide-eyed, “What are you doing!? Drano and vinegar make a poisonous gas and we could die!”
Y’all. I almost poisoned us on our very first Christmas together. We began running around, opening all the windows, turning on fans. We even made these makeshift masks out of pants. (If you’re on my email list, I’m going to send that picture of us to you.)
Here we were, on this perfect day, running around freezing and trying not to die. And all of a sudden, we both started laughing. How ridiculous was this situation? But, it was perfect. When I look back on that moment, the 3 feelings or values I would’ve wanted to feel were connected, playful, and joyful. And that’s what we were — running around the house being total goofs who were trying not to die.
ASK YOURSELF:
How do I want to feel?
If I was to have the most incredible holiday season ever, how would I be feeling?
What are the feelings I would be having during that time?
Tool 3: The Sacred Pause
The Sacred Pause is a Buddhist principle. It is the brief moment that exists between a trigger and how we either react or respond to said trigger.
When we React to a trigger, it’s often unconscious. This can look like yelling at your mother or having a meltdown in the grocery store when none of the ingredients you need for your recipe are in stock.
When we Respond to a trigger, it’s very conscious and intentional. A response is only possible with The Sacred Pause. It’s essential that we take a moment to gather and anchor ourselves so we can then decide and chose how we want to respond.
Now, if you find yourself in a moment where someone who has said something rude, offensive, or they’ve crossed a boundary and you really want to snap back, here are some phrases you can use after taking The Sacred Pause in those moments.
These come from Kami Orange—a self-professed Boundary Coach—who you can find on TikTok or Instagram:
Hmm… what an odd thing to say out loud OR What an odd thing to say.
I’m not sure what answer you’re looking for with that question.
Oh wow. That is a really personal question to ask someone.
I’m not sure why that’s funny. Would you explain that joke to me?
Tool 4: Self-Compassion
Yes, good ole self compassion. I’m ending with this one because honestly, we are going to fudge it up. We are going to mess up this holiday season. We are going to react instead of pausing and responding. We are going to lose sight of our feelings and values. We are just going to mess it up.
So, having self-compassion at the heart of all of this is going to be so incredibly helpful for you to truly thrive, love.
Self Compassion is the ability to be kind to yourself, to be patient with yourself, to have grace for yourself when you don’t do things the way that you had intended to do them.
The holiday season is all about love, joy, and being kind. And that kindness, and joy, and love is not reserved just for other people. It’s for ourselves, as well.
How can you be kind and loving towards yourself in every moment this holiday season?
Everything we talked about here today is for you, love. It’s all for you to take the best care of you.
Did you know that each podcast episode comes with free guided journal prompts?
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If you enjoyed this, you’ll also enjoy these posts & podcast episodes:
Self-Care for the Holidays: Setting Boundaries: The holiday season asks a lot of us and often it can be hard to thrive alongside all its demands. In this episode Shirin talks about one of the most important pillars of self-care during the holiday season: boundaries. Learn how to create healthy boundaries for yourself and if all else fails, Shirin shares her #1 script to asking for what you need.
The 3 Pillars of Self-Compassion: The number one tool for thriving during any difficult circumstance is Self-Compassion. It’s something that we easily give to others but struggle to do for ourselves. But if we can learn to be self compassionate during the holiday season then this can truly be the most wonderful time of the year. In this episode learn what the 3 pillars of self compassion are and how you can cultivate them in your life.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to listen to your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.