The Power in Motion Podcast

118 - Holiday Self Care Series #3: How to Reduce Holiday Overwhelm

• Kim Hagle • Episode 118

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Do you find yourself caught in the whirlwind of holiday frenzy, striving to create the perfect festive experience? Do you notice the strikingly similar patterns between this seasonal hustle and the diet cycle as you grapple for validation from others? We are here to tell you that your self-worth is not, and should not be, tied to the opinions of others. It's high time we all prioritized self-care during this joyous season.

Imagine a holiday season where you're not overwhelmed or stressed. This is possible when you develop a deep sense of self-acceptance and focus on what truly matters to you. We share our thoughts on how to redefine your holidays centered around your values and the essential things in life. By asking, "What matters?" you can streamline your priorities and navigate the season without the usual frenzy. 

Finally, we delve into the importance of self-care during the holidays. Reflecting on personal experiences, we underscore the need to believe in your own worth and choose how to spend your time and energy wisely. As we wrap up this eventful year and head into the holiday season, let's focus on making it a time of joy and meaningful connections. This episode challenges you to redefine your holidays, make cherished memories, and remember - you are enough! So, tune in to this heartfelt holiday special on the Power in Motion podcast and let's prioritize taking care of ourselves as we bid farewell to another year.

About the Host

Kim Hagle (she/her)  is Certified Personal Trainer, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Body Image Coach and founder of Radiant Vitality Wellness. 

Through mindset and movement coaching she helps women heal their relationship with food and exercise while disconnecting their worth from their weight, so they can feel healthy, happy and confident in the body they have.  

New Here? Join our exclusive email community: Embrace Your Radiance is my weekly email series that helps women overcome feeling limited by their body. Each week you'll receive exclusive coaching tips to help you feel healthy, happy and confident no matter what the scale says. As a subscriber, you'll be notified when new podcast episodes drop and will also be the first to hear about all of my free and paid offers. Emails come out every Sunday at 7 pm.  

Want to feel good in your body without focusing on weight?  Register for our 5 day mini training course. For just $27, you'll receive one short video and worksheet each day for 5 days that will help get started with the non-diet approach and  feeling better in and about your body.

Ready to take the next step?  Book a free consultation call to discuss how coaching can help you reach your goals.

Let’s stay in touch! Kim is on Instagram and Facebook @radiantvitalitywellness.  

Disclaimer.  The information contained in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice.  Always consult a health care professional about your unique needs.


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Speaker 1:

Hey friends and welcome back to the Power In Motion podcast. This is episode 118 and part three in our holiday self-care series, and today we're talking all about how to reduce holiday overwhelm. Today's episode is gonna be really helpful if you're the type of person who tends to take on more than you can chew over the holiday season and find yourself doing all of the things cooking, baking, attending all the functions, participating in all the traditions essentially overextending yourself to create a magical experience for everyone else, to the point where you're needing a holiday to recover from the holiday except that there isn't one and then starting the new year feeling depleted and exhausted and like you're beginning that new year on the wrong foot, which I think is one of the main reasons why a lot of us turn to diets and exercise programs at the start of the year is because we feel so depleted and we've gotten so far away from our own routines and our own self-care habits that we almost crave the structure and discipline that a diet has to offer and as well as the renewed focus on our nutrition and our movement practice. And though we know that restrictive eating plans and punitive exercise programs aren't sustainable and they don't work in the long term. I do identify with the desire to wanna return to your usual self-care habits. What I'm suggesting is how about we just avoid that whole overwhelm and that whole neglecting ourselves in the first place, so that we don't have to go down that road that we know is not gonna work out in the long term?

Speaker 1:

And I say this with all of the love because, believe me when I say I was the queen of overdoing it at the holidays, I love the holidays. I really, really, truly do. I have fond memories of so many traditions growing up. I love baking, I love making crafts, I love all of the holiday things. And also this previous version of me didn't know where to draw the line. I was like Martha Stewart on steroids. So the holidays were what I considered my time to shine. I would make no less than eight or 10 different varieties of cookies and I would bring them to all of the different parties that I attended on nice little trays, all beautifully arranged, and I would love to present that to the hostess and they would love receiving it.

Speaker 1:

I loved making homemade gifts. I would often do that for the kids, teachers, on their coaches and family members. One year I made soaps by hand Other years. I've made soup mixes in jars. I've done bags and other different things on my sewing machine. I loved doing those kinds of things. I loved decorating my house, having a tree full of gifts, all beautifully wrapped with nice big ribbons and bows. Like I did it all, and though I liked doing those things to a certain degree, I felt an immense amount of stress and pressure to do it all and it got to the point where people expected me to bring the tray of cookies and to bring the amazing elaborate dishes to the potluck and to make the homemade gifts. And people loved that. I did that.

Speaker 1:

I received so many compliments and so much praise and so much gratitude and appreciation for the things that I made and the things that I brought and all of the things that I did and that made me really happy, because it felt good to make other people happy right, but along with the joy that I felt from making other people happy, I felt a lot of pressure to do it all. It caused me a lot of stress and overwhelm and it would get in the way of really enjoying the holidays. And though I loved doing all of those things, each year it was beginning to feel more and more like an obligation, like something I had to do, and that if I didn't do it I would be disappointing people. And though I continued to look forward to the holidays, I couldn't ignore the feeling of dread that accompanied the pressure to have to do it all. And though the compliments and gratitude and appreciation that I received for doing these things were really nice and felt really good, there was another side to that, where sometimes my efforts weren't acknowledged and I could feel like all of that hard work was for nothing or that it wasn't appreciated, or what was the point in putting myself through all of that stress and doing all of that hard work if nobody's even going to appreciate it? So it was kind of like a double-edged sword, where I really enjoyed doing these things and I really enjoyed the compliments and making people happy by bringing these things, but it never felt like quite enough and I felt so depleted myself.

Speaker 1:

But the thought of not doing them almost made me feel even more stressed out, because I had thoughts of well, what will people think if I show up to the party without the tray of cookies? Or if I show up at the party with a tray of store-bought cookies? What will people think if I don't make their gift from scratch, if that's what they're used to? And you know what? That fear of what people would think is what kept me on this cycle of holiday burnout for many, many years. It's not unlike the diet cycle, right? That praise and validation that we receive when we attain a certain body size and that fear of what people will think if we regain the weight I mean that's what kept me participating in disordered eating and exercise habits for so many years. And the same pattern was showing up in how I related to the holidays.

Speaker 1:

I really worried that if I let go of some of this stuff, if I stopped doing it all and doing it all perfectly, that people would be disappointed in me or that they would have opinions about me, that they would think that I was lazy or that I didn't care. And I even worried that if I didn't bring the homemade things, that I didn't do all of this stuff, and if they didn't have that to talk about, then what would they talk about? I really thought that I wasn't interesting enough, that people really only valued me because of what I brought to the table. These were the things that I used to believe and what kept me Martha Stewart-ing for far too long. What I know now is that I had my sense of self-worth completely wrapped up in the opinions of others. I found my worth in the praise and compliments that I got from others and in people pleasing and making other people happy. Only then was I able to feel happy myself, except that I wasn't entirely. I was overwhelmed and burnt out and stressed. So it wasn't exactly working. The people pleasing wasn't even giving me the result that I wanted, which was to feel happy and relaxed and like I was enough.

Speaker 1:

And it wasn't until I started working with a coach myself that I realized what was at the root of all of this holiday overwhelm and all of this people pleasing behavior was this core belief that I wasn't valuable and enough just as I am. That's been the main work that I've done in healing my body image and healing my relationship with exercise and food. And then, you know, it's also translated over into other areas of life, and this holiday Martha Stewart in behavior is no exception. Right once I learned and accepted and truly embodied and believed that I am enough, that I'm valuable and worthy just because I exist, just because I'm here on this planet that that is enough. Then I no longer felt the perceived need to validate my worth based on what other people thought of me. That freedom has allowed me to scale back what I do for the holidays and to truly experience the joy and the peace and and all of the memory making and traditions that we experience in the holidays and really take that in without feeling like I have to do it all and create this magical experience for everyone else in order to feel joy myself.

Speaker 1:

So I'll take you through some of the questions that I remember being asked when I first started working with a coach, and these are some questions that you might consider asking yourself if you are someone who also struggles with holiday overwhelm and burnout and feeling like you need to do everything and the thought of doing less causes you to worry about what people will think of you or how you might be judged or what opinions that they might have of you. So the first question is who are you if you're not all of those things? If you're not doing all of those things, who are you apart from what you do? Who are you at your core? And then, secondly, what are you afraid that people will say about you if you don't do it all? And and is it true? Are those judgments that you fear actually true?

Speaker 1:

I know I worried that people would think I didn't care or that I was lazy, that I wasn't thoughtful, and that's absolutely not true. I do care, I'm certainly anything but lazy and I am thoughtful. I had equated doing everything and doing everything from scratch to being thoughtful and being caring. But is that the only way that I can demonstrate thoughtfulness? Is that the only way that I can demonstrate that I care for other people? Absolutely not. I was worried that people wouldn't find me interesting if I didn't bring all of the things that they would have nothing else to talk to me about, if I didn't bring all of my beautiful homemade baked goods and food and crafts and also, that was not true. I was also worried that people would be disappointed in me if I didn't do all of the things, if I didn't participate in all of the traditions, if my elf on the shelf didn't do the wildest, craziest, most exciting things every night, if we didn't watch all of the holiday movies as a family, if we didn't participate in every single holiday tradition, if I didn't show up to every single party and if I didn't make all of these baked goods from scratch, that people would be disappointed in me. And so that leads to the third question is who cares? First of all, is it true that people will be disappointed in you? Probably not. But secondly, who cares?

Speaker 1:

The reason we care so much about disappointing other people is because we don't have our own back. That's a big thing that I learned in coaching and it's a big thing that I help my clients through is to be your own best friend, to be there for yourself even if people are disappointed. Trusting yourself that you're doing enough, that you care enough and that you are enough, even if you don't do it all and even if you're not doing it all, disappoints other people Because, at the end of the day, it's your opinion of yourself that matters most. That's what we call having your own back, is being there for yourself, no matter what other people think of you. It's knowing that you are enough just because you exist, and it's that knowing that you are enough that allows you to break free from the need to people please. You no longer feel that intense need to do everything for everyone else to gain all of that praise and appreciation and gratitude and validation, because you're validating yourself. You know that you're enough, no matter what you do or don't do or how much you give.

Speaker 1:

And here's what changes when you know that is that you might find yourself still doing a lot of the same things, like I still love to bake and I still love to cook and I still love to make homemade things, but I do a whole lot less and I'm able to pick and choose the things that are most important, like, as an example, in our family, one of the traditions that we've done since the kids were very, very little and we always will do like I imagine we'll still do this when I have grandchildren someday is we I make homemade gingerbread men from scratch, and then on the last day of school, the kids all come home and we decorate them, we fill them with icing and candy and like we play the Christmas music and everybody just sits around the table and laughs and tell stories. My niece always comes for that day too. It's a very, very special tradition. That one is one that we'll always keep, but I no longer feel the need to bake 12 different types of cookies and squares to bring to every holiday event that I go to. I'm more than happy to stop at the bakery and pick up those things and take that.

Speaker 1:

That's the type of thing that changes when you know that you're enough. Right, you still love doing the things that you love to do, but you don't feel the need to do it all. You don't feel the pressure and stress and there's no need to lead yourself into overwhelm Because your worth isn't hanging on the opinion of everyone else. So that's my first big tip for you is in order to free yourself from holiday overwhelm, your work is in developing your sense of self and developing the belief that you are enough as you are, no matter how much you do, no matter what you look like, no matter how much money you spend on Christmas gifts. You are enough as you are. And then my second tip for you to help you reduce holiday overwhelm. Stress is a very simple but very powerful question, and that is simply what matters. It's two simple words, but it has so much power, and I have to give the credit for this question to my good coach, friend, uimea Guta, who's been on the podcast a number of times in the past, and this is a question I got from her that I honestly come back to over and over again in my life.

Speaker 1:

Asking what matters forces you to be honest about where you're spending your energy and your time and what's the best use of your time and energy. When I ask myself what matters, does it matter if I have 10 dozen different homemade cookies or squares? Or does it matter that we make the homemade gingerbread and the children have that experience of decorating that every year? Does it matter that I have the 10 dozen different homemade squares or does it matter that I'm calm and present and enjoying? Does it matter if I do everything and everyone compliments me? If I'm completely overwhelmed, does it really matter what others think of me at all? When I think about that now, I'm less worried about disappointing and I'm a lot more concerned about making sure that those who are closest to me feel loved and have my presence. Asking what matters causes you to define your values.

Speaker 1:

So when you think about a holiday that you want to look back on and be proud of what is most important to you, asking what matters is a really great way to prioritize those things that are most important for you to spend your time, energy and resources mental, financial, whatever resources on. Maybe that looks like picking the top five things that matter most. When you think about an ideal holiday, you're top five and you put them at the top of the list and then your energy and your resources go to making sure that those happen and that they are done well and that you're bringing your best to those things that are most important. And then whatever is left are our want tos or can dos, or, if I have time, if I have energy, if I have money, I'll fill in the gaps with the rest. And maybe, when you're considering what matters, you're asking for the opinions of those folks who are closest to you you know, if you live with other people, if you have a family asking each of them what's the most important holiday tradition to you, what's your favorite thing about the holiday, what do you remember most about the holidays? And then each person picks their most important thing and that goes on your list of what matters. And that way, when you feel the pressure to do it all, you're able to bring yourself back and focus on those things that truly matter the most.

Speaker 1:

When I ask myself what matters most, it's less about what I do and what I make and what I bring, and more about how we as a family feel. It's most important to me that we have a memorable holiday, that we're happy, that there's joy, that we're giving to others, that we're resting, that we're taking care of ourselves and each other, and at the end of the day, that's how I define what matters. That's where my values lie is in how we feel, and then I choose my actions. I choose what I do based on those values. I still bake, I still cook, I still make some homemade gifts when I have the time and energy and capacity to do those things. I do a whole lot less of those things than I used to. I pick and choose and I spread my energy around.

Speaker 1:

But here is the most important part of this being able to honestly answer what matters first requires you to have your own back and to truly know and believe and embody that you're worthy and valuable, no matter how much you do. And if that belief isn't there yet, that's where coaching can be so valuable, and I am more than happy to be that person for you if you're needing support in increasing your level of belief in your own worth. Because once you know that, once you truly embody that belief, then you're worth no longer hinges on the compliments and praise and pleasing of other people, and that's what frees you up to choose what you want to do with your time and energy over the holidays, what traditions you want to engage in, and really giving the best of you to those things that you choose to do, and releasing that sense of obligation and have to and need to. So those are my two tips for you to help you get out of holiday overwhelm and holiday burnout is develop your sense that you're enough, that you're worthy as you are, and having your own back and asking that very powerful question what matters? Now, with all of that said I mentioned, I continue to ask myself the same question all of the time what matters?

Speaker 1:

And in looking at my schedule over the next few weeks and in the capacity and energy that I have, and having my own back and knowing that my needs matter too and that self-care is important to me, there are some things in my own personal life coming up in the next few weeks that are gonna need my attention and I don't have the capacity that I thought I did to do all of the things. I'm gonna have to scale back on some of my business activities and save some energy for myself. So, with that said, this holiday self-care series was to be a six-part series, but it's now gonna be a three-part series. I'm gonna take some time off away from the podcast to care for myself and prioritize some things in my personal life that need my attention. We're gonna finish on this note today, which I actually think is a really good one, and I think what we learned here today is really what we need to know when it comes to holiday self-care and prioritizing our own well-being. It is all about saving some of that love that we so generously pour out to everybody else for ourselves, and if you take what we learned in this episode and apply it to your eating and your movement practice and your body image, grounding in having your own back and asking what matters is enough to see through the holiday season.

Speaker 1:

I will be back with new episodes in the new year, but the main way that I'm going to be communicating with my audience for the remainder of the year is through my weekly email series. So if you're not a part of that yet, then I encourage you to go and join my email list, and you can get there by going to radiantvitalityca slash email, and I send out at least one email a week, and I'll continue to send coaching and tips to help you prioritize your self care over the holiday season. So make sure that you're subscribed to get those, and that's also the place where you're going to be the first to hear about any of my new offers. Free or paid coaching services, group programs All of those things are first announced through my email list, so that's where we'll stay in touch for the remainder of the year.

Speaker 1:

All right, so I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season, whatever it is that you celebrate. I hope that it's filled with so much joy and so much connection with those that you love, so many memories that are made. I hope that you take what you've learned here and apply it and care for yourselves well as we navigate the holiday season, and I look forward to seeing you back here on the Power in Motion podcast in the new year. Be well, my friends.

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Kim Hagle

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