Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / Holiday Bonus Episode 1: Simplify the Season

Transcript

Holiday Bonus Episode 1: Simplify the Season · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joy Living Home podcast. If you are new around here,
• 0:04
  you are tuning in for just a series of special episodes.
• 0:08
  I am doing five bonus holiday episodes, one each day this week.
• 0:15
  If you're listening in real time, I started Monday, December 8th.
• 0:19
  I am just throwing out there some procrastinator Christmas ideas.
• 0:25
  If you look back through my podcast list, gosh, years ago now,
• 0:31
  I did a 12 Days of Christmas and I still stand by that.
• 0:36
  Those were a good series of podcasts to just sort of think through Christmas
• 0:41
  with you, make sure we hit all the points that things weren't forgotten and
• 0:46
  how to sort of walk ourselves through.
• 0:47
  This year, because it's already December 8th, I am feeling a crunch this year
• 0:54
  in a different kind of way.
• 0:55
  And I thought if I'm feeling like this, maybe some others are as well.
• 1:00
  So I am just zeroing in what I'm going to call the five golden rings.
• 1:05
  It's a shortened version of my 12 days of Christmas.
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  And we are going to just hit the
• 1:11
  most important five to make sure
• 1:15
  that for me it's Christmas for whatever
• 1:17
  holiday you may celebrate now that you
• 1:21
  you get the key things taken care of because at the end of the day just doing
• 1:28
  the what's necessary and not all of the extra that just adds stress to our lives
• 1:34
  may be what's really going to make this Christmas the most important or most memorable,
• 1:39
  or it really helps us zero down and realize that simplifying is the best.
• 1:45
  It's not about you doing the bare minimum. It's about you doing what's most important.
• 1:51
  So with that in mind, on these five days, we're going to zero in on what I think would be.
• 1:59
  Those five things that if we hit, we've covered it all.
• 2:02
  So ring one, and instead of thinking of like when you throw a stone into a pond
• 2:08
  and the ripples go outwards, we're going to start with the biggest ripple and work our way in.
• 2:14
  So the biggest ripple is the overarching plan.
• 2:18
  So today we are going to zero in on our non-linear pending list.
• 2:23
  And I speak about this over and over again because it's actually a great way
• 2:27
  for us to organize our scattered ADHD brains.
• 2:32
  We need to dump everything out of it so that we can even pick through what's important.
• 2:38
  So if you're listening right now, you can do this in real time with me.
• 2:42
  Grab a blank sheet of paper and start dumping everything that you had hoped
• 2:47
  to do this Christmas out of your brain and get it all down.
• 2:50
  Whether that's decorating and you can spring off of that, decorating inside,
• 2:55
  decorating outside, decorating the tree, the mantle, the table,
• 2:58
  the staircase, whatever. Get it all out of your head.
• 3:02
  If you're like, oh, I got to get my gift list together, and you start jotting
• 3:07
  down family and then extended family and then community people and teachers
• 3:13
  and helpers and whatever,
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  you can start dumping all of that down in your brain.
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  Pause at any point here and see that thought through.
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  Then get into events.
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  Look at each of your kids' school calendars.
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  How many holiday parties have you been invited to?
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  How many events of like an evening musical or practice schedules or practice
• 3:37
  parties or sport team parties or church parties or all the parties that hit this time of year.
• 3:44
  Whether you're trying to do any kind of special food or treats that are special
• 3:50
  this time of year, they're like, I need to bake the cookies and decorate the
• 3:54
  cookies and have the stuff for the cookie party.
• 3:57
  And I was invited to the appetizer party and the progressive dinner and I'm
• 4:03
  supposed to make the salad and whatever.
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  Get all of those thoughts with any dates.
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  Star it out. Get it on this piece of paper. Then take a moment to pause and
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  ask yourself, are there any traditions or meaningful moments that I was hoping
• 4:21
  to get out of this Christmas?
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  Whether that's adopting an angel off of an angel tree,
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  or making sure you know when the kid's Christmas nativity event is at church,
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  or whether it's, you know,
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  the elf on a shelf tradition, whatever things that you do that you want to make
• 4:42
  sure don't get forgotten,
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  get all of it out of your head, okay?
• 4:47
  Now, this can be scary, and you're like, great, I was thinking this was going
• 4:52
  to be helpful, and now I'm seeing everything all in print and now I'm actually extra panicking.
• 4:58
  Take a breath. Now, the beauty of this being a non-linear pending list is that
• 5:07
  pending means it's just pending a decision.
• 5:11
  So we can decide that a lot of this isn't necessary.
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  So let's slow down and take a step back. Let's think first about decorating.
• 5:20
  Look at everything you wrote down that you wanted to decorate.
• 5:23
  And now let's cross through anything that isn't necessary. When it boils down to it.
• 5:29
  If we have a tree, if we put stockings up, and again, I'm going to lean into
• 5:34
  Christmas because that's what I know best, but you know what this is for your holiday.
• 5:39
  Maybe you throw some lights in the window or some lights outside,
• 5:44
  something to make you feel festive within the neighborhood. If that's important
• 5:48
  to you, it doesn't have to be.
• 5:50
  One plug-in blow-up in your yard if that's something you enjoy.
• 5:54
  Your outdoor is decorated with that one plug-in blow-up.
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  Whatever feels right about decorating, pick those bare minimums,
• 6:04
  and I'm going to call bare minimums the actual important things,
• 6:09
  not all the extra stress fluff. Okay, get that down.
• 6:13
  When you look at gifts, let's zero in on the core family. Okay.
• 6:20
  Those that you want not to feel forgotten in any extended family.
• 6:24
  And then if you are doing people in the community, just decide on one type of
• 6:29
  gift card at one stop or one set of,
• 6:35
  I'm going to bake cookies anyway because everybody loves my cookies and we're
• 6:38
  going to give cookies to all of those community people with a nice card.
• 6:42
  Whatever your thing is, do the same thing on repeat so you don't have to think
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  about, oh, well, there's this teacher and that teacher now.
• 6:51
  One size fits all. We're going to make that a one size fits all gift.
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  In the event situation, go ahead and get those down in your calendar.
• 7:00
  Star and bold and highlight anything that you are supposed to bring to those
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  things so that you don't feel stressed out.
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  If that's your kid has to be wearing a green shirt or your kid has to be in,
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  a certain, any kind of special attire that you know, oh, they've got to be in
• 7:22
  a dress and they had this Christmas dress last year, but it's probably not going to fit this year.
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  Do I need to address that? Like handle whatever you need to make sure is on
• 7:30
  hand to fit them for what they need for those events.
• 7:33
  As far as the special food or treats go, if you are not famous for your homemade
• 7:38
  cookies, then maybe you grab the break and bake this year.
• 7:42
  They can be decorated for sanded just as well as a homemade one.
• 7:46
  You can even take any of that sugar cookie dough, roll it out,
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  and still let them do cookie cutter cooking if that makes sense in your family
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  or that's a big deal for you as a tradition.
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  And then as far as the meaning and the traditions are concerned,
• 8:00
  really stop and say, actually, I'm going to give some attention to this and that's okay.
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  That's kind of the stuff that you want to have be more important.
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  And then start striking through all the stuff you're not going to do.
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  That's going to feel really good.
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  You can even strike it through with a big check mark because the check is that
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  you've decided not to do it.
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  Check this year I'm not decorating banisters. Check this year I am not decorating
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  anything on the outside of the house.
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  Check this year I am not worrying about gifts for people who are never going
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  to remember if I actually gave to them.
• 8:38
  I just always felt like I had to. Checks to these events that you're like, you know what?
• 8:43
  I don't have to go to all the extracurricular events. I can pick one that means a lot.
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  There will be other people there. Their house will seem full.
• 8:51
  They're not going to miss you.
• 8:53
  If this is a year, you cannot pull it off. So the goal today is just the plan.
• 9:00
  Now, sometimes we make the plan and we start checking things off and we start
• 9:04
  circling and highlighting the things that are actually going to happen.
• 9:06
  And we get a little initiation of dopamine and we get some movement and we get
• 9:11
  excited about getting something going.
• 9:14
  If that's you, then lean into it. If you're like, okay, what do I feel drawn most to do today?
• 9:21
  I'm gonna feel so much better if I clear out that space where the tree is gonna go and put the tree up.
• 9:28
  Yay, go for it. If that's what you're, don't stop yourself because I said today is just the plan.
• 9:33
  If today is a day when you start rolling, follow that roll.
• 9:39
  Don't put the brakes on just because. If you've got moments while kids are still
• 9:43
  at school, I want you to be able to milk them.
• 9:46
  If that means you get in your car right now and you go, I'm going to go find stocking stuffers.
• 9:51
  And while you're finding stocking stuffers, you discovered you found some cute
• 9:54
  teacher gifts. If you were out and you also saw something on your kiddos list,
• 9:59
  grab whatever you can grab while you're out.
• 10:03
  Don't overthink it. Don't overstress yourself about it.
• 10:06
  Just lean into the motion and the motivation that you're feeling.
• 10:10
  If you are antsy and you're just like, I can't do anything that seems real yet,
• 10:16
  but I'm just antsy and I want to do something, clear out a little bit of your entry.
• 10:21
  Clear out the space where you're all going to gather and sit down and open gifts. Yes.
• 10:25
  Clean up a little bit of space in the kitchen so that you could bake some cookies later if you wanted to.
• 10:30
  Anything that is drawing you in, I want you to quit resisting that because it's
• 10:36
  not in the right order and it's not the way it should be done.
• 10:40
  We're going to get rid of all of that. The whole goal of the non-linear part
• 10:45
  of this pending list is that you can go in any direction at any time and still
• 10:50
  be able to scratch something out.
• 10:52
  Nothing takes priority over anything else. And so you can actually lean into
• 10:58
  the interest that your brain is trying to get going.
• 11:02
  And that interest and that motion is going to carry you through more and more and more of this list.
• 11:07
  So I hope that's helpful. If you are interested, I'm going to go live in my
• 11:14
  free community today at 2 p.m. Eastern.
• 11:17
  And I'm going to work on the pending list with you. If it's something you want
• 11:22
  a little guidance on, I'll give a demo.
• 11:25
  I've set my alarm. I will go in there.
• 11:28
  The way you get to that group, if you're not already a part of it, is you type in bit.ly.
• 11:37
  Slash joylovinghomecommunity, and you arrive at that.
• 11:41
  It's a free Facebook community, and I will let you in. And if you can't watch at whatever 2 p.m.
• 11:47
  Eastern is in your time zone, you can watch the replay. it will be there.
• 11:51
  Hope that helps and I'll hopefully see you then.
• 11:56
  Until tomorrow when we cover our next golden ring, continue to choose joy.