Episode 262: Values-Based Holiday Season
Hello, welcome back to the show. You’re listening to episode number 262: Values-Based Holiday Season.
How are you FEELING this season?
I feel like this is an idea that I dance around every year at this same time. When we’re heading into the end of the year with Halloween and Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Diwali, all the different holidays that pop up right here in this last quarter of the year.
There is sort of a buzzing energy in the air and it kind of crosses the line like wavers back and forth between an excitement, enthusiastic energy, and a sort of anxious, overwhelmed energy. You know, depending on the day and the circumstance of your life, at any given day, you can kind of vacillate between those emotions. It’s like this very fine line to be on one side or the other.
I’m curious how you’re feeling this year. Are you feeling that high valence, you know, excited and positive emotion? Or are you feeling some of that high valence, excited, maybe overexcited, stressed out, a little bit frustrated with like the, I don’t know what’s happening, or I have too much on my plate energy this year.
Maybe you’re neither. Maybe you’re feeling calm and peaceful and satisfied. Or maybe you’re feeling some of those lower Energy emotions that aren’t as positive that you’re feeling maybe a little bit sad or disappointed, uh, that things this year haven’t gone the way that you expected or that you are hoping for things that haven’t yet happened.
All those emotions are acceptable and normal, and I think particularly around the end of the year with all the festivities that happen, there’s a lot of pressure to feel a certain way and to kind of see.
Permission to FEEL your FEELINGS
And I just want to give you permission to feel however you’re feeling right now, and to know that that’s okay, that we’re supposed to feel the entire spectrum of human emotions, and that the more we tap into those, the more self-aware we are. Paying attention to how we’re feeling, maybe even trying to understand the emotion itself, find a name for it.
Maybe even intentionally feel it in a more sensory way, like pay attention to where in your body it feels like it’s being held. Or, um, if you can almost go inside and explore it a little bit. Not that you must explain it or understand exactly why you might be feeling that way, but just being able to name it and accept it as okay allows it to sort of dissipate and allows you to move through it and maybe find out if there’s other emotions that you’re more interested in feeling it, that you’re, that you are aiming towards.
The episode today is hopefully going to give you some tools to think about how to be more intentional about the decisions that you’re making during the holidays to align with the values that you have, which also requires some self-awareness to first just like pick out which of my values feels like I want to put it forward this holiday season. And then also how to make decisions using values as an anchor point rather than just doing whatever you’ve always done or doing what you see your friends and neighbors and Instagram friends doing.
Hopefully this episode will be helpful as we dig into the wonderful and sometimes messy and sometimes tricky as we get ready to dive in, I want to share a quick segment that I am calling the Book Nook.
Segment: Book Nook
These last couple weeks, I’ve read a couple books.
One is an old classic that I’ve read, well, basically every year I like to read Anne of Green Gables during the fall just feels nostalgic and sweet and maybe to kind of combat some of the busyness, like mental busyness of getting ready for the holidays, it feels nice to just have a familiar story.
The delightful writing. I mean, I read it every year and I’m just delighted all over again by the writing and the story and the character and is just so sweet. So, if it’s been a while since you’ve read Anne of Green Gables or you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it this year. I listened to it on audible and it was, it was kind of a funny juxtaposition because I was in Costa Rica doing this couple’s retreat that was so fantastic.
We’re in the tropical jungle and, you know, the rainforest and we’re sliding down natural water slides and swimming in rivers and surfing and I’m like listening to this classic story set in Prince Edward Island of this orphan. It was just so funny because it’s very not tropical Costa Rican adventure happening in my ears while I was on that trip.
But it was, it was nice. I love Anne of Green Gables. I love returning to it in the fall. It feels sweet. And it reminded me as I was listening to it this time again that I’ve always wanted to go to Prince Edward Island. Is that a place people go? I have loved the idea of it since I was young and I’m, I, you know, I live out here on the East Coast.
I don’t know how difficult it might be, but it can’t be that far away too. Find my way to Prince Edward Island. So maybe I’ll put that on my list of things to explore how possible and whether that seems like something that I still want to do. It just sounds beautiful and lovely, so we’ll see have any of you been to Prince Edward Island?
Let me know.
The next book that I read right after Anne of Green Gables, I finished Anne of Green Gables right at the end of my Costa Rica trip, and midway through that trip, I noticed on Audible that my pre order of the book Iron Flame I had downloaded, and I was so excited. Iron Flame is book two in the fourth wing series by Rebecca Yarros.
Back in the summer, I had, was just finishing up my master’s degree. I was finishing my big paper and I wanted some recommendations for just lighthearted fiction beach reads and I got a bunch of great recommendations. They’re all on my Instagram page. There’s a whole list of them there if you want to. Go check out all the recommendations, but one of them was this book called Fourth Wing, and it’s funny because I, I got it and started listening to it, and I was like, this isn’t really a lighthearted fiction.
It’s a fiction book. It’s sort of a, uh, mystical science fiction book about dragon trainers, this world in which children are either scribes or healers or, or dragon trainers. And if you become a writer, then you get to hopefully match with a dragon and then you’re bonded for life. And it’s interesting.
It’s not my usual genre, but I have really enjoyed it. And I got to the end of that book, and it had this cliffhanger and then said, the next book comes out in November. I remember thinking I should warn people to not give me recommendations for series that aren’t all the way finished because I want to like read the whole thing.
I want to go start to finish the whole series. So, I did pre order Iron Flame. It came out in November. I had preordered it, so it downloaded straight to my phone, and I started listening to it and it’s a long one. It’s 28 hours long and I really liked it again. It’s super engaging and I like the characters.
I’m interested in the world. It just feels like a fun place to escape to. And I’ve been really invested in it. So, turns out there’s going to be more. I think that there’s maybe it’s a series of four is the latest thing that I read, so I don’t think there’s any more slated to come out right now, so I can’t pre order the next one, but I am invested in the series, and if you like that sort of thing, or even if you don’t, and you’re interested in just like jumping into a different world for a little while, I would recommend Fourth Wing and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.
Those books will both be linked in the show notes, and they will also be, uh, on my Instagram stories for Practically Happy.
If you’re not yet following along at Practically. Happy, uh, podcast on Instagram, I’m sharing little bits of the show and there’s highlights for the peaks of the week and easy links for the book nook and things like that.
So, find your way over there and follow along with Practically Happy on Instagram. Okay, those are the books for the book nook.
What Are Values?
Let’s talk about values for a minute. I talk about values a lot, and I have used the idea of values in a lot of my work. I talk about values in my book more than enough.
Part of the reason that we embarked on our minimalist adventure was to realign our choices with our values, and I think that, I don’t know, I think about values Often in my life, I try to live a value aligned life and make decisions from a place of self-understanding.
I want to just give you a quick overview of values because most of you probably have some clear ideas of your own personal values, sometimes a lot. Different institutions have values that they give to us. If you belong to a church or religion, if you belong to sometimes like a professional organization or a business, or even like families that have clearly defined values.
Now I grew up in a Franklin Covey home. My parents loved Franklin Covey and used the Covey planner. We talked a lot about goals and values in my home. I learned how to write a personal mission statement. And having an idea of your personal values is different than simply keeping your arms open to accept the values that are given to you by the organizations that you affiliate with.
I want to be clear about that because I think that it’s easier for sure to just feel like, well, of course I value all the same things that this organization values or that this church values or that my family of origin values.
And you may find that you don’t. And it may be surprising to you at some point that you recognize, like, oh, I really value this or that, that is different than what my, the family I grew up in values, or different than the school I went to, or the business that I belong to, or the church that I attend.
And that’s okay. There isn’t, uh, like a moral hierarchy of values or like a priority list that is one size fits all, even though sometimes we may sort of think that, like it’s better to value honesty than humor, for example, but there isn’t a moral hierarchy in terms of values. What does matter a lot, the research shows that when you identify and live in alignment with your personal values, with the things that matter most to you.
That you find more satisfaction and fulfillment in your life. It’s much better for you as an individual to understand your personal values rather than try to maneuver your values into fitting into someone else’s idea of what matters because in one instance, you will feel more satisfied and fulfilled with your life and happier, practically happy, and in the other, you will find you feel some disappointment and resentment and frustration about continually giving energy and resources to areas of life that you don’t care that much about.
Just as an overview, values are principles, standards, or qualities that an individual or group considers important and desirable. You can have individual values; you can also share values with a group as part of an organization. The idea of values, discovering them, examining them, virtues, living according to some guiding principle outside of yourself, that is an ancient idea.
The history of values exploration
It goes back to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all trying to define self-reflection and what does it mean to live a good life? What does that look like to be part of a society? What is the aim of, of making decisions? Should your decisions impact you for good or you and the whole? There’ve been hundreds of years of examination of values.
Even looking through history, you can see times where what society valued in different parts of the world was reflected in the choices that communities made and policies. That were made. We’re going to reign that in a little bit to personal values, values that matter to you and that you want reflected in your family.
And as part of that, it’s helpful to think about how some of the decisions that you make and the values that you lead with. Have an impact outside of yourself, as well. Determining your values involves a lot of introspection, because there isn’t really, like, one specific quiz that you can take that, that tells you what your values are.
Values are discovered through self-reflection
Or you can’t walk through a scanner. Wouldn’t that be nice if you could walk through a scanner and it would just, like, print out your top ten values in order of priority?
The truth is that It takes a little bit of discovery and reflection and time to determine your values and I like to, when I’m coaching people through this process of values discovery, I like to invite them to try some on, use a value and to guide a couple decisions and see how it feels and sort of experiment with prioritizing different values and using them in a meaningful way and Based on the results of how you feel and how things go as you’re trying on different values, you’ll even have more information to determine whether or not those are a good fit.
If you are curious about the idea of what some values might be, I have a list here that I just grabbed from Brené Brown’s website, and I’m just going to read through, and I want you to just pay attention to how you feel as you’re listening to these words. If there are some that sort of give you a little zing of like, oh yeah, that really.
Feels important to me. Or if there’s something you’re like, and I wouldn’t say that that’s something that matters as much to me. Okay, so we’re just going to read through this list. It’s an alphabetical order. I will link to this list in the show notes. So, if you want to print it out and, you know, do a values activity with your family, or use this to kind of, uh, as we go throughout the rest of the episode about using your values to make decisions during the holidays, you can reflect to this list as well.
Here is the list of values from brenebrown.com.
Accountability. Achievement. Adaptability. Adventure. Altruism. Ambition. Authenticity. Balance. Beauty. Being the best. Belonging. Career. Caring. Collaboration. Commitment. Community, compassion, competence, confidence, connection, contentment, contribution, cooperation, courage, creativity, curiosity, dignity, diversity.
Environment, Efficiency, Equality, Ethics, Excellence, Fairness, Faith, Family, Financial Stability, Forgiveness, Freedom, Friendship, Fun, Future Generations, Generosity, Giving Back, Grace. Gratitude, growth, harmony, health, home, honesty, hope, humility, humor, inclusion, independence, initiative, integrity, job security, joy, justice, kindness, knowledge.
Leadership, Learning, Legacy, Leisure, Love, Loyalty, Making a Difference, Nature, Openness, Optimism, Order, Parenting, Patience, Patriotism, Peace. Perseverance. Personal fulfillment. Power. Pride. Recognition. Reliability. Resourcefulness. Respect. Responsibility. Risk taking. Safety. Security. Self-discipline. Self-expression.
Self-respect. Serenity. Service, Simplicity, Spirituality, Sportsmanship, Stewardship, Success, Teamwork, Thrift, Time, Tradition, Travel, Trust, Truth, Understanding, Uniqueness, Usefulness, Vision, Vulnerability, Wealth, Wellbeing, Wholeheartedness.
Wisdom.
Whew, you made it through.
What values jump out at you?
That was a long list of values. And I think that it’s helpful to hear a bunch of different words when we’re talking about values as sort of an abstract concept right now, to just give you some different words to kind of anchor on to. What jumps out at you from that list as I’m, I mean, if you didn’t like to go to sleep as I was.
There are a few that jumped out at me, partly because I have done a lot of this work myself. And so, I feel like I kind of have some clarity around some values that matter to me. One of which is creativity, curiosity, adventure. I’ve talked about creativity, adventure, and intention as my values for a long time on this show.
Something that I have been digging into recently that I’ve kind of felt a rising of an interest in stability or consistency and That’s interesting because that’s new for me too.
Your values usually stay fairly constant over your life, but can flex and change as your seasons change.
Maybe it’s getting a little bit older maybe it’s just a stage of life where I have teenagers and I feel like a lot of our consistent rhythms and routines are Not as consistent these days because we have so many different personalities making individual decisions that Rhythms of the household that it was easier for me to generate as the mom five years ago aren’t as simple anymore because there’s more people making their own decisions within those rhythms.
I’m really feeling drawn toward the idea of consistency and stability in a way that I haven’t for a lot of my life. So, it’s interesting to kind of grow up into different values as well and think, you know, something that may have been really, important to me in, my younger years, maybe achievement or recognition might have felt like more important values to me now.
Stability, consistency, creativity feel more important to me now. And again, there’s not a moral hierarchy to these values. What matters more is that it feels individual and that you’re applying them or that you’re considering your natural affinity for Which of these feels most important to you now that we’ve got this whole list of values, I’ve given you a little bit of a framework of what values are.
Why do values help anchor the season?
I want to share a little bit about why Using your values during the holiday season can impact your experience for the better. Here are a few different ways.
Decision-Making
Decision making We talked about decision making last week. I’ve talked about it a lot before. Understanding your values, almost like your own beginner guideline to the decisions that you’re making.
It eliminates so many options that don’t align with that value. You can prioritize the activities, events, the way that you give gifts, the way that you spend time on. the things that matter most to you. So, if you have a clear idea of the guiding values that you want to use during the holidays, you are much better able to make the many, many decisions that come at us this time of year.
Setting Boundaries
Number two, setting boundaries is easier when you have a clear understanding of your values. You set boundaries. the boundaries that align with your values. This might involve deciding how much time you’re going to spend in social events, managing expectations around gift giving, allocating time for personal reflection or journaling or alone time during the holiday rush.
If you know what your values are, you’re able to set personal boundaries and feel confident in the boundaries that you set to have the best outcomes for yourself and your family.
Stress-Reduction
Another reason that knowing your values around the holidays is helpful is that it can reduce your stress. One of the definitions of stress is that our demands outweigh our resources.
That we don’t have the amount of time, energy, money, relationship connection, capacity, that we need to fulfill all the demands that are being put on us. When you use your values, to make decisions and to align the way that you’re moving through the holiday season, you’re more able to manage those demands. You eliminate demands by recognizing your resources and then eliminating any demands that don’t align with the values that you have.
Clarity
The expectations and traditions and ideas of what you’re supposed to be doing sort of dissolve. into having some confidence around what you want to do that you get to be back in the driver’s seat of the season, and you get to make decisions and I don’t only mean this from like a, you know, there’s some big, bad, like societal expectation out there.
There is, there are, there’s lots, but I even think how when you’re walking through Target during the holidays, even just the signage of like two for one, 50 percent off holiday deal, all of those like little, tiny messages about the best way to do things can be overwhelming. And so, without a clear idea of what you want to do, it’s very easy to be pulled and swayed and go back and forth and feel like everyone has the right answer.
Aligning your values, ahead of all the decision making of the holidays, gives you the space to consider your own voice first, and have your message be the loudest one playing in your ears. That feels good. Takes a little bit of time and attention to do this, to think, you know, give yourself ten minutes to think, what are my guiding values this holiday season? What one or two values do I want to really lead with? And how do I make my decisions around those values?
I’m going to explain with some examples of how to do this. And I know it’s probably a little bit late for some of you. I have already done about half of my Christmas shopping.
It’s you know. The first week of December, and so we’re kind of zipping through it. Like, maybe some of you are already done. There are still decisions yet to make.
There are still plans that can be changed or added to depending on what it is that you feel as you’re listening. Stress reduction is key. The more you know your values and make decisions to align with them, the less stressed you’ll feel. That imbalance of resources and demands will be less.
Increased Connection and Meaning
Knowing your values also allows for more connection. You get to bring your whole self to the table and engage authentically with people.
Gratitude and giving, understanding your values like compassion or gratitude or generosity, can inspire you to engage in acts of kindness, charitable giving during the holidays, fostering some meaning and fulfillment that you might not otherwise have, and self-reflection.
This is a time to be thinking about the year that you’ve been through, the upcoming year that you’d like to have, and knowing your values can guide this introspection and this experience. in a more meaningful way.
Examples of using values to guide holiday decisions:
Now I want to give you a couple examples to bring it home and then your homework for this week, hopefully in the next day or two, just while this episode is fresh on your mind, is to have a conversation with your partner, with a friend, with your sister.
Maybe with some of your older kids about the value that you want to guide your holiday season. While I was just driving in the car on the way over to this coworking space where I record the podcast, I, Dave asked what the show was about that I was recording.
And I mentioned this idea of. You know, guiding your holidays with, with your values and I, I asked him, so if you were to determine, you know, a value that you’d like to guide the holiday season, what would you say?
Thrift/Frugality
And he was joking at first and said, thriftiness or frugality and which, you know, doesn’t have to be a joke like that would have been a perfectly great value to guide the holiday season. And you can imagine the way that your decisions may be different when guided by thrift as you. Guiding value for the season.
So, you’re going to be, you will be looking for deals. Maybe you’re going to set a budget ahead of time that is your boundary and get really clear on that. I love the way that frugality increases creativity.
You get to do a little bit more digging. It’s, it can feel simple sometimes to just solve. Whatever problem you have by putting more money at it, and if you’re guiding value for the holidays is thriftiness You’re going to be taking advantage of free activities
You’re going to maybe do a little bit of research to find out where the things that you want to accomplish are going to happen for the least amount of money and being able to You know, enjoy some of the parts of this season that aren’t just about buying things and spending money.
I think that that is a great way to think about the holiday season, especially I feel like there’s kind of a weird market right now where things have gotten expensive and just, you know, general, like, baseline living is is a little bit more than it has been in years past. So, thriftiness is, is a great value.
He kind of, we kind of laughed, though, because I was like, is that, are you being sincere or not being sincere? And he said, no, I was just kind of joking.
Gratitude
What he ended up deciding, saying, you know, I think maybe gratitude is something that I want to be a guiding value for the holidays. And then we were able to have a great conversation about what does gratitude look like in action during the holiday season.
How do you? Use gratitude as a value to guide the decisions you’re making and for the, you know, I asked Dave that question. So, what are some of the decisions that you would make or what are some of the boundaries you would create around the idea of gratitude at the holidays? And he had a great reflection.
Dave said, you know, I think about gratitude as my reaction to when good things happen to me rather than as the way that I move ahead with decisions independently. So, we were able to kind of bounce ideas back and forth about what gratitude looks like in action during the holidays, and I wanted to share some of those with you.
We talked about how thinking about your gifting as, uh, an expression of gratitude for your relationship with the people with whom you’re sharing gifts may change the gifts that you buy, and it may change the way that you go about giving. acquiring them and sharing them. For example, rather than just seeing a list of stuff that you need to get, just like check off all the boxes and slap like two from stickers on everything and send it off into the world.
You may feel a little bit more thoughtful about the gifts that you want to give. You can still have a great. You know, baseline budget, you can still be frugal within gratitude and the way that you think about your gifting may be different as a response to not just like, what would this person like, but how does this gift show up as an expression of gratitude?
We also talked about adding little touches, like rather than just, you know, saying, you know, to plum from mom, I may. I may choose to emphasize writing a nice note along with my gift. I may choose to give an experience where we get to spend time together doing something that I’m grateful that we’re able to do together.
Or, you know, this is a friend that I really love going to try new restaurants with and so I’ll get a gift card to a new restaurant and express how it’s been so fun to go have those experiences with this person, and I want to do more of that in the upcoming year. Maybe gratitude guides some of the giving that happens not only to friends and family, but charitable giving or finding ways to express gratitude for all the, the Blessings that we have the things that we have the stability that we have and recognizing that we have enough that we can give outside of our family.
We can impact our community. We can impact, you know, families in our school district or in our city. Maybe we want to choose to donate. Additional finances to foundations that mean a lot to us and to express gratitude to, you know, for our health by giving back to facilities that have made an impact on us.
Maybe if we have a tradition of doing like a cookie exchange. This year, Guided by Gratitude, we include an element of having people make a batch of cookies for a neighbor, as well, or to do all the cookie exchange and then go carol and deliver them to friends. Maybe we think about ritualizing some gratitude practices.
Maybe we put a big piece of poster board on the wall that says, this season I’m grateful for, and then have a bunch of pens or markers underneath it where people can just, as they’re passing by, take a minute to think about something they’re grateful for and write it up on the board. I know that feels, you know, maybe like a Thanksgiving tradition or Thanksgiving idea, but why not?
If, you know, gratitude is the value that you feel strongly. To guide your season, why not have it guide through your entire season? These are just examples of the way that you can use a value to make decisions. Another thought that comes to mind is the idea that when you’re living in a space of gratitude, when you have a mindset of gratitude, you tend to not complain as much, you tend to be looking for the things that are going well rather than the things that are going wrong.
And so maybe a personal commitment to be grateful for what is happening and accepting that. Even if it’s not always exactly what you expected or what you would have asked for, being grateful for the thoughts of others, accepting gifts with gratitude for the time and energy that someone put into it on your behalf, even if it’s not something that you would have chosen for yourself.
You can see how using a value to kind of guide your mindset and guide your decisions and boundaries around the holidays could become meaningful. Then it adds this layer of impact to all the decisions that you’re making rather than just kind of coasting through and feeling either stressed out or excited and enthusiastic but then exhausted.
Your value anchors your decisions and mindset
Having a value that you can come back to feels like it kind of anchors the decisions that you’re making and the experience that you’re having. So, with those examples, I want you to think back and maybe even like reverse, reverse, reverse, reverse, you know, on your podcast listener, you can kind of go back, hop by 10 or 30 seconds back.
What value(s) will guide YOUR season?
If you need to listen to that values list again, or just click on the link in the show notes and look at that values list. and highlight or circle one or two, have a conversation with a friend or a family member about this.
And it would be really great if you chose a value to try on this season as a guiding anchor for the decisions that you’re making and see if it feels better, if it feels more meaningful, if it feels a little bit lighter, if you’re able to have some clarity because you put down this lens through which you see the decisions that you’re making during the season, and it doesn’t have to be frugality.
It doesn’t have to be gratitude. It could be magic. It could be peace. It could be faith. Any one of those values can influence and guide your decision making and your mindset around the holiday season. I think that Anyone that you choose, just simply choosing one to give yourself this scaffold and this anchor will help you feel like your season is more meaningful.
It will feel better, it will feel a little bit lighter and a little bit easier because you are In essence, if we reflect back to last week, choosing a guiding principle or a scaffold, a second order decision that will then make your other decisions and the other ways to see and to frame out the experiences and circumstances of your life this season a little bit More clear.
Two Things:
Thank you so much for tuning in. I have two things to share with you today. One is that I am Opening up some exploratory calls for my coaching packages I do one and two time a month coaching, and I love working with women to help clarify your values make aligned decisions to move forward in your lives progressing in the areas that matter most to you with some accountability and the research-based understanding of well-being that I have.
Sign up for a free exploratory coaching call HERE
So, you can find a link to set up a free exploratory call in the show notes right now. I’m opening slots for the first quarter of 2024, and I would love to work with you.
Women’s Adventure to Istanbul and Cappadocia TURKEY
The next thing that is very exciting is that all the results came in from the survey on the Trova trip. Remember how a couple weeks ago I asked if you wanted to travel with me?
Where should we go this upcoming year? Well, I have planned a trip and we are going to adventure to a bucket list destination of Istanbul, Turkey. This coming July, if you want to join a group of Millennial aged midlife women who are excited to travel together, explore the history and culture of where West meets East.
Enjoy incredible meals, including a Turkish cooking class all together. Explore some of the beautiful moss. historical buildings in Istanbul and then hop on a little plane over into Cappadocia to the center of the country where the landscapes are other worldly and we can explore together the historic underground cities, take a balloon ride, a hot air balloon ride at sunrise over the desert and make Lifelong memories while we’re making lasting friendships with this incredible group of women.
Would you like to join me? Click on the show notes to learn more about our trip to Turkey. Maybe one of your holiday values is adventure and you want to tuck this trip into your own stocking. I hope you have a wonderful week, and you do this exercise of aligning your values for the holiday season. It will help you feel a little bit more practically happy.
