4 Steps to Stop Your Holiday Stress: Clean up the Chaos one Baby Step at a Time #173
We’re in the thick of the holidays and perhaps your sanity is already wavering. School performances, shopping, baking, less sleep, unusual schedules, no routines, more asks… yikes!
We still have 2 more weeks to go!
In today’s episode, I’m sharing 4 ways to lower your stress and make the holidays enjoyable for both you and your family.
Free resources mentioned in today’s episode:
Not sure what to put on your holiday wish list? Ask for a Successful Mama Gift Certificate and choose your course, community, coaching, or retreat next year to lower your stress, take care of yourself, and get your life in order.
Patricia Sung 00:02
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess, Mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 01:08
Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung? Well, we're in the thick of it is the holiday season. And I don't know about you, but it is already pretty crazy. Over here. There's a ton going on. We had our big annual Christmas party this weekend, you know, the Christmas performances have started. And it's a lot. I want you to know that it is okay that this feels like a lot, there is a lot going on. And when you have ADHD, our nervous systems are quite often already at the brink of stress level, we're already in a stress level. And all this extra stuff of the holidays simply adds on to that pile, making everything feel like too much, too much noise, too much to do. Too many emotions. were interacting with family that we may be able to avoid more in the rest of the year. Extra sounds extra smells, extra asks, on our time, our talents, our treasure, what little of our sanity, we're still clinging to, it's not you. It's a lot. So I have a couple of helpful resources for this holiday season.
Patricia Sung 02:27
Let's start with planning if you have not already planned out your holiday, and you're like, hey, it's already weekend to December and I haven't planned anything. That's okay. Can you take a suggestion from everyone? Can you take two or three suggestions? What do you have the capacity for? So we said two from each person? What are the two things that are going to make this holiday season feel like the holidays for you? We came up with a list. And those are the things we're going to do. And if we have space for other stuff, great. We can add it in if we feel like we can do that. But otherwise, that other stuff is clearly put in the No Category. And then it makes it really easy when people say, well, not really easy, easier than when people ask like, Hey, do you want to do this? Or can you come over to do that? You already have a clearly defined list. So like these are the things we're doing. And these are the things we're not doing. And it's a lot easier to say, No, we're not coming. Because in that moment for us, we always want to say yes, we don't want to disappoint anyone.
Patricia Sung 03:30
But we only have so much energy, and so much sanity to go around. And when we have a clearly defined group of these are things we're doing. And these are things that are not doing. So easier to know in the moment whether or not it falls in that category that I can uphold my boundaries a little better, is knowing, hey, this is what our family said is important. And if it's not on this list, it's not on this list. And if you realized partway through like, Oh, this is important, and we didn't mention it. It gives us a chance to be like cool.
Patricia Sung 04:00
Well, when we had our little meeting about know what was important. Like, if this wasn't brought up, was it really important? Or is it just like we had a moment where like, we just didn't think about that. And that's okay, and you can add it to the list. And the great thing is that, like I keep all these lists on my phone, and I put a reminder, or like if I'm doing it in like Google Keep, I put a reminder for next year in mid November. And this you know, my gift list pops up, my activity list pops up. And then I know that you know here's all the things that we did last year.
Patricia Sung 04:32
Here's all the things we bought last year, like all the people we had to shop for last year. It's already pre prep. So it's not as much of a brainstorm level. And then you have the chance to say like, Okay, well, you know what, so and so's Carolyn Christmas party didn't come up when we thought about all the things we want to do in the holidays. Like, is that really important to us? Maybe it is maybe it isn't, but that gives you a chance to think about it. And another thing I've been doing to ease that uncomfortableness when I don't know how to answer someone is just answering like, Oh, let me check my calendar, and I'll get back to you. And then they make a note to myself to get back to them. Or you can say like, oh, I need to check with my partner, or let me check my work schedule, like whatever thing you want to blame so that you have extra time to think about it, pick something. And that way, you can actually sit back when that person is not staring in the face and decide like, does this matter to me or not? So that's tip one is asking everyone in the family, what matters to them, and it's holiday season? So that, you know, what are the things that you want to put your time and energy into.
Patricia Sung 05:32
Suggestion number two, is having a conversation with your partner about family stuff, like, it's a lot in these holiday seasons, where you're having to spend a lot more time with extended families, and there's a lot more opinions and a lot more stressful people and stressed out people to deal with. And having those chats with your significant other ahead of time allows you to go into like, how are we going to deal with the stress illness of you know, you can do this before Thanksgiving, you can do it going into Christmas.
Patricia Sung 06:06
Like how do we want to handle these situations, knowing that it's going to be a lot of time with family we don't normally spend time with or it's going to be a lot of late nights. And hey, one of our kids doesn't do well with late nights like how are we going to handle all these things. So having those discussions ahead of time. And if you're a single parent, it's just as important to sit down and think about how that matters to you and deciding what you want it to look like. Because whether you're planning it by yourself, or whether you're planning it with a partner, the whole point is to have that proactive planning there, like we talked about in the series last month that like proactive planning makes such a huge difference. Because then we can feel like we're choosing the way that we want our life to unfold instead of like life just happening. And we're just like getting pushed along the river with it.
Patricia Sung 06:54
We're choosing how we want this holiday to look. And if that means that, you know one person in the family doesn't want to spend 14 hours at Grandma's house this year, how can we make that compromise ahead of time to make this enjoyable as much as we can for as many people as we can? Do, we need to have some uncomfortable conversations with our family members ahead of time and let them know like, Hey, we're not going to be at this event from sunup to sundown, we're going to show up right after lunch. And then we're gonna leave right after dinner. And setting those parameters ahead of time are really uncomfortable. And it's also a lot easier on the day of when we do those things. So that is to just number two is have a little planning meeting with yourself. Or if you're in a partnership with your partner to decide how are we going to handle these obstacles that we know are coming ahead of us. So just number three, is when you look at all the things that are going on? Do you have space? For rest? Do you have space for normal? What can we do that is like keeping some semblance of regular illness so that we're not overwhelmed by everything. If our kids are going to be up late three nights in a row, how do we make sure that they're getting enough sleep early or like before that or after that? Because we know if you know if our kid is up late multiple nights is going to be a big disaster? Are you giving yourself space to rest? If you have a day that's full from top to bottom, is there a place in there where you're one year old can nap? Is there a place where you can nap? Is there a place where you can have some downtime in that day? Is your family eating lunch? Like real food at some point in that day? Like what are you doing to take care of you to take care of your family? Amongst all the craziness that's going on, How are you taking care of you? How are you lowering your stress level so that you're not losing your absolute ever lovin mind on your family every evening?
Patricia Sung 09:04
What are you doing to take care of you and your family and creating that space so that it's not overwhelming 24/7 For the next three weeks, that rest time is just as important to plan as all the activities going on. Now for our like when we're thinking about all this planning, you can do all of this planning in a very, like thrown together ADHD friendly way of just throw it on a piece of paper and hope for the best or throw it on a note on your phone and hope for the best. You can also go on in the LinkedIn and post here in the show notes. I have a holiday planning class that I taught a couple of years ago about how to plan your holidays in a proactive way. It's totally free. I will post that link in here as well. So you can if you want to be more detailed and be thorough about it, you can plan it that way. If you want to plan it in you know throw it together. Just jump in and write some stuff down on a piece of paper or in a note on your phone, like, whatever is going to feel most comfortable to you. You know, obviously the class has like the prompts in there. And the questions ask yourself, like, it's a lot more thorough.
Patricia Sung 10:11
So whatever method feels good to you, you've got both resources there. And for my final suggestion, the cleanup process is just as stressful as the going into it process. So on December 26, I ever start a series called cleaning up the holiday hangover, I really should have looked at the exact name of it. Before I started recording this, and y'all, it's one of those days, I'm just gonna run with it and trust that y'all can find it. I'm gonna put the link here in the show notes. It's every day for two weeks, I give you a like one singular step to clean up all the holiday stuff. The videos that are emailed to you are 30 seconds long. And you can also read it if you want to read it. And it's super simple, all broken down for you. Because you know, people always say like, oh, just break it down into pieces. And it'll be easy to do the project. And we're like, wait, what, what, what are the pieces? I don't know, how do I break it down? I do that for you.
Patricia Sung 11:13
So in that two weeks, every day, super quick, task five, maybe 15 minutes, taps on a couple of them. But most of them are like five minutes, where you gather up different pieces of holiday chaos and deal with them. So one little snippet of time for two weeks. And it all goes through boom, boom, boom. And by the end of the two weeks, you'll have everything cleaned up and ready to hit that new year running with all the holiday disaster gone. And yeah, that's totally free, too. So head over to my show notes here. Click on either of those links to grab it. If you want the detailed planning for the holidays, if you want the super simple cleanup plan. They're both they're free resources for you. And if you are, you know if your family is going like what should we get you for Christmas, and you're like I don't know, Mike Thai suggest that I have gift cards like yes certificates on my website where your family can buy you a gift certificate to go towards either community courses or coaching on my website.
Patricia Sung 12:19
So if you would like to work with me somehow, some way in 2023 This is a great way to give a gift that is not just for you. It's also for your family, like spending time figuring out how to work with your brain, and being proactive and knowing like how to live well, as a mom with ADHD. It's not just for us, it's for a whole family. Because when we learn how to work with our brains, we learn skills that we need to teach our kids. We learn skills that make our kids lives less stressful too. So this is a gift for you and your family. I absolutely love hanging out with my mama's every one day. And that is such a gift that I didn't know I was making as much for me as for them for you like knowing that I'm not the only one who is overwhelmed and frustrated and burnt out and needing support. It's just really like getting and I want you to have that too. So yeah, if you're failing is known to get you snag a motherhood and ADHD gift certificate. They're on my website. They're in the tab for support. And you can cut those up and decide what you want to do for the year coming up. And you know, you can use them for community the successful meetups using them for coaching you can use them for many different courses we know time agent mastery daily planning how to outsource simple morning routines and by evening routine any of them so yeah. Oh, and the retreat if you're gonna retreat next year.
Patricia Sung 14:02
So take care of yourself, Mama, this is a very stressful time and we can make it through with some proactive planning rest planned in there. And knowing it's okay to say no. So, reach out, get some support, go grab those free resources I mentioned on my website. And yeah, have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon successful. The more resources classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com