#205| How To Have a Holiday You'll Truly Enjoy—Without Overwhelm and Exhaustion: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

Feeling that holiday pressure building already—and wishing you could actually enjoy the season instead of just surviving it?

If December always leaves you overwhelmed, overstretched, or quietly resentful, this episode breaks down exactly why the holidays feel so heavy—and how a few simple shifts can finally bring you the peace, calm, and breathing room you've been craving.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  How to prioritize what actually matters so your holiday season becomes lighter and more enjoyable
•  How to use “B-minus work” and lowered expectations to instantly reduce stress
•  How one simple boundary can protect your energy, time, and emotional bandwidth all season long

Press play now to learn the four proven strategies that will help you feel calmer, lighter, and far more present this holiday season.

Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.

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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...

Chapters

• 1:20 Tip 1: Prioritize What Matters
• 2:42 Tip 2: Let Good Enough Be Enough
• 4:02 Tip 3: Lower Your Expectations
• 6:50 Tip 4: Set A Boundary

Transcript

Michelle Gauthier: 0:00

If you want a calmer holiday season, start by choosing what actually matters to you and what you really enjoy.

Michelle Gauthier: 0:11

You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences. And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.

Michelle Gauthier: 0:38

Hello, friend. Good news. It's the most wonderful time of the year. I say that with seriousness and also just a little touch of sarcasm because, you know, it can be a lot, a lot of pressure, a lot of people, a lot of expectations, a lot of things for you to do. But what if you actually could enjoy it more while also doing less? Today I'm going to offer you four real life tips. These are tried and true. These are the things that I always recommend for a more peaceful holiday season. I also posted about this and I got some feedback on social media asking listeners to give me their best examples of what has worked for them. Let's dive in.

Michelle Gauthier: 1:19

Let's start with tip number one. Number one is extremely simple. Prioritize. That sounds so obvious, but if you want a calmer holiday season, start by choosing what actually matters to you and what you really enjoy. This might sound like too simple or too obvious, but I think most of us go into December carrying traditions and expectations and to-dos that we've inherited or we did once and we decided to make it a tradition. So I recommend doing just a quick holiday brain dump and thinking about what is everything on my mind? What are all the things that I have to do? And then ask yourself, if I could only do three things this year, what would make it feel the most meaningful to me? And then choose your top three and let those be your focus. Just today, one of my clients was telling me that she asked her two kids who are both teenagers, she asked them both, Hey, what are your favorite holiday traditions? And they both said the same thing. And then one said a second thing. And so those are the things that they're gonna do this holiday season. Meg shared on social media, I only do traditions I actually care about. Very few make the cut every year. And then Jean said, I only get gifts for grandkids. Adults don't get gifts. It keeps the peace and the budget in check. And Kate said, We gift experiences and do them at a different time of the year. So there's no pressure to squeeze it all into December.

Michelle Gauthier: 2:42

Number two is let good enough be enough. Do some B minus work. You've heard this from me before on this podcast. And if you're someone who likes to do everything right to the A plus level, this next tip might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but it is a total game changer. Think about an area, or maybe it's all the areas where you go above and beyond and ask yourself, what would B minus work look like here? So for example, when I posted this online, Maggie gave a great example. She said, I love sending cards, but I print address labels from Excel instead of handwriting each one. It saves me so much time and I don't write little notes. So she loves sending the cards and then she B minus the addressing of them and doesn't write a note on them. So she still enjoys the tradition of doing it. Something that I do to the B minus level, actually, it might be more like a D minus level, is outdoor decorations. I love the inside of my house and I love decorating the inside of my house. On that, I do go pretty minimal. I have like two bins of stuff that I put up, so that's B minus work for some people. And then outside, I really do nothing. I'm trying to think. Last year, I think I might have put like a little fake Christmas tree on my front porch, but I just don't do anything outside. There's a lot of holiday joy in here, and that is just fine for me.

Michelle Gauthier: 4:02

Tip number three is to lower your expectations. A lot of holiday stress comes from expectations, and they aren't even necessarily expectations you think are realistic, but they're just sort of these best case scenario ideas that things are floating around in our head. So at my house, we have this very specific tradition that we do on Christmas morning. So ever since the kids were little, and they're 15 and 18 now, and at least one of them still really likes it. But I do like a scavenger hunt and I write them clues and they find one present and then they open those presents and then they get a new clue and they find the next present. And it's just something funny and fun that we do, and I like doing it too. Before we go on our scavenger hunt, we always eat our special Christmas breakfast, which is peanut butter cookies with the chocolates on them, you know, peanut butter blossoms, I think they're called. We eat those warmed up. We warm them up in the microwave, we drink them with milk, we have that. Then we open our presents. And then after we open our presents, then we have chocolate croissants, a very healthy breakfast at my house for Christmas. My expectation, I know exactly what we're gonna do. So I have that expectation. But my expectation is that if I go to all of the effort to make this setup that we all know and love, that everyone is going to be happy and nobody's gonna be disappointed about anything, and no one's gonna get in a fight or nothing bad is gonna happen. Now, I really know that that's not true when I think about it, but my brain likes to offer that that will be like the best case scenario, is my expectation. So this is where one of my favorite tools comes in, which is the holiday prediction game, or you can just call it the prediction game if you play it, and it's not the holidays. But here's how it works. So, this example that I'm giving about my Christmas morning, if I'm playing the holiday prediction game, I want to predict what's actually going to happen instead of what I hope will happen. So, what will happen is my kids will get the first clue. One who's very competitive will rip it out of the other one's hand, and then they'll run towards it. And whoever finds it first will grab their present and then they'll open them so fast and they'll be arguing about something, and then eventually somebody's gonna be disappointed in the present that they got. Like they didn't get exactly the thing that they wanted, or they'll be fighting over a cookie, or maybe the croissants will get burned or something. So if I play the holiday prediction game, and I guess that all those things are gonna happen when my kids do shove each other out of the way to get to their Christmas presents faster, then I can be like, oh, I want one point for me on the holiday prediction game. And it just gives you a chance to kind of laugh inside your own head at predicting what someone else is going to do. I taught this in a class that I did before Thanksgiving, and people have been coming up to me all week saying, Oh, I did a good job on my holiday prediction game.

Michelle Gauthier: 6:50

Okay, then my last tip is for you to think about just one boundary that you can have during this holiday season that protects your peace and calm. So that could be like going to bed by nine every night or blocking a rest day on your calendar. On social media, someone answered my question about this by saying I scheduled a whole me day. I stayed in, did a face mask in yoga, had soup for dinner, and wore pajamas. Total peace. Can you imagine what you would feel like for the rest of the holiday season, even if you just had one me day in there where you could do that, all of those things for yourself? If that feels like a there's no way that's gonna happen, stretch. Maybe a boundary that you put in place for yourself is you only go to one event a week. Or during this busy season, you're just not gonna work past five o'clock. So think about one boundary that you could have in place that would help create a more calm environment for you. Okay, so here's a recap of those four tips. Prioritize what matters and skip what doesn't. Do B minus work, lower the bar, lower your expectations, and play the holiday prediction game. And then finally set a boundary for yourself. These aren't tips that are just good in theory. These are tips that really work. So try them. You don't have to do them all today, but just pick one that resonates, try it this week, and then give yourself credit for any shift that you make or any chaos that you relieve yourself from. If this episode gave you a little exhale, share it with a friend who's feeling stressed out during the holiday season, too. I hope you have a fantastic week and I will see you soon. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothier.com. See you next week.