TINAH Talks | Mental Health and Wellbeing Podcast

The Christmas Intention Setting You Need To Stay Sane This Holiday Season!

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🧘 Join TINAH's 12-day Mindfulness Challenge to go from chaos to calm this holiday season + get the FREE PDF workbook here.

Today is the FINAL Day of TINAH’s 12 Days of Christmas Chaos To Calm Challenge - where we are helping you find a moment of peace and mindfulness to destress and calm your nervous system during the busy holiday period.

The challenge practise we’re sharing with you today is Intention Setting 🤔

Setting intentions during the chaotic holiday season can be a super powerful thing to do. When you can identify stressors and emotions that arise during this time and create strategies for setting personal intentions and boundaries to manage these challenges effectively can save you a lot of stress and overwhelm this Christmas.

The key to a successful, calm, and happy holiday is mental preparation and self-care. Watch this video to see how it’s done!

‼️ Don’t forget to sign up to receive the full challenge workbook with all the guided prompts dropped daily into your inbox:

BONUS: WIN a Christmas gift from one of TINAH's brand partners. More details on HOW when you subscribe for the workbook. 🎁

Thanks for joining us for TINAH’s 12 Days of Christmas Mindfulness Challenge.

#intentionsetting #holidayintentions #settingboundaries #christmasstress #intentions #mindfulness #selfcare

About The TINAH Talks Podcast: TINAH (Time Is Not a Healer) is your go-to mental well-being marketplace and community! In this podcast, you can expect empowering conversations to support you in your mental health healing journey.

We are on a mission to: ✨ EMPOWER you to prioritize and take control of your mental health ✨ EDUCATE you on mental health and wellbeing practices ✨ ELIMINATE stigma around mental health

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Kelsey (00:01.046)
Welcome back to Tina's 12 Days of Christmas Chaos to Calm Challenge. Today is day 12 and we're going to be talking all about intentions. So we want to get really clear on the certain intentions we may need to set in the holiday season and when there is a lot of chaos going on. I know that we are wrapping up things at the end of the year with work, school, whatever you're in.

And then now we're preparing for whatever holiday events, lots of family time, lots of seeing friends, lots of money spending, lots of just time that is not your own. And that in and of itself can be very stressful. And then thinking about the new years ahead. All of that tends to remove us from being really present in the moment. Either we're worrying about, you know, what's going to happen with our family and how we're going to deal with that.

or how we're gonna feel after the fact. So there's a lot of anxiety that kind of comes out of the chaos that can come with the holiday season. And we're all about kind of having preemptive measures and making sure that we feel prepared with what we're walking into and how we can more successfully manage our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors in these really difficult moments. And with that, we...

can set intentions to better protect ourselves, to stay resilient, and to be able to move through it with the love and grace that we deserve. So Sophie, I know you're big on intentions and everything, so I'm gonna walk through a very many exercise and we're going to just kind of throw out some example ideas of things that come with the holiday season and how we can better set some of our own personal intentions to feel prepared and to have the boundaries

and feel like we are going to make it through the chaotic times. Does that sound good?

Sophie (01:59.382)
Alright, let's go.

Kelsey (02:00.952)
Yeah, okay, perfect. So we're just gonna take a second. I want you to get a pen, get yourself a notebook here and some paper. And to start, we're just going to take a really deep breath in through our nose. We're gonna breathe in, four, three, two, one, and out. Four, three, two, one. Great. So I want you to take a moment and I want you to think about when you're feeling stressed in the holiday season,

What are some of the feelings and experiences or activities that bring anxiety for you or that bring up negative emotions for you? This can be anything from a potential experience with a family member. This can be some of just the negative emotions you feel about yourself.

because it's the end of the year and you're not where you want to be and now you're going to be in front of family talking about how the year was. It could be having to spend quite a bit of money on gifts and presents. It can be that your time is not your own during the holiday. You've just wrapped up a stressful year. You've got another big year ahead of you, but now you're focused on doing everything and anything with friends and family that's all holiday related. It can be any of these situations.

that bring a little bit of discomfort and chaos for you. So I you to take a moment to identify four to five of these for yourself.

I'll give you a minute to do that.

Kelsey (03:55.46)
So for each of the different situations that brings up some discomfort for you, because it's important that we acknowledge the uncomfortable feelings that come with it, next to each situation, I want you to write down the feeling that comes with it. And this must be a feeling word. It can be insecure, sad, angry, frustrated. Let's avoid not good. Let's actually use feeling words here.

Kelsey (04:44.186)
So now that we've acknowledged the feelings that kind of come with these difficult situations, let's just take a moment to take a really deep belly breath in. We're gonna breathe in through our nose. Four, three, two, one. I'm gonna have you hold. Four, three, two, one. Exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. We're gonna do another round. Inhale, four, three,

hold. Four, three, two, one, exhale. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And then we're just going have you take a slow inhale in, no counting.

Kelsey (05:36.063)
out through your mouth as long as you can go and then let's shake it off a little bit.

Kelsey (05:45.006)
Okay, some of the situations that you may have written down may be situations that are unavoidable, that come with the chaotic holiday times, and that's okay. And your feelings about that situation are 100 % valid. What can we do now in this moment to set intentions about how we are going to handle these situations and these emotions when they come up? What sort of thoughts can we create around it?

how do we want to behave when that situation arises? Sometimes having a little bit of mental planning about what we're going to do to manage that situation can really help take the edge off and allow us to feel prepared so that we can be more confident and resilient in the moment. So for example, let's say, you know, your family might have poor boundaries and there's not much that you can do to stop them.

from behaving the way that they behave. But you do know you have control over yourself, how you react, and your own behavior. So maybe setting some intentions of, know, when Aunt Karen has her invasive questions, what are some of the scripted comebacks you can have that you'll feel comfortable enough with sharing and just answering the question and being done? But...

script it out for yourself right here and now so that you have something already prepared and planned. Maybe it's being that it's difficult to be around family and you need to set firm kind of party limits that you know you are only going to be there for a certain amount of time. You're going to get there on time and you're going to leave you know on the hour instead of sticking around for you know four hours.

Maybe it is with friends and you don't want to drink alcohol with being around them. And so maybe it's about setting the amount of time that you're going to be there or maybe it's communicating to friends ahead of time. Hey, just so you know, at the party I'm not going to be drinking and I wanted to give you a heads up. No, no bad reasons, just personal reasons. I've decided not to do that this year and just want to give everybody a heads up so I didn't have to answer a bunch of questions when I first get there. Right. It can be.

Kelsey (08:04.28)
making sure you have excuses ready to go if it becomes such an uncomfortable situation. What do you gotta do? You gotta get out of there. I gotta go, my cat misses me, whenever that may be. Maybe it's defining your gift budget and letting your family know ahead of time what that budget is for you. Maybe it's making sure that you have one of our other methods from the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge that can help you reground and reset your nervous system in the moment.

having that handy and ready to go sneak off to the bathroom and do that for two to three minutes to help reground yourself during difficult times.

Kelsey (08:46.146)
And maybe it's making sure you schedule in recovery days, right? Maybe your schedule is overloaded and overwhelmed. And so you need to have recovery days scheduled in. So I know Sophie, you've been writing, but I'm going to give you guys just a one minute to come up with for each of the four to five situations that you've already kind of identified. What is an intention you can set to feel more prepared mentally, emotionally, and physically in those situations?

Kelsey (09:24.986)
So let you guys keep working on that in your own time. But what you're wanna do is put this somewhere visible as a reminder that you have options on what is within your control and how you're going to handle the chaos that comes up during this busy season. How did this exercise feel for you, Sophie?

Sophie (09:43.774)
Yeah, good. I guess it identified a few things that maybe feel a little bit stressful and then how I can, how I might be able to handle them and the emotion that it makes me feel.

Kelsey (09:57.636)
Love that. All right, guys. Well, in case you're looking for a little more in-depth guidance on doing this exercise and some more explanation, we do have our Chaos to Calm Challenge workbook. All you have to do is sign up to our mailing list and it'll get dropped right into your inbox. And then you'll have today's instructions as well as all the other days during the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge. But we appreciate you coming with us and sitting with us and hoping that this will bring you a little bit of calm during this chaotic time.

We'll see you guys next time.