The ROCKSTAR Mom

3 Steps To More Joy, Less Stress This Holiday Season

• Megan Caldwell • Episode 8

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The holidays can feel like a runaway train...traditions to juggle, calendars packed tight, and a constant hum of “shoulds” in the background. Let’s slow it down. In this episode we're sharing three clear, simple steps to help you trade pressure for presence: 

--define what actually matters to you right now

--triage the to‑do list with a simple method, and 

--shift expectations so they match your real life.

We also anchor on what you can actually control: your thoughts and your actions. Not the weather, not relatives’ opinions, not last year’s drama. With that boundary in place, we reframe perfectionism and the relentless “shoulds.” Overwhelm happens when expectations don’t meet reality, so we walk you through a simple cycle to shift your thoughts and expectations.

If you’re ready to feel lighter this season, press play, set your priorities, and let the rest follow. If this resonated, subscribe, leave a quick review, and share the episode with a friend who needs a gentler holiday plan. Your future self will thank you.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Send us a text

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SPEAKER_00:

You are listening to the Rockstar Mom, a podcast for high achievers who are ready to get off of autopilot and live a life with more intention, peace of mind, and happiness. This is a space to expand, dig deep, get clear, and take action towards living your most authentic, aligned life. I'm Megan Caldwell. As a mom of three, two-time burnout survivor and empowerment coach and speaker, I've cracked the code on what it actually takes to thrive at work and home, ditch perfectionism and people pleasing, get your schedule under control, and live with more ease. So you've got more time and energy to do the things you love without the mom guilt. It's time to get out of your head and into action. Now is the time to live your most rock star life. Let's go. Welcome back, my friends. Today we are diving into a time of year. It is coming to be the holiday season. As I record this for you, it is mid-November. And I know as we approach the end of a year, the beginning of a new year, for many back-to-back holidays, end of school year events, end-of-year events, all the things, there's a lot of anticipation, oftentimes a lot of added stress, oftentimes expectations that we are trying to meet. And it can just be a time of stress when really what so many of us aren't crave during this season is joy, is presence, is family. So today I'm going to be sharing with you three things to guarantee you more joy and less stress this holiday season. And I guess to be fair, it can't be guaranteed, but I can say that if you focus on these things, you will have a holiday season that you will enjoy more than maybe if you didn't. So let's dive right in. And this episode today is going to be me sharing some of these things, but there's also going to be some time for reflection. So if you're in a space to grab a notebook and journal, awesome. If you're driving or doing dishes or something else, no problem. You can always come back to these questions, but at least you have the time and space right now to do a little bit of thinking and a little bit reflecting. So as we think of the holidays, I want you to take a moment to just really ask yourself, what are your favorite part of the holidays? And this might be something that you work towards and you achieve every single year, it might be something that's been with you since you were a child. It might be something that you've adopted in adulthood or tried out since you became a parent. But if you were going to take a moment to really just pause and reflect, like if you had to name just one or two pieces of the holidays that you really love, you really enjoy or want to enjoy more, what are your favorite parts? And again, if you can identify the top one or two, that's awesome. Is it the cookie making? Is it cutting down the tree? Is it lighting the menorah? Is it specific time with specific family members? There is no right or wrong. I know some people absolutely love the gift-giving piece of it, while for others, that might be the biggest stressor. So take a moment to just really reflect on what are your favorite parts of the holidays? The follow-up to this is to really think about what stops you from being present and from there being added stress. What stops you from experiencing true joy during that season where we have been told this should be such a joyous time? Is it items on your to-do list? Is it unrealistic expectations? Is it the added stress of one more thing to do on top of everyday life? Is it maybe strained relationships or needing to attend events that maybe you're just not so thrilled about? So, two questions you can start asking yourself are what is it that you actually truly love about the holidays? And then what stops you from being able to experience true joy, decrease stress, and be more present? There's so much power in taking the time, even just listening to this episode, to allow yourself to reflect on those and to pause. This first piece, the first step in helping you experience more joy and less stress this holiday season is to really identify what are your top priorities? What do you in this season of life that you are in? And again, this is going to be different than even a year ago, different than five or 10 years ago when maybe kids were younger or maybe you weren't a parent yet. It's going to be different than what this looks like in a year or 10 years down the line. But in this season of life, what would you name as your top priorities? Some things that that women have told me as it comes to this busy holiday season is it's being present with family. For others, it is taking the time to make grandma's favorite chocolate chip cookies. This is where you get to choose. You are a unique individual. And I really invite you to dig deep here to really think about what you desire? What do you want to most get out of the holidays? Not the thing that maybe your kids are wanting. I know for my kids, they are all about just creating their gift lists and getting all of the best gifts. We're working to shift that as we do do experience gifts in our house as well. All right. But what it is, what is it for you as a woman or a man or however you identify yourself that you most want this holiday season? Can you identify one or two of those top things? Because here's the thing as we think about more joy, less stress this holiday season, if we don't have that vision, if we haven't identified those things, how can we take those steps towards actually getting there? How can we ensure that they do become a priority and that we do shift things so we can make these things happen? Because if we don't have that guiding light, if we don't have that vision, if we haven't taken the time to actually identify if at the end of the day or even at the end of the year, if there is one thing that you could most want to get out of this holiday season, what would you name that to be for yourself? That is the first step is to really, really get clear on what your priorities are. And your priorities, again, they might be traditions that you have carried on for years and years, or your priority this year might be letting go of a tradition. I always like to share the story. I grew up in a small town, rural Connecticut. And every single year we went to a local family's tree farm and we took the tractor out to the field and we got our hot cider cocoa and we got to choose the saw that our family would use, and we'd go trek out. Some years it was in the snow and ice, other years it was just really, really cold. And we would go and we pick out that tree, and as a family, we'd saw it down and they'd load up the tree onto the back of the tractor and pull it back and then wrap it in that stuff, put it on top of our car, and off we'd go. And that was a tradition that was so ingrained in my childhood that when I became a parent, and as we started building our family, and especially when we moved from Los Angeles area up here to Oregon, I said, that is a tradition that matters to me. And we adopted it and we found a local tree farm. It wasn't on a tractor, but we found a local tree farm. And we, with the help of our young kids, we sawed down and we cut those trees. And fast forward then, a handful of years later, my kids are now significantly older. And we've been through many life events, including our house fire, where we did lose most of our holiday decor and all of kind of some of those memory pieces. And we've shifted our tradition for the last couple of years, and that has felt okay. But it was letting go of this expectation that we needed to continue on a tradition just to continue it on, versus what is it that I and us as a family, what was most important to us? And for me, and as the matriarch of the family, as many of you are, we oftentimes get to help kind of sway what those traditions can become. And for me, it wasn't so much about actually cutting down the tree. It was about the decorating of it. It was about the holiday music on. It was about putting the lights up, it was about having the scented candle in the background. That's what really mattered most to me. So now, truth be told, my friend, we actually now, for the first time in our life, the last couple years, we have a fake tree. Never in my wildest dreams would I think that I would have ever shifted that way. But this is just a friendly reminder when you think about your priorities this holiday season. I'm recording this in 2025. They can shift, they can change. And what might be a top priority for you might differ from maybe what your partner wants, what your extended family wants. But I do want you to take a couple moments to get really clear on what it is that you want. Because you've heard me say the saying before, potentially, one of my favorite phrases of all time is where your focus goes, your energy flows. So again, if we are focused on that one driving factor that's gonna help us bring more joy this holiday season, our energy is going to flow in that direction. We are gonna find evidence and we are gonna take steps to get ourselves there. It's all about being intentional. You get to choose where your time and your energy goes as we come into this busy holiday season. It also makes me think about really just reminding you to be cognizant of as we come into holidays, what again, oftentimes there are lots of expectations we place on ourselves, expectations from extended family or from even from our kids, to really think about you as an individual, what is within your control. And this is going to lead us into our next two steps that are gonna help you experience more joy and less stress this holiday season. And when we think about things within our control, it really comes down to only two things. So let's take a moment to kind of narrow down to those things. The first thing, things that we can control, we can control our beliefs, our mindset, our routines, our actions, our reactions. We can choose our boundaries, we can control relationships that we are part of. We have complete control over how we treat others, how we spend our time, how we talk to ourselves. Outside of our control, and I think that it is especially important, well, really to let this be a practice every single day to really focus on what's within your control. But outside of our control, super important as we come into the holiday season to remind you that other people's behavior, beliefs, opinions, other people's words, they're actually outside of our control. We can't change and control them, even if maybe we want to. We can't control what the weather is on Christmas morning. We can't control what happened last year around the dinner table. We can't control what's going to happen in a week or two. All right. What it comes down to is the only two things that we can really control in our life, which is going to influence our personal lived experience and how we view the world and how happy and joyful we are, is we can only control our thoughts and our actions. And so these next two steps are going to really help you get clear and go a little bit deeper on what this looks like for the holidays here. So, again, after you've identified the top priority or maybe top two priorities for yourself as an individual for the holidays, the next thing that often comes to us, the thing that oftentimes causes us so much stress are the actions. They are the things that are on the to-do list, the things that we need to check off and get done in order to quote create the magic. Again, we have been conditioned as women to say you are responsible for creating this holiday magic. Here's the thing: that's a choice. How much you dive into it, how deep you want to go, your kids are gonna love whatever is created on this day. And you get to help create that magic, but you don't have to do it all. This is where you really have the power to take a look at all the things that quote need to be done. Because let's get real. If we don't bake grandma's famous chocolate chip cookies this holiday season, sorry to break it to you, my friend. The world is going to keep spinning. Take just a minute, maybe even pause this and give yourself two minutes tops. And if you're driving, don't write things down right now. But again, you can still reflect through is take two minutes to brain dump. Brain dumping is one of my favorite ways to get all that shit out of your head onto paper, is I want you to brain dump everything that's currently occupying space in your head that needs to get done when it comes to the holidays. And again, I put that word needs in quotes, but things that you feel need to get done, things you want to get done, these could be specific tasks, such as getting gifts for people. These could be specific decorations you need or want to get up. All right, take a moment to pause and braindump anything and everything. There is no right and wrong that needs to get done between now and the end of the year. Now that you've come back is where you really have the power. Well, actually, let's be real, just unloading that out of your brain and putting it onto a space that alone, science-backed, can help actually relieve stress, this power of writing. It's why journaling is so powerful. Once you've identified all of these things, you then have the power to of as to what you want to choose to take on. One of my mentors always says that life is just made up of thousands of choices. And it's really true. We actually have so much more power within us to make choices. We can choose to take on and put pressure on ourselves to check off and do every single thing on our list that we just created. I did this exercise recently with a group of employees that I was doing a workshop for. And it was so funny. I was like, and just tell me approximately, like, we're not going to share everything on the list, but approximately how many are on each list. And, you know, people's lists range from six or seven items up to, I think, 25 items was maybe the top number somebody got in two minutes. And then somebody had commented and said, you know, Megan, I only had 13 items, but each one of those items then probably has like 12 more subtasks to do. Truth. Okay. There's so many decisions in there, but we have the choice to take each of these on. We have the choice to say no. We have the choice to release and let go of things. We have the choice to set boundaries. Those are all things within you that you have the power to do. Now, I'm not going to say that it's easy because oftentimes we're working through stories we tell ourselves or self-sabotage or what is so-and-so gonna think. We can work through those. But I do want to share with you when it comes to again identifying actions for the holidays, a little simple little tool. I call it the daily decision tool. Some of you might have referred it or heard to this as other things. That's my fun name for it. But as you take a look at your list, and this is a great kind of task management or even time management technique that you can use in other situations as well, is taking a look at that list, there are four D's that you will follow: delete, delegate, delay, and do. Okay. I'll just briefly go through each one, but their names pretty much state what they mean. First is delete. Is there anything that you braindumped that based on what you said your top priority is this holiday season, you can just take off your list. You can make the choice to let it go, to give yourself permission to say this year, either that's not important to me or I don't have capacity for it. Sometimes that is hard, but let me just say, waffling on the decision is way more stressful than just making the choice to say, I'm gonna choose not to do that this year. I'm thinking back to, you know, this whole concept of holiday gifts and all the materius materialistic culture that we live in. It's a lot. And again, oftentimes it's like we have to get gifts for each one of our family members and extended family members. And what about each of the kids' teachers and the bus lady and the person who does the crosswalk and the lunch lady and da-da-da-da the soccer coach? All of the things is, you know, a handful of years ago, as as I've worked to simplify my life, my husband and I decided that for our kids, rather than get them more stuff, we decided we wanted to do experiential gifts. Having to figure out what the perfect quote gift is when it comes to a material item for our children. Let me just say, they get plenty of that stuff from extended family. But from my husband and I, it's an experience gift. Last year, I took my daughter, it was a it was a twofer actually. I took her one date to go roller skating and another date to go ice skating. My older son, who's now in his teens, you know, he really enjoys a good shopping trip. So we would go get lunch at a space of his choice and then go to one of his favorite local stores. I've done ziplining adventures with one of my sons. My husband likes to do an overnight hotel stay just so you're out the house and can play in the hotel pool. So there's lots of different ideas. But again, this goes into the delete is we decided to delete having to shop for gifts for our immediate family members. And again, what you choose to delete is up to you. Do you sometimes have to have conversations with others about this? Maybe you do, but you can also make that choice for you to delete it to say, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be a part of that, which leads me right into the second D, which stands for delegate. Is what on your list can you delegate? Can you ask for help with? Can you maybe reach out to your partner and say, hey, can you take on the load of figuring out holiday dinner this year? Again, when we delegate, it is the practice of releasing and letting go, which can be hard because it's tied to control and our natural human desire for control. But it can be done. And I will tell you, the more that you learn to reach out for help, to delegate, to delete and say no, the easier it becomes. The last two here are delay and do. So delay is exactly what it sounds. Is anything that came out on your list that can actually be delayed doesn't need to be happened today on November 16th or whatever day it is that you're listening to this. But can it be something that you either delay till next month? Maybe it's a task that actually isn't holiday specific that you can delay till after the holidays. There is power in saying that not everything is urgent right now. And again, you can loop that back to as once you identify your priorities. And the last one here is actually do. And again, great reframe here is to what are you choosing to do versus feeling like you have to do? That reframe alone, that kind of shift alone can make a really, really big difference. Leading from a space of choice, leading from a space of gratitude as you're making these choices can be a game changer. So the second step, again, step one, really identify your top priorities. Step two is of the tasks that quote, need to be done or the things that came out on your list is using this daily decision tool to delete, delegate, delay, or do. The last thing that you can really focus on as you are looking to have more joy and less stress this holiday season is the power of shifting expectations. One of my all-time favorite quotes is overwhelm comes when expectations don't meet reality. I'm gonna say that again. Overwhelm comes when expectations don't meet reality. Oftentimes we have expectations that are completely unrealistic. All right. Oftentimes our expectations might be around how long something takes versus do I have the capacity or energy for it? It often is us shoulding on ourselves, S-H-O-U-L-D, shoulding on ourselves. We think we should do certain things during this time of year because either we've done it every single year leading up to them, or because it maybe it's an expectation that we think our parents have for us, or oftentimes they're expectations that we place on ourselves. Again, there's two types of expectations that we can really think about the self-imposed ones. Like for real, is anybody gonna really know if I don't do the cheese board this year and focus on, I don't know, the veggie tray instead? Oftentimes these are expectations that we just internally put on ourselves and causes so much stress. There are also expectations that others may put on us. But again, it comes down to really you having a choice. And so the third step here is really thinking about what expectations that are causing you stress can you shift? And here's the three-step process to actually shift expectations. The first one is to notice it. We have to catch ourselves in the action. Again, we have to pattern interrupt the thought. We have to identify it and notice it. And then we have to get curious. The second step here is to, after we notice the expectation, is we need to shift it or replace it. Okay. So it this is the practice of reframing our stories. Again, we put so much pressure on that it needs to be done a certain way. It needs to be, quote, perfect. Notice that perfectionism, maybe tendency coming in, or maybe it's noticing some of the expectations of I'm only doing this to please so and so. Work to replace it with a different thought pattern or bring it back to what is actually most important to you. And then go ahead and practice it over and over and over again. This is the practice of reframing, of shifting expectations, of shifting our thoughts and our mindset of our beliefs. Notice it, replace it, practice it over again. And the more that you actually do this, the more we are building those neural pathways in our brain to go towards, again, away from stress and into a space where we feel like we have a little bit more control, a little bit more positivity, a little bit more peace of mind. Sometimes I like to have kind of simple go-to mantras or sayings when I notice those negative thought patterns coming up, such as, man, I've got to get the Christmas cards out by X date or else is notice the thought. Either again, we can reframe it as actually, I'm giving myself permission. It's not really a big deal if they don't get out in time. It's kind of funny, funny story. We talked a little bit about gift giving. In addition to gifting our kids experiential gifts, we also now gift our extended family. And we've done this for probably going on seven or eight years. Each year I take a little bit of time and it kind of gets my creative juices flowing, is we make a family calendar. And this calendar each month has pictures of my kiddos from that year in that month period. And I put that together and we give that to the grandparents and the aunts and uncles and the great aunts, and they absolutely love it. Now, for years when I first started this, well, one, there was relief, and that I'm not trying to buy each family member something different or gift something different. And is this gift better than that gift? It's just what we do now, and people actually really appreciate it. But I would put so much pressure on myself to get them out for we celebrate Christmas for Christmas Day. So on Christmas Day, they are they have been made, they have been printed, they have been wrapped. And at least two or three out of the last seven or seven or eight years since I've been doing this, I've just given myself permission to say, this year, nope, I'm not gonna stay up till 4 a.m. and push myself to do this. They'll get it after the holidays. And so they might get it first week in January, mid-January, and that is okay. Again, this is shifting an expectation I put on myself. And one of those go-to mantra sayings is I'm doing the best I can right now. Or I'm actually a woman who prioritizes my own well-being. And so I'm gonna actually choose sleep right now in this season, knowing that I can make time for this another time. I don't need to sacrifice my own health to get the thing done. So as we get ready to wrap up, I just want to go ahead and quickly recap the three steps that I went over. One, identify your true top priority or priorities this holiday season, the ones that speak true to you. Again, be observant of the ones that are maybe creeping in because you think you should be. No, no, no, no, no. What is it that you want most this holiday season? Once you know that, you can start taking steps towards it. Number two, braindump all of those things that need to be done. Use that four-step process of delete, delegate, delay, and do to really focus on the things that you are gonna choose to do. Or again, it's a choice. And lastly, start to recognize and identify the belief systems, the thoughts, the expectations that you are ready to shift. Notice it, replace it, and continue to practice this over and over again. My friend, if you adopt and try out even just one of these steps, I am really hopeful that it's gonna lead to a little bit more peace and joy this holiday season and allow you to step a little bit out of the stress. I also want to remind you that this work, it is a journey and it does take practice. So give yourself grace, take moments to pause, tune into gratitude, and truly just know that you're doing the best that you can. So, as we dive into holiday season or whenever you're catching this episode, I'm gonna wish you exactly that. Go into this holiday, thinking about things differently, trying things differently, and bring a little bit more joy for yourself because you deserve it. All right, my friend. Until next time, I am cheering you on always, and happy holidays. Thank you so much for tuning into the Rockstar Mom podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, here's how we can keep this momentum going. First, be sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Next, I'd be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach even more women who are ready to live more intentional, fun-filled lives. Lastly, please share your insights on social media and be sure to tag me at Megan Caldwell PDX so we can connect and inspire other rock stars to live their best lives too. Again, I am so glad that you are here, and I'll see you next time.