26. Holiday Self Care: How to Show Up for Yourself This Season
You know that wild scramble to find a charger when your phone nears 1% battery life? That’s how most of us approach The Holidays: frantically running on empty, trying to power through until we absolutely crash. But what I’ve learned from working with ambitious moms is that the secret to actually enjoying The Holidays might surprise you.
This isn’t doing more or being more organized. It’s about completely rewriting the rules of how we show up for ourselves first. You may feel drawn toward creating the picture-perfect Holiday experience. But the truth is, that isn’t what our kids need. They need us fully present and actually enjoying the season they love so much.
When momma’s running on empty, everyone feels it, so tune in this week to discover how to fill up your mental and emotional tank, so your whole family can feel the Holiday joy. You’ll learn how to give yourself a new sense of hope as you approach The Holidays through practical strategies and mindset shifts so you can make this season energizing instead of depleting.
If you struggle to even think about yourself throughout holiday season, I invite you to download my 31 Days of Self Care calendar below.
Follow along each day of December and hold yourself accountable to those mini acts of kindness to yourself!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
The way people pleasing and perfectionism show up during The Holidays.
How permission slips empower you to do things differently.
What it looks like to redefine your non-negotiables and delete everything else.
Some helpful new ways to think about self-care during the festive season.
How to do The Holidays your way, for the benefit of you and your family.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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25. Reparenting: Find Joy as a Parent and Energy for Your Business with Crystal Haitsma
Full Episode Transcript:
What if you sat down right now and asked yourself, what if I could do the holidays exactly as I wanted? What would that look like?
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Hello, mom friends. I'm really excited about this episode because it's not only a topic near and dear to my heart, but it's also the first episode that I'm recording live after birthing another human. So whether I sound like I'm glowing or sleep deprived, I probably sound a little different because frankly, I am different, which is really exciting. And this episode is so timely for so many reasons.
You know that feeling when your phone battery hits one percent? That desperate scramble for a charger knowing you're moments away from completely shutting down? That's exactly how most of us approach the holidays. Running on empty, trying to power through until we absolutely crash. But what I've learned from working with so many ambitious moms is that the secret to actually enjoying the holidays isn't doing more or being more organized, it's about completely rewriting the rules of how we show up for ourselves first.
It's easy to want to create the perfect holiday experience, but the truth is our children don't need Pinterest perfect holidays, they need us present and enjoying the season with them. And here's the reality, when mama's running on empty, everyone feels it. But when your tank is full, that energy radiates through the entire family. So by the end of this episode, I want you to feel a new sense of hope as we approach the holidays with practical tools so that this season is energizing, not just depleting.
So let's talk about some practical self-care strategies and mindset shifts to get you energized this upcoming festive season. The first is one of my favorites and you can actually do it right now. It's called permission slips. Yes. It's literally like the ones from school. I love this one. And it was inspired by Brené Brown, who I adore. And I want you to write down or maybe just think about it. If you're driving or on the go, which you probably are, say to yourself, I give myself permission to, you may need to give yourself permission this holiday season to do things differently. And yes, that may mean stepping out of people pleasing or perfectionism, but it will energize you in the long run.
So here are a few examples to get you started. I give myself permission to skip the holiday cards this year. I give myself permission to order pre-made dishes. I give myself permission to say no to any event that doesn't bring me joy. I want you to adopt a hell yes or no mentality which means you are either a hell yes to do something and if you're not you just say no. I give myself permission to let the kids wrap their own gifts. I give myself permission to take time away from work so I have energy for holiday celebrations. Write yourself a permission slip or two right now for the end of the year your festivities and trust yourself in those decisions.
Which leads me to another practical strategy to take care of yourself this holiday season, redefining non-negotiables and deleting the rest. This is where we get specific about what actually matters. I love sharing this story from my own coach who made a decision years ago that transformed her family's holidays forever. She decided that instead of getting caught up in the traditional gift-giving frenzy and all the festivities, her family would travel somewhere each Christmas. That would be their gift to each other, experiences and memories instead of stuff. And with that, they were essentially opting out of the holiday madness. And it was radical at first, and it still probably is radical to some hearing it, but it eliminated so much holiday stress and created a tradition her family truly loves.
So what if you sat down right now and asked yourself, what if I could do the holidays exactly as I wanted? What would that look like? Maybe it's having one meaningful gathering instead of trying to attend every event. Maybe it's choosing quality time over quantity of activities. Maybe it's creating new traditions that blend different cultural celebrations in a way that feels authentic to your family. Or maybe it's simplifying gift giving or focusing on acts of service instead.
So I want you to make your list. What are your true non-negotiables? Not what you think they should be, but what truly matters to your family. What are the things you wanna keep and what are the things that you want to get rid of? The beauty about these first two strategies is that they force you to be intentional about what you decide to spend energy on. Activities begin to shift from I have to do X, to I get to do X, because you are deciding that you want to keep it. Which is an energizing mind shift all in and of itself, and we haven't even gotten to mindset yet.
The third strategy I wanna share is tied to what we think of as maybe traditional self-care. And it's all about quick win self-care actions. Now, before you roll your eyes, thinking I'm about to suggest meditation and bubble baths, I want to suggest a few new ways to think about self-care. The first is we often think self-care takes too much time, or better yet, we don't have time for it. And the reality is that some of my most effective self-care practices take less than five minutes. It's not about duration, it's about intention.
So you could spend five minutes or less taking three deep breaths behind a closed door or doing one song dance party, unless it's Bohemian Rhapsody because that song is six minutes because my son loves it. So we speak in Bohemian Rhapsody time. You could also walk to the mailbox in silence, right? Or stay in the shower for five extra minutes when you would normally be done. All of these can be self-care.
In last week's episode, I interviewed Crystal Haitsma and I raved about her daily grounding exercise that she encourages, and it only takes a few minutes. She even shares how to make time for it when you feel like it's impossible. The second thing is we often think that self-care has to be expensive or extravagant, you know, the spa day or the long weekend with our besties. And the reality is that the most powerful forms of self-care are often free. And it's not just that they're free. They are easy to do more often, which has a greater impact.
I love the weekend getaways. I love the spa days and massages so please do those but that's not the self-care that's going to sustain you. It's the enjoying a morning coffee in complete silence or dedicating 15 minutes to a stretching session before bed. Yes, those things take a little bit more time but they are still self-care or maybe it's going to the grocery store by yourself or having a phone call with a friend.
The third thing is, you know, a lot of times we feel like self-care is selfish. And the reality is that self-care is like maintaining your car, okay? If you skip it, and eventually everything will break down. You can't show up for others if you're running on fumes. Everyone benefits from you figuring out what you need more of and less of.
And if you're someone who struggles to even think about yourself throughout the day or week I'm going to link in the show notes a free self-care calendar that I made years ago and it works whether you're still in corporate or have your own business or are somewhere in between right so it's 31 days of self-care and the tasks each day are simple so you can follow along each day of December and hold yourself accountable to those mini acts of kindness to yourself, okay? So go to jenna.coach/26 to access that calendar and prepare for an energizing December.
Now that we have our practical tools in place, let's talk about the mindset shifts that will help these changes stick. The first is releasing perfectionism. I talk about this all the time because it's so ingrained in so many of us to strive for perfection. The truth is perfection is stealing your joy. Your kids will not remember how perfectly the table was set or how neatly the presents were wrapped. They remember the feeling, the laughter, the presence.
I want you to check yourself when you notice that you're getting overwhelmed or anxious about some task that you have and ask yourself will this matter in five years? What does good enough look like and what do I need to do less of in order to really enjoy this moment or activity?
The second shift is breaking free from people pleasing. Your holiday season is not a democracy. You don't need everyone's vote or approval. Trust me, no is a complete sentence during the holidays. When you decide to drop a tradition or say no to a holiday party, trust yourself and your decision. You're not responsible for other people's feelings, only your own. And doing things that don't give you energy mean that you're managing lots of resentment and frustration.
I want you to make two lists in your head or write it down. And remember, you can get the full transcript of this episode and all episodes at jenna.coach/26, you can put whichever episode number after the forward slash and get the transcript and that will allow you to revisit some of these questions and exercises later if you're on the go. But I want you to write down number one, things you do during the holidays because you genuinely want to, and number two, things you do because you think you should or to please others. And when you look at that second list, I want you to think, you know, what if you could decline some of those invitations? What if you could alternate years for family visits? What if you could set boundaries around your time and energy.
This is kind of going back to the permission slips and the non-negotiables. They're so important because you can do those things. You can decline invitations. You can alternate years with family. You can set boundaries. And I want you to be intentional about doing it this holiday season as an act of self-care.
The other shift is I want you to sit back and really think about what success means for you over the next two months and as you move into the next year. I want you to think about and write down what a successful holiday season would actually feel like and not just what it looks like but really feels like. So some examples might be feeling rested enough to enjoy the moments, having enough space to create memories, maintaining your peace throughout the busy times, not snapping at your kids, which, you know, definitely check into last week's episode where Crystal gives some great insights about that.
The holidays don't have to look like they always have. You can create new traditions that fit your current life, your current season of life. You can blend different cultural celebrations in your own way. You can choose simplicity over extravagance, okay? And that will make all the difference this holiday season for you to understand that you do have control over what this looks like and feels like and it can work for you.
So let's recap this holiday season blueprint. All right, I want you to write yourself permission slips. Give yourself permission this holiday season to do whatever and not do whatever you want to. I want you to define your true non-negotiables, the things you want to keep, and I want you to delete the rest. Three is choose your quick win self-care actions. It doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be extravagant. It can be little wins throughout the day.
Number four, release perfectionism and people pleasing this holiday season. Trust me, it will give you so much energy to no longer try to be perfect or make everybody happy. You are not responsible for other people's feelings, okay? And the fifth is I want you to reset your definition of success and expectations, or at least define it to understand what success feels like to you.
And your homework this week is simple. I want you to write a few permission slips for yourself and put them somewhere you'll see daily right start with just three and make small steps that lead to bigger changes and more time and energy for you and in the coming weeks we'll talk about setting powerful intentions for the new year but for now focus on giving yourself the gift of presence over perfection remember you don't have to overhaul everything at once start with one permission slip one boundary one act of self-care at a time.
And I want you to really enjoy everything that this end of year season has to offer. I want you to be able to relax, I want you to be able to laugh, I want you to be able to find joy with the people you love. It's a beautiful time of year and I want you to take full advantage of it. Until next week, this is your reminder that you deserve to enjoy this season too. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Hello, mom friends. I'm really excited about this episode because it's not only a topic near and dear to my heart, but it's also the first episode that I'm recording live after birthing another human. So whether I sound like I'm glowing or sleep deprived, I probably sound a little different because frankly, I am different, which is really exciting. And this episode is so timely for so many reasons.
You know that feeling when your phone battery hits one percent? That desperate scramble for a charger knowing you're moments away from completely shutting down? That's exactly how most of us approach the holidays. Running on empty, trying to power through until we absolutely crash. But what I've learned from working with so many ambitious moms is that the secret to actually enjoying the holidays isn't doing more or being more organized, it's about completely rewriting the rules of how we show up for ourselves first.
It's easy to want to create the perfect holiday experience, but the truth is our children don't need Pinterest perfect holidays, they need us present and enjoying the season with them. And here's the reality, when mama's running on empty, everyone feels it. But when your tank is full, that energy radiates through the entire family. So by the end of this episode, I want you to feel a new sense of hope as we approach the holidays with practical tools so that this season is energizing, not just depleting.
So let's talk about some practical self-care strategies and mindset shifts to get you energized this upcoming festive season. The first is one of my favorites and you can actually do it right now. It's called permission slips. Yes. It's literally like the ones from school. I love this one. And it was inspired by Brené Brown, who I adore. And I want you to write down or maybe just think about it. If you're driving or on the go, which you probably are, say to yourself, I give myself permission to, you may need to give yourself permission this holiday season to do things differently. And yes, that may mean stepping out of people pleasing or perfectionism, but it will energize you in the long run.
So here are a few examples to get you started. I give myself permission to skip the holiday cards this year. I give myself permission to order pre-made dishes. I give myself permission to say no to any event that doesn't bring me joy. I want you to adopt a hell yes or no mentality which means you are either a hell yes to do something and if you're not you just say no. I give myself permission to let the kids wrap their own gifts. I give myself permission to take time away from work so I have energy for holiday celebrations. Write yourself a permission slip or two right now for the end of the year your festivities and trust yourself in those decisions.
Which leads me to another practical strategy to take care of yourself this holiday season, redefining non-negotiables and deleting the rest. This is where we get specific about what actually matters. I love sharing this story from my own coach who made a decision years ago that transformed her family's holidays forever. She decided that instead of getting caught up in the traditional gift-giving frenzy and all the festivities, her family would travel somewhere each Christmas. That would be their gift to each other, experiences and memories instead of stuff. And with that, they were essentially opting out of the holiday madness. And it was radical at first, and it still probably is radical to some hearing it, but it eliminated so much holiday stress and created a tradition her family truly loves.
So what if you sat down right now and asked yourself, what if I could do the holidays exactly as I wanted? What would that look like? Maybe it's having one meaningful gathering instead of trying to attend every event. Maybe it's choosing quality time over quantity of activities. Maybe it's creating new traditions that blend different cultural celebrations in a way that feels authentic to your family. Or maybe it's simplifying gift giving or focusing on acts of service instead.
So I want you to make your list. What are your true non-negotiables? Not what you think they should be, but what truly matters to your family. What are the things you wanna keep and what are the things that you want to get rid of? The beauty about these first two strategies is that they force you to be intentional about what you decide to spend energy on. Activities begin to shift from I have to do X, to I get to do X, because you are deciding that you want to keep it. Which is an energizing mind shift all in and of itself, and we haven't even gotten to mindset yet.
The third strategy I wanna share is tied to what we think of as maybe traditional self-care. And it's all about quick win self-care actions. Now, before you roll your eyes, thinking I'm about to suggest meditation and bubble baths, I want to suggest a few new ways to think about self-care. The first is we often think self-care takes too much time, or better yet, we don't have time for it. And the reality is that some of my most effective self-care practices take less than five minutes. It's not about duration, it's about intention.
So you could spend five minutes or less taking three deep breaths behind a closed door or doing one song dance party, unless it's Bohemian Rhapsody because that song is six minutes because my son loves it. So we speak in Bohemian Rhapsody time. You could also walk to the mailbox in silence, right? Or stay in the shower for five extra minutes when you would normally be done. All of these can be self-care.
In last week's episode, I interviewed Crystal Haitsma and I raved about her daily grounding exercise that she encourages, and it only takes a few minutes. She even shares how to make time for it when you feel like it's impossible. The second thing is we often think that self-care has to be expensive or extravagant, you know, the spa day or the long weekend with our besties. And the reality is that the most powerful forms of self-care are often free. And it's not just that they're free. They are easy to do more often, which has a greater impact.
I love the weekend getaways. I love the spa days and massages so please do those but that's not the self-care that's going to sustain you. It's the enjoying a morning coffee in complete silence or dedicating 15 minutes to a stretching session before bed. Yes, those things take a little bit more time but they are still self-care or maybe it's going to the grocery store by yourself or having a phone call with a friend.
The third thing is, you know, a lot of times we feel like self-care is selfish. And the reality is that self-care is like maintaining your car, okay? If you skip it, and eventually everything will break down. You can't show up for others if you're running on fumes. Everyone benefits from you figuring out what you need more of and less of.
And if you're someone who struggles to even think about yourself throughout the day or week I'm going to link in the show notes a free self-care calendar that I made years ago and it works whether you're still in corporate or have your own business or are somewhere in between right so it's 31 days of self-care and the tasks each day are simple so you can follow along each day of December and hold yourself accountable to those mini acts of kindness to yourself, okay? So go to jenna.coach/26 to access that calendar and prepare for an energizing December.
Now that we have our practical tools in place, let's talk about the mindset shifts that will help these changes stick. The first is releasing perfectionism. I talk about this all the time because it's so ingrained in so many of us to strive for perfection. The truth is perfection is stealing your joy. Your kids will not remember how perfectly the table was set or how neatly the presents were wrapped. They remember the feeling, the laughter, the presence.
I want you to check yourself when you notice that you're getting overwhelmed or anxious about some task that you have and ask yourself will this matter in five years? What does good enough look like and what do I need to do less of in order to really enjoy this moment or activity?
The second shift is breaking free from people pleasing. Your holiday season is not a democracy. You don't need everyone's vote or approval. Trust me, no is a complete sentence during the holidays. When you decide to drop a tradition or say no to a holiday party, trust yourself and your decision. You're not responsible for other people's feelings, only your own. And doing things that don't give you energy mean that you're managing lots of resentment and frustration.
I want you to make two lists in your head or write it down. And remember, you can get the full transcript of this episode and all episodes at jenna.coach/26, you can put whichever episode number after the forward slash and get the transcript and that will allow you to revisit some of these questions and exercises later if you're on the go. But I want you to write down number one, things you do during the holidays because you genuinely want to, and number two, things you do because you think you should or to please others. And when you look at that second list, I want you to think, you know, what if you could decline some of those invitations? What if you could alternate years for family visits? What if you could set boundaries around your time and energy.
This is kind of going back to the permission slips and the non-negotiables. They're so important because you can do those things. You can decline invitations. You can alternate years with family. You can set boundaries. And I want you to be intentional about doing it this holiday season as an act of self-care.
The other shift is I want you to sit back and really think about what success means for you over the next two months and as you move into the next year. I want you to think about and write down what a successful holiday season would actually feel like and not just what it looks like but really feels like. So some examples might be feeling rested enough to enjoy the moments, having enough space to create memories, maintaining your peace throughout the busy times, not snapping at your kids, which, you know, definitely check into last week's episode where Crystal gives some great insights about that.
The holidays don't have to look like they always have. You can create new traditions that fit your current life, your current season of life. You can blend different cultural celebrations in your own way. You can choose simplicity over extravagance, okay? And that will make all the difference this holiday season for you to understand that you do have control over what this looks like and feels like and it can work for you.
So let's recap this holiday season blueprint. All right, I want you to write yourself permission slips. Give yourself permission this holiday season to do whatever and not do whatever you want to. I want you to define your true non-negotiables, the things you want to keep, and I want you to delete the rest. Three is choose your quick win self-care actions. It doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be extravagant. It can be little wins throughout the day.
Number four, release perfectionism and people pleasing this holiday season. Trust me, it will give you so much energy to no longer try to be perfect or make everybody happy. You are not responsible for other people's feelings, okay? And the fifth is I want you to reset your definition of success and expectations, or at least define it to understand what success feels like to you.
And your homework this week is simple. I want you to write a few permission slips for yourself and put them somewhere you'll see daily right start with just three and make small steps that lead to bigger changes and more time and energy for you and in the coming weeks we'll talk about setting powerful intentions for the new year but for now focus on giving yourself the gift of presence over perfection remember you don't have to overhaul everything at once start with one permission slip one boundary one act of self-care at a time.
And I want you to really enjoy everything that this end of year season has to offer. I want you to be able to relax, I want you to be able to laugh, I want you to be able to find joy with the people you love. It's a beautiful time of year and I want you to take full advantage of it. Until next week, this is your reminder that you deserve to enjoy this season too. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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