3 Ways to Have Better Boundaries & Enjoy The Holidays with Your Family

What we want to make sure on is that you don't create resentment around relationships that are actually important to you and that it doesn't get blurred in thinking that it's a them thing, when really we have a lot more control over it than we think. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. It's time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration. And I am just so sitting here my first day in Arizona out of 10 days. Chris and I came back because it is his birthday week. It is Thanksgiving week. And also our favorite vet for our dogs is here, and poor Bonkers is about to get neutered. So we are back here for all of the things. And let me tell you, all of the things are also happening to my skin back here. That typically happens in wintertime in the desert, and that is I was feeling dry, I was feeling cracked. And I am doubling up on glosi, which is per usual. I'm telling you, I don't know how I even survived without glossy. It is so huge for skin hydration, for gut health. And especially with this holiday season, there's so many different foods that are coming in that you don't normally eat. Like, literally just getting here, I bought some snack food from a gas station and I'm like, why am I eating string cheese? Like, this is not the best thing for me right now. But I swear it's helped me not bloat, like, wake up and not feel like my stomach is bloated, feel like I have a flat stomach, feel like I'm not retaining water. I'm sleeping better. I swear, when we created this, I wanted to just look at all of the different things that I hated feeling. And I'm like, I want great skin. I want to wake up. I want to feel lean. I don't want to feel bloated. I don't want stomach issues. And that's what we do with glossy. So all you have to do is go to getglosi.com and use code happy for 25% off today. I want to chat with you about the season, what's coming up, what's on your heart right now with getting to know that you are going back to see your family, most likely, or you're going to go be around a whole lot of people that maybe are challenging to you. Maybe it's not the easiest time when you think about holidays because it's extended family or it's dropping in for long periods of time with family. And so I just did a teaching into growth Day Growth Day is an app that Brennan Bouchard started, and I was teaching on better family communication, and it really brought up a lot of things that I deal with and that I've dealt with in my past. And I can sit here and say that after a lot of family challenges and a lot of uncomfortable holidays or holidays that we didn't necessarily love, that we've been able to have incredible holidays and really improve our relationships and make holiday time something that we all look forward to. Because I actually used to get so stressed out about it. I'm like, oh, my God. I have to be around people that I'm uncomfortable around, or we have to, you know, do things that we don't love. Or I'm going to feel awful. I'm going to feel bloated. I'm going to eat all this food, I'm going to drink all this wine, and we're going to spend all this time with people. It's not going to be super fun, right? Like, I don't know anybody who wants to get out of their routine to spend, like three to seven to 10 days in a house doing things so far outside of your routine that you feel like crap. You start getting anxious. You start to just feel terrible in your body. You start to feel depressed because of what you're eating and what you're drinking and what you're talking about. Maybe it's really negative. Maybe you're just not loving the conversations that you're having. So I want to give you some things to think about right now to improve this time of year in this experience. So a lot of you are going back for Thanksgiving. A lot of you are going back for the holidays. A lot of you are going back for Christmas, New Year's, whatever it is. I want you to think about one to three things that could make this holiday time better. So I'm going to use a couple things as an example that we did when Chris and I first got together and we were going back to his family's house for the holidays. Mine does not celebrate holidays, but we would go back for days at a time. We'd go back for five days, seven days, 10 days sometimes. And we had a couple of experiences that were not awesome because we didn't set boundaries. We didn't have the conversations that we wanted to have. We weren't eating healthy food. We totally got off the rails. We completely were not on our routines or schedules. We got so far behind on work that when we started to think about going home, it actually stressed us out beyond what we could possibly tell you, because it felt like we were getting behind in everything. Getting behind in work, getting behind in, in fitness, feeling like we're gaining weight, not feeling good, relating bad feelings to it. And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not what this time is about. And we can't necessarily even blame these people. Like, it's not their fault. It's the fact that we are not interrupting this pattern in these traditions and saying what we actually need in order to get a holiday experience that we desire. Just because something has been done one way for however long in the past does not mean that it has to continue to be that way. It's okay to have conversations, it's okay to ruffle some feathers around it. What we want to make sure on is that you don't create resentment around relationships that are actually important to you and that it doesn't get blurred in thinking that it's a them thing, when really we have a lot more control over it than we think. So when we were thinking of the situation, we were like, okay, what were the one to three things that we could change? Because you don't want to bring them, like 10 things. That's going to be overwhelming. They're probably going to be like, hell no. Like, who do you think you are? We brought one to three. So we said, what are the three things that we would want to change in order to make this an incredible experience for us and for them, like, really think about them as well. And the first thing that we said was that we would need to stay in our routine and what would that look like? So we want to be able to walk. We want to be able to walk alone together. We want to be able to keep our morning walks. We want to be able to eat something healthy in the morning. We want to go to our power nine that we do. The three gratitudes, the three excited abouts, and the three manifesting things that we do. We want to be able to have a little bit of time in the morning to get that walk, maybe a workout, because, you know, it's holiday time and you're off. Why not? And then we also want to be able to catch up on work if we need to. Like, maybe it's just 20 minutes, maybe it's an hour in our inbox every day, you know, not on Christmas Eve or Christmas, but like, maybe it's an hour where you're just playing catch up so that you don't feel like you're getting behind so that you're just on Top of things. So you can really be present and enjoy and not feel like, oh my God, my team needs me. Oh my gosh, my, my parents are like upset with me because I keep looking at my phone and trying to answer things. And so that was the first thing that we brought to them is we said, hey, you know, we're excited to come home. But the one thing that we've really noticed about the past is that we start to kind of start to feel crabby or anxious and we really fall behind. You know, we have health goals and we start to feel bad. So then we relate like feeling bad to the experience of going home. And that's not what we want at all. So here's some of the things that we just want to kind of ask for and let you know that we're going to do in order to be our best, in order to feel our best, in order to be fully present with you from this time to this time. And so we started to say, hey, you know, from 1:00 clock p.m. or 2:00pm on, like, we are all yours. We'll be fully present, whatever you want to do, whatever that looks like. But up until that time, we need it for our walks, we need it for our workouts, we need it for catch up time. We want a healthy breakfast, whatever that looks like. And it was pretty well received. Now, of course, there's going to be days where maybe you're starting a festivity earlier or you know, maybe there's a day, whatever that looks like, it's starting early in the morning and you need to be a part of it. Great. You're not saying you won't be flexible, you're just saying overall, these are the things that you would love to ask for. You're setting up the expectation so it's not weird that you go and do it. You're not excluding anyone. They know why you're doing it. They know that it's so that you feel good and you feel present and you don't feel stressed out. And yes, they still may comment, they still may say something like, well, gee, I wish you, you know, you had a job where, you know, you could take off more time. Or wow, it's, I just wish we could be a little more present with you the whole time that you're here. That's okay. It's okay. If they say that, you don't have to let it stick to you. You don't have to take the bait, you don't have to respond, you don't have to let it Trigger you, you can just know that this is sometimes what parents do, what siblings do, what family does. Let it be okay and know that this relationship is worth preserving and just letting that slide off you, right? Like be Teflon. During the holidays. The next thing that really helped us asking if we could play with some new traditions. So at holiday time, at Christmas time, it always felt kind of stressful to run around and get all of these gifts because there was just this pressure on so many presents and getting the right gift. And just we found it to be a lot more stressful than fun. And so we said, you know, why are we doing this thing that stresses us out? Just because it's always been done this way. What if we had a conversation around like, hey, can we just try this on for this year? We just try this. If we don't like it, we don't have to do it again. And so around gifting we said, what would it look like if instead of having to buy gifts for everybody and everyone's stressed and financially this isn't great for some people in our family? Like, what if we just did White Elephant and bought one gift per person and set a spending limit on it and made it a really fun game and instead of spending all that money on gifts, we went and created experiences instead. If somebody really wants to do something else, we can put some more money towards family ice skating or a ski trip or you know, maybe there's some fun events going on in your town that you go and, and you do that instead. And this was one of the most like life changing experiences. We've done this for the past. I don't even know, maybe it's been eight years now. But instead of running around and worrying about so many gifts now we've changed some of those traditions and it's been incredible. It's been amazing. So if something's not working for you, all you have to do is have a conversation around it. And the third thing was that we noticed if you get a bunch of adults together and you don't create a plan or things to do, it's not a very good formula for sitting around and drinking and talking about things that maybe you don't necessarily want to talk about, or politics coming up or what, you know, different belief systems. It's so amazing to have games planned, have different festivities planned, have different things that you want to do planned and different traditions planned. So we try to make actual plans to keep us busy during the holidays. So one thing that we love to do is an ornament tradition where we all buy. Like, each person gets one white ornament. You can find these on Amazon. You can find these at, you know, I think I found them at Pottery Barn one year. You take a black Sharpie, you write your name on the bottom of that ornament, and you. You all sit around a table and you pass it to the right. Then what you do is you write a word about that person, whoever's name it is that you have, and you write something nice. You can write a powerful word about them. You can go on to elaborate why you picked that word, and then you pass it to the right. And what happens is, at the end of this, everybody has these beautiful words on their ornaments, and it's really fun to go around from person to person. You take about a minute to two minutes each, and each person says why they wrote that on that ornament. Then you get to go put them on the tree. You have this lovely tradition. This can take from one to two hours. It's just such a beautiful sentiment and a beautiful way to open up communication and create new tradition. So challenge your traditions. Challenge what you're doing. You guys try one, or try all three of these and let me know what you think. I'm so grateful for you. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone. Sam.