Planning Together for the Holidays

Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. I'm a relationship and sex coach who's worked for 23 years with executives and business founders versus our executive coach. But by popular demand, as their intimacy coach, over the last 12 years, most high performance people in the world have given me a wealth of knowledge about how to create relationships that are not just good, but great. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help every listener create those same world class results in their relationships. Today, we're talking about holiday planning. My wish for you this season is that your events, your decor, your, your food and your rituals are all imbued with meaning and free from pressure and stress. This is supposed to be the happiest, happiest season of all, but so often we're miserable inside of it. Stressed out, feeling rushed, overwhelmed, feeling there's too much to do, buying presents with some resentment attached to it because, oh, shoot, there's another person I forgot. And we're just sort of fulfilling obligations and not enjoying ourselves at all. And I find that kind of tragic that amid so much abundance, we can create so much misery. And in relationships so often what happens is that one person has a big vision for how the holidays are going to go. They put a lot of energy into planning and they're going to create the traditions that they're used to from the past that come down from one or both of their families. They're going to create particular memories for their children. They're going to make holiday magic, damn it. They're really devoted to that, but in a way that can wind up being stressed out and controlling and in a way that winds up not feeling very collaborative. So their partner is just this accessory inside the vision of this holiday tableau. And there's kind of no way to win. And I know of what I speak here because I've been that person in various ways with various holidays in the past. And I've learned a lot from both my own process and coaching clients through it. So I want to talk to you today about some of the mistakes that we need to look at that we might make in our holiday planning together. And I want to give you some pointers for how to plan together effectively. So let's dive right in the mistakes we often make. And there are four I really want to highlight. First, thinking and planning in your head, but then dumping the whole vision and plan on your partner at once. So, so often you've been thinking about this since maybe October. Okay. These are what we're going to bake and these are some of the things that I know that people want. And I've got to start thinking about how we're going to decorate and what's going to happen. We what are the different events that we need to get to. Oh my gosh, Covid's happening. And so how does that change what's happening? And I want to create memories. So we've got all this pressure on ourselves and we're doing a ton of thinking about it. And then one day we say to our partner, we need to talk about Christmas or we need to talk about the holidays. And I'm sorry if my language sometimes leans toward Christmas. And the cultural Christmas and spiritually, the solstice are both really important to me. And then I consider Christmas spiritually. For me, it means the reawakening of the Christ within. It's that divine. You know, Jesus said these things and even greater things than I have done shall you do also. And that's how I think of it, is this is this dark time of turning within and finding the divinity in ourselves that we might be born again like that baby in the manger. We might have a birth of our own magnificent, miraculous capacity as the children of the divine right here on earth. So that's just a quick snapshot of my spiritual take on all this. And I really want to be inclusive of everyone, regardless of your spiritual traditions or what time your holy days happen in the year. I'm talking about all of it. But from my vantage, it's been about there's Santa, there's the elf on the shelf. I rail against the cultural connotations or the commercial connotations of that. My children really want that daily surprise. And so we do an Advent calendar and we do little surprises every day. And it's a lot. So I just want you to know I'm in on the a lot. And your allot may happen a different time and or in a different way than mine. It might be the different days of Hanukkah. It might not happen at this time of year at all. So with that said, we're looking at this big plan in our heads. And if you're the planner, it's important not to make the mistake of dumping it all on your partner at once because you're going to have too much pent up energy behind that and it's probably going to overwhelm them as it would you if the tables were turned. So we want to make sure that we're having a series of titrated conversations. And this is particularly salient for me because I'm married to someone whose mind just works differently than mine does. I love all the details and talking fast and thinking fast, and I have a huge capacity for lots of info. And he gets waterlogged pretty quickly if I just open the fire hose at him. So I can't do that. And that may be the case in your family as well, where you'll need to say, I want us to be able to talk about the holidays and plan them intentionally. And so I'd like us to have a series of conversations. Can I come to you? And when would be a good time to do this, to talk about the different pieces of our holiday plans and see what your vision is and what matters most to you in it. So that's another one of the mistakes that we make is not being collaborative. I think this is a fifth one. I might have said four, and here I go. I'm making up more. But so often we get an idea in our head and with all these things that are important to us and we think, oh, my partner doesn't think about this stuff. Or they don't have priorities. So don't think that. Even if you are the planner, even if it's kind of 80, 20 in your couple, it doesn't mean they don't have preferences. It doesn't mean they don't have a vision or a way that they want to feel. So I think a beautiful question. I'll get into questions later with the keys. But a beautiful question to ask is, how do you most want to feel through this season or at this event? If both of you can ask yourselves that question and answer it for each other, you can collaborate on a gorgeous experience that does reflect how you really want to feel. So the next mistake is when you set the holidays up as this test, it might be a test of your partner's enthusiasm level. How they engage might be a test of their engagement in the holiday, or their performance of different duties might be a referendum on their love for you, or it might be a referendum on their support for you, or it might be a referendum on your value and how well you performed in your planning. So all of that is just a recipe for misery. Let's not make this mean anything it doesn't actually mean. How about let's back it up a little bit and be intentional about how we create these things, but let them be simply expressions of our love, our joy, our traditions, and the magic that we want in this season. And if you collaborate in the way that I'm guiding you to do. It will be an expression of your partner as well. Not just you, but. But so often we set things up and our expectations are so high and we've worked so hard to create something that if other people don't show up playing the part that we thought they were supposed to play in it, whether that's your three year old who got their little cutie pie outfit dirty before they got their photo taken, dang it. Or your partner who isn't as stoked about the big event that you planned as you are, you can be really disappointed. And then that can turn you into the kind of holiday beast that you don't want to be. So really decoupling meaning from the creation of the events, you know, assigning a meaning that goes beyond what the event is is not appropriate. On the other hand, the next mistake I want to talk about is the mistake of not being intentional, of not infusing what you do with choice and joy and grace. So I want to go into each of those. We want to be intentional. All of this is optional. It might not feel like it. So I want to grab you by the shoulders and just say that slowly. Again, all of this is optional. You don't have to do any of it. You are at choice. Every piece of your plan is negotiable. So do it as if you had free will and as if you were choosing it. And then you'll have a lot more room to be joyful, to be self expressed in it, to not be put upon and resentful. Next, do it with joy. Think about a way of doing it. How can I bake this stuff or cook this stuff, or wrap these things or whatever it is you need to do in a way that's joyful for me. What do you need to bring along with you? What time of day or month or year do you need to do these things so that it's joyful for you? What do you need to not do anymore? What do you need to delegate? Where's your joy in this? And which pieces of it are sticky or stinky for you? And how are you going to rewrite those so that you can do the whole thing with joy and then finally infuse it with grace? And by that I mean recognizing that even when it looks like things are going to hell in a handbasket, everything is working out for good. All things are working together for good. There is room for outrageous perfection amid the very flawful experience you might be having. So when things don't go to plan. That doesn't mean they're not perfect. You're not perfect or you're not flawless. Your partner's not flawless. Mistakes happen, things get forgotten, messes happen. And all of it is part of the perfect grand design. And that grand design is bigger than your plan. So having grace means recognizing. Oh yeah, that didn't work the way I wanted it to at all. And being able to laugh at that. Oh, yeah, I wanted to be able to get that and I couldn't. There must be something better. So it's really trusting life. And for me, there's like a higher power. I think of the universe or God or the divine. Those are all words that work for me. You may have words that work for you that are different, but really trusting that. That there's something larger than you that is actually orchestrating all of this. And the plan's not looking at all the way I intended it to. Might be good news, actually. Then the final mistake I wanted to talk about is that we don't want to put in perfectionism, consumerism, comparison, or performance. Those are all mistakes, and they all loom large. So the cultural deconstruction we have to do is to recognize that so much of what this holiday season tends to mean in our culture is built by companies. My little girl is so sad with me because I would not buy one of those elf on the shelf things. I was like, honey, that's a company. And they sold the elf because they want to make money and it's adorable and everything, but I am not doing that. We had an elf in our house already. I was like, this is our elf. We don't need the brand name elf on the shelf. I'm not going to train you that you have to have the. The brand name thing in everything. I'm not shaking my fist at every brand on the planet all the time, but that one kind of got to me because I think that consumerism really poisons this holiday season if we're not careful with it. The best things about the holidays are not the things that we buy. They're the moments that we share together. Now we can buy things that help. And my son wanted a. We're calling it his zoot suit. A one piece Santa themed pajama thing. You know, it's head to toe pajamas. It starts with these boots at the bottom and then it's red, got white cuffs and then red all the way up. Big belt with a spangly buckle. But all of this is made of like really fuzzy fleecy stuff. And so he's going around dressed like Santa wearing it every single day, I think from Thanksgiving through Christmas. Hilarious. And so buying that twenty, twenty five dollar pajama thing was a key to a bunch of mirth and joy for us. And now, honestly, he's talked me into getting them for all of us so we'll be a whole Santa family. But it's a lot of fun and I hope that we don't totally wear them out this year and then we'll be able to pull them back out next year or whatever. We'll find the right tradition in it. So I'm also not saying that you can't spend money to contribute to the fun, but don't let this season be about the things you buy. Also don't let it be about things having to be just so. Now I come from a tradition of boy, my mom makes the most beautiful cookies in the world. Really. She could sell them for six, eight bucks a piece. These gorgeous sugar cookies she makes. And she sends out dozens and dozens of cookies in, I'm not exaggerating, dozens of flavors. She makes thousands of cookies each holiday season and mails them all over the world to friends and family. My parents have had more than 10 foreign exchange students and I have a lot of friends and family in lots of places. And there are a lot of people in this world who love and look forward to Pat's cookies. And that's one of the ways she shows love. And we have to both express ourselves in ways that feel good to us and not be perfectionistic about it. She wraps them up and trusts that they're going to be okay. You know, she's got to like, let them go. And I just, I tell that, you know, a little bit about my mom because, you know, we grew up, she could make things so beautiful. You know, she's sort of the Martha Stewart of Alaska. And I know how to make things just right. And you can either make a lot of beauty that way or make yourself miserable. So in my own entertaining and cooking and baking, I really endeavor to be present to a spirit of excellence. But then also in that last 5%, to kind of let it go, to be willing to show up human. And I could tell you stories about, like the wedding cake I made for our beloved nanny, where it was a lemon cake and something in the cake and the lemon and everything caused the cake to start melting and disintegrating at the back of it. I was so humiliated. But the cake was beautiful. And if you turned it just the right way, you couldn't even see that part. But we have to let our egos leave the picture so that we can have joy in the holidays. And then comparison is the other piece that we've got to pull out. So it's so easy to look at Instagram and see what other people are doing and how beautiful their house is and how beautiful their tree is and how well groomed their children are. And whatever you might want to compare yourself to, you can find something to compare, but don't do it, because there's no joy in that direction. Everybody can find somebody who's doing something better or who at least framed it up so that it looked better in that moment or used a better filter. And so no good can come from comparison. Let it go. And then finally, performance. So performative holidays, performative, you know, even like your. Your family photos, there's so many ways that we can. And it's so insidious. It's so easy to show up for how it might look to others, to kind of start to live, maybe not our whole lives even, but a given moment of like, how's this? You know, how am I doing? Kind of trying to live up to our own image, even if it's not through others eyes, our own image of how we're supposed to be. And that really wrecks our satisfaction. There's nothing nourishing about performing your way through either baking cookies with your kids or caroling or sledding or a family meal, any of it. If we're trying to do things right, there's no room left for us to be. To be present, to truly savor, to truly enjoy. So pull those things out now. Let's jump into the keys to planning together for a beautiful season. Key number one is to set a good time. I mentioned this earlier. Ask your partner what, when would be a good time for us to talk. And you might, during this season, want to have a weekly time where you get together and go over the latest details. I just find that that might sound a little bit anal to try to set up an ongoing meeting like you were running a corporation. But truly, the spontaneous meetings, where you go, I got this out of my mind. I got that on my mind. Those can be jarring and overwhelming and stressful, and they're statistically quite likely to happen in the evening when everybody is at a low energy level, and they tend not to go as well at that time. So I really encourage you to find a time. It might be calling each other at lunchtime. It might be keeping a shared Google Doc so that it's kind of a running meeting and you're in conversation about it and sending emails back and forth. Whatever works for you. Just make sure that you're using good energy, not rung out energy, and that it's consensual on everyone's part that we're going to talk about this right now, so you're not springing a conversation on somebody because no good can come from that. Second, be intentional. The next key is to really be intentional about what you want to feel. Like I mentioned this earlier, ask yourself and ask your partner, how do we want this to feel? Either the whole season or at a given event, a given evening. I know I really want to have you thinking about what kinds of memories you want to create with your kids, but also what kinds of little pockets, little vacations together you and your partner want to have. And when I say vacation together, I mean like an hour or three, you know, can you make the time to be in the living room with the tree in the dark, just savoring all of this that you've worked so hard for? What kinds of times do you want to craft for this season and how do you want them to feel? Because if you want something to feel sexy or if you want something to feel hilarious, those are two different things, right? And if you want a time with your kids to be really fun and playful for them, then that's going to shape how you show up, it's going to shape what you wear, what you dress them in, versus on the other hand, if you want something to be a beautiful picture for later, the clothes are going to be different, your attitude is going to be different, the kids experience is definitely going to be different. So be intentional about what you're trying to create and set yourself up to win, to create that, not something else. And don't try to pursue contradictory intentions simultaneously. Never works. Third, put your plans in context so you want to create certain things and you might have a vivid imagination like I do that goes 17 directions at once. What is there room for? What else is going on? Are you in the middle of a global pandemic? Because I am. How does that affect what you want to create? So putting your plans in context can help you go back to some of those mistakes and not make them. The perfectionism, the comparison. If you put your plans in the context of what's actually going on in your life, what's actually going on in the world, what your budget is, what your energy is like, what work is like for you and your Partner, you can create the just right season for you for now. And so this is a great thing to talk to your partner about. Like, how much energy do we feel like we have? How much money do we have, realistically, in a healthy way, in a sustainable way? What can we spend in terms of time? What can we spend in terms of energy? What can we spend in terms of money to create the feelings we want to create? Because those feelings, as you know, can be created with very little time, very little money, very little energy, or they can be created with a lot of all three of those or anywhere in between. So when you look at the resources that you have to put in and the backdrop against which you're doing this planning, you can create something that actually works out, as opposed to building a castle on sand, you know, that's doomed to fail from the beginning without even realizing it. The fourth key is to be collaborative. So we've been talking about this all along. But it's really important to remember there's often a differential in how much training and energy each of you has been given around a particular theme. This is why it's so hard, even in feminist households to get equity of labor on home, family holiday stuff is just because I know at my house, I'll just talk about us. I don't, you know, I don't want to make a generalization about everybody, but I was trained a lot more in how to think these things through, how to plan for them. I was trained to have them matter to me. And my husband was like, I think many men were trained to show up for it. Go get a tree, strap it to the top of your vehicle, bring it home, haul it in. You know, there were certain things he was supposed to do, but masterminding the whole thing, not at all. That was not his job. And so we are a lot more egalitarian, and he's a lot more participatory. But I have a leg up. So to be collaborative, I have to clue him in, and I have to treat him like an equal, and I have to recognize the differential interest level or passion level and what we both want out of the season. So we both have to bring all that to the table and have a frank conversation with some of that cultural intelligence about where we're coming from, to be able to do it in a way that doesn't have hostility or resentment baked in from the start. And then the fifth key is to ask good questions. So I've been mentioning this, my favorite one. How do you want to feel? What do we really want this to be about what matters to you. Is a great question to ask your partner. What are you willing to do and what are you not willing to do? How much energy do you have for this? What can I do to support you? Particularly if you're making a request of your partner? You know, I'd really love for you to be a full partner with me in cooking this particular dinner or I really want us to all decorate the tree together, whatever it is. If you have a vision that really matters to you and you want them to participate in a certain way, you want to be explicit about that, and then you want to be explicit in asking if I wanted you to show up that way, and that was a really important ask from me, what could I do to support you in showing up that way? You know, what do they need in order to be able to do that and what would they like you to do? How would they like you to be? What's something that would be really meaningful to them inside this season? And one of you might have like 80 things you want for this season and the other might have three and that's okay. So we want to be asking the good questions and then having just an intimate, really present, really grounded, grown up relationship with the reality of our partner's desires and energy and attention and availability. And if we're at peace with them being a whole and complete person separate from us, we're not trying to control them or make our holiday the way we need it to be. And that's why I wanted you to unplug from expectations and comparison and all those other pieces. Because. Because that really helps you to respect your partner's limits. If you are unplugged from those things, you can go, oh, okay. Given who I am and given who they are, this is how it's going to be. All right? You can be at peace with that. There's room for grace. So looking at all of this, creating a collaborative, beautiful holiday season that reflects your values, your heart's desires, and the backdrop of what you're both and all of you are dealing with right now. I know that you can have the season of your dreams. You can plan it effectively together. I'm glad we're talking about this now because we're going to go into, later in the month, we're going to start talking about planning an amazing new year and doing larger scale planning together. So this gives you an introduction to some of that and we're going to go way more into it. But I'm really joyful about this season in my family. I love that we have more time together right frankly, and we are tremendously privileged that it's not a time of huge stress for us. Hopefully, God willing, we will stay healthy. And my heart goes out to all the families that are dealing with loss right now, that are dealing with financial pressure, that are dealing with fear. And my wish for you is that you feel the hope inside this season that this time of shorter days and sometimes physical darkness and sometimes energetic darkness can be a fertile place where the light of the future grows. So whatever you're cultivating this season, I wish abundance for you in that. And I know that we can cultivate in the dark and the cold, that which will come to fruition later and so may all be bright for you inside, if not outside, and merry if possible. So that's it for today. And my wish for you and for our community is that you will join our conversation over on the Secret society. That's@society.lizenberry.com It's a great place to answer your questions and and for you to share your experiences and join the conversation about creating the love and sex that we deeply desire in ways that evolve us both. So it's all happening@society.lizenberry.com and that link is in the show notes@lizenberry.com Episode 017 if you enjoyed this episode or other episodes, you know what would help me and the podcast immensely? If you would leave a review, particularly in Apple Podcasts, because those are a huge help in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please go leave a review right now. It'll just take a minute. Just give us a few words about what the show gives you. I would so, so appreciate it. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to, so you never miss an episode. So please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, hit that subscribe button and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes each week. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This has been Sex, Love Power. I'll be back here next Thursday with another holiday special episode. This time it's about gift giving and how to be successful at it. You know, I never want to point fingers at men, but this episode is inspired by one of the bonuses from my men's program, PenetrateHER. Because so many men ask me, how do I win at gift giving? It feels like a losing proposition no matter what I do. So we are going to hit that conversation hard next week. Until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you. It.