Light Up The World

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

It's the Winey Palooza Wednesday, grab some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Greeb Family.

Cha-cha-chicken!

I think it's no need to whine, it's Winey Palooza Wednesday. I screwed it up. Do you want to come sing it right?

No.

Grab some wine and join us on Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Greeb Family. Okay, yes, we should write a guitar song.

You can play the guitar and play the guitar while you sing my song.

I can play the flute.

Okay, you could learn the flute. Can you see this?

Oh, Seth, why am I so bad?

I don't know.

I'm going the wrong way.

So Kristen, my dear friend Kristen, dropped off Hanukkah surprises today.

Um, do you see this gnome? Hanukkah gnome with the menorah. I'm not very good at this.

But I love it. Thank you, Kristen.

I'm having some really needed wine today. You should go get your gnome and show them the gnomes that I bought you.

Will you go get it?

Can you bring me back my phone?

Go on, Daddy's phone and your present. So I bought Lily and Ella, uh, gnome, uh, winter— how do you say it, Seth? Am I saying it right?

Saying what?

Winter gnome stuff, uh, Squishmallows today. I gave them to the— it to them today. And I got a bunch of Hanukkah gnome stuff from Kristen, so the timing is ironic and awesome.

There's lots of gnomes.

I love it. So, um, yeah, I've been doing a lot of complaining. I'm gonna be I'm gonna always give you—

Hi Kristen, thank you for my beautiful glass and all my presents. Oh, I'm wearing the socks.

Can you—

here, let me hold the wine so you don't spill it.

I'm wearing the socks she gave me.

She's a foot model now.

She gave me fuzzy socks and a platter. And show them your gnome, hurry up so I can move on. Isn't that so cute? Okay, um, so it's, it's winter Hanukkah gnome day. Kristen, do you see this? It goes with your theme of your presents. Thank you, um, my Hanukkah fairy, for dropping off my presents and surprising me.

That was such a nice surprise.

Jen Kerr says, you go, girl!

Jen, I— Jen, I need that today. How come it's not showing up? Because she's on Facebook.

She didn't comment.

Okay. Um, love it. I love you. Thank you.

Mwah!

I love you.

Okay, so my topic is Light Up the World.

And this is something that I needed for myself. And I'm going to tell you why with all the timing. Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating. We just did our Hanukkah celebration. And we probably should be taking the night off in respect of Hanukkah. But this topic is my respect to Hanukkah. So I've been complaining a lot, um, cried a few times today, um, go to my negative places, and I'm going to tell you why. Um, complain a lot about, um, like the weather. It's now winter. We live in Buffalo.

Hi, Tayton!

Hi, Miss Tayton!

We live in Buffalo and it's cold and snowy, and we were just in Virginia for Thanksgiving to see our brothers and their families. And when we were driving, it wasn't warm, but it was warmer, 10 degrees. When we were driving back and driving into the snow, I was like, turn around.

My friend Jen was like, turn around.

And I was like, ugh, winter, and Hanukkah's too early this year. I like when Hanukkah is at the end of December with you, with you wonderful Christmas people, so that I have more time and so that the kids are off of school because we have been squeezing in our Hanukkah celebrations.

None of our activities have stopped.

I mean, we have skipped a few things. Yes, thankfully we have skipped a few things, but, um, Hanukkah is in the middle of our chaos and we have extra things this week. So I was complaining about the timing of Hanukkah, complaining about the weather, um, complaining about COVID My son doesn't feel well, he's all stuffed up, and if you call the school and tell them that he doesn't feel well, you then have to go get him a COVID test. So I was like all stressed out all day, in tears about this policy that I just want to end, complaining about our state. I'm not happy with my county or New York State. And my family is like, come on, we've heard this song before.

We have heard it.

Can we move on? And so I knew when I was feeling like the Grinch, I was feeling Grinchy.

That's a good way to put it.

I don't like, um, you— a lot of you know me, a lot of you know me personally, or you've watched my videos, um, or you've listened to my podcast, and I like to be happy. I like to be joyful. I like to smile. I'm most comfortable smiling. So when I get to these negative places, I feel crappy and I don't want to stay there. So I want to tell everyone that we have to acknowledge how we feel. We have to say it. We have to vent it. We can write it. We can share it with someone who's tired of hearing it. We can share it maybe with a friend who might be a little more tolerant because your husband has heard it too many times. Um, get it out. I will be right with you, Lily. Get it out, acknowledge it.

It's okay, self, I know you don't like the winter, but it is what it is.

It'll be okay.

See, there it is. It is what it is.

My friend told me I say that all the time.

Um, make the best of it. I, I don't want to be grouchy all winter. Share with me anytime. Emma has patience for me. Thank you, Emma. Thank you so much.

What do you want to share?

Um, that when like we find out that we have something or feel overwhelmed because of COVID it stresses us out a lot and it makes us want to cry, but we hold it in and makes us feel so much overwhelmed. Holding in your tears makes it worse.

Oh yeah, don't hold in your tears, my honey bunny. Um, Mrs. Paulzak is here. Winter is just so so long.

Mrs. Paulzak, I just saw some pictures of you on Facebook and I don't want to be inappropriate but you are quite the hottie. I was like, Mrs. Paulzak is looking good. I love Mrs. Paulzak. I should not be inappropriate like that but she's a very pretty lady and she's very sweet and supportive and I said, I'm doing the topic Light Up the World and I'm complaining about COVID and she was like, it's okay, It's frustrating.

So Max says to me, "Mom, you really have to change because I don't want to tell you when I have any symptom because you freak out." And I was like, I— this is when we got in the car to go get his COVID test. And I said, I was going to apologize. I said, you beat me to it.

I was going to apologize for getting upset this morning that you didn't feel well.

It's not— I don't feel well.

Oh, honey, I'm I'm so sorry, it's—

oh no, she gets mad and sad.

Really mad. I'm like, oh God, no, your brain just goes everywhere and you're like, no, I'm like, oh God, this school's gonna make me do a COVID test.

So anyways, I am everywhere. I am celebrating Hanukkah.

Yes, happy Hanukkah, Danielle! Happy Hanukkah to the Alba family.

Did you have a good night?

Did you guys celebrate? What was your theme? Tonight she does theme nights, which is every night of Hanukkah has been a different theme.

Is this better than you're like, we're filled with Glee, it's night number 3?

No, no, I just do rhyming. I just do rhyming stuff. She does like— she did Imagination, she did, um, but she did—

she do video game. Okay, so tonight is night 4.

What is the theme tonight, Danielle? So So, okay, so I'm celebrating Hanukkah. Yes. And Hanukkah is the festival of lights. And as I was looking at my children with all the candles lit, we lit so many candles tonight because they each do their menorah. So, you know, 12 candles being lit tonight. And we light a candle for each night. I should explain that. So 4 times 3 kids is 12 candles. So I'm looking at the beautiful light and I am like, okay, it's time to light up. It is time to stop complaining and it is time to go with the theme of Hanukkah and move to lighting up the world and not being the Grinch who stole Hanukkah.

Danielle says the theme tonight was cozy. They got Squishmallows, like a lot, and comfy cozy PJs.

Oh, I love yours.

Oh, so you're theming the night?

She does themes with presents every night. She is so smart. Um, yeah, I don't know if I could do that, but I could try.

I love that they have their own menorahs.

That's incredible. I may have to use that idea. Well, yeah, it's very cool. It was like they kept like, whose turn is it to light it? And I was like, well, I have enough menorahs, let them each light one. Um, however, I think we might even have 4. So I think you and I could even light one.

Oh my gosh, because I know you're dying to light a menorah.

We don't have enough candles going in the house.

Okay, so how do we light up the world?

Um, ironically, the 2 ladies that I got to talk to today were talking about self-love, kindness, self-compassion. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, all of that will help us because when we work on ourselves inside, everything that is inside reflects to the outside world. So when I'm being harsh and critical and expecting perfection and being upset with myself for something I might have done wrong, that is being reflected out into the universe. So the more self-love, self-compassion, self-kindness that I give to myself then goes out to everyone else around me.

Is that why you're so beautiful?

Oh, scoring so many points tonight, Mr. Green.

It's a lot of work.

The menorah fight isn't real. They were fighting over the menorah, Danielle. So we gave them—

worried that they were going to knock a candle over or burn each other because they were all wanting— no, I want to light it. So we solved the problem and made it more beautiful with 3 menorahs.

We were kind of close to burning each other, so good thing I got you extra candles.

Um, yes, I have lots of candles to use.

Thank you, Kristen. Candles are always put in use. We literally have the same fight.

I know, every house is fighting over whose turn it is to light the menorah. I'm like, I don't want to deal with this anymore.

Excellent problem solving.

So how else can we light up the world? My favorite thing— I love— I've been being the Hanukkah fairy. I love to drop off and give to other people. It doesn't even have to be a gift. Even just— I was even thinking that a written card goes a long way because we don't— we just send texts. And we send emails and we don't write cards anymore. So I decided self-love, kindness, giving yourself grace will light the world.

Amen.

Yeah, but so well. Yes, I'm learning to give myself grace. One of the lines today from Laura Fro—

why do I struggle with her name? Froy.

En, freuen, freuen.

Tune into the podcast to see how many times she pronounces it.

I was just gonna say that Kristen sends us notes in the mail and it warms my heart.

You know I love snail mail. I do, I do know, and I appreciate it. I love it. I need to return the favor. So Laura was like, okay, so we don't want to be perfectionists. And we want to be easy on ourselves. But if we're not doing a good job, we don't then get mad at ourselves for trying to do better and not doing it.

And I was like, oh my God, it's like this cycle.

It's like, okay, I'm gonna do this better, and I'm—

then I'm gonna be hard on myself because I'm not doing it better.

Oh my God, we were laughing.

Yes.

So I decided to change my story. And one of the things that Seth, one of the things that Seth will say to me is, do you like the story that you're telling yourself?

Is that the story that you want? Like, is this making you happy?

And if he says it in a kind and loving way, I need to work on it.

I take it so well.

And I'm like, he's right. I don't like this story.

But when he's like, do you like this story?

I might resemble that tone.

So I'm like, I can say, yuck, it's cold. Or I can say, Isn't the snow pretty? And isn't it nice that we get to have four seasons?

I'm not going to lie to myself. We all know that I'm a summer child. But I can embrace it and I can go with it, or I can fight it and resist it and be miserable. So those are my choices. Yes.

I like the non-resistance choice.

I find that my mother always taught me to get outside of myself. And the more inside of ourselves we are and the more self-focused we are, the more anxiety, depression, negativity. So I find that if I start focusing on other people, like, you know, what's going on around me, what's needed around me, what can I give, what can I do, instead of being like, I feel like this and I feel like this and I'm upset about this, just getting outside of myself. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to love ourselves, but we also have to not focus. Be self-focused.

Tayton says, agree with your mom.

Yes, she always taught me to get outside of myself. It's a very good lesson. Um, we talked about doing something for someone else, anything. There's so many things. Um, I was even talking today about paying for the car behind you.

Um, with the toll booth.

Yep.

Um, oh, can we do that anymore with E-ZPass?

No, no, no, but I was talking about like in the Starbucks line.

Ah, the thing you go to. I'm not talking about— I'm talking about used to be paid for the toll on the highway and Starbucks.

Loves warm hugs. You know, I love summer. But yes, big snowflakes are pretty.

Yes, Kristen.

I will focus on that.

It's pretty. And I can ski.

Yes.

And we can ice skate.

Yes.

And we can build a snowman.

Yes.

And we can have coffee. I do like to build a snowman. Doesn't have to be a snowman. Okay, lighting up the world, giving to charity, volunteering. I have to talk to my children because what I did last year is on the 8th night, I had them all think through Hanukkah. And unfortunately, I'm going to start this on the 4th night instead of the 1st night, is I have them think about and research a charity that they want to contribute to. So I want to continue this every year. And I want the 8th night of Hanukkah to be them discussing with us which charity they chose.

Yeah, I remember when we adopted— donated— adopted a cheetah via—

well, you started it before Hanukkah. That was a charity you did with them, and that was cool. Um, definitely, that's teaching them to light up the world. Yes. So I'm, I'm trying, I'm trying to move from the Grinch Who Stole Hanukkah because you've shifted.

Have I shifted?

I think that Hanukkah was the shift. Yeah, because we were lighting the menorah. And I was wrapping presents.

You were finding reasons to be happy.

And I was making latkes. And I was like, happy family members getting into the spirit of Hanukkah. Yes, yes. And getting a negative COVID test today for my son helps.

When I focus— can you imagine if the test ended up Have some wine.

Okay, focus on thankfulness and blessings. When I focus on, um, I was feeling like pissed to be home and pissed that it was snowing, and I was looking around my house and my kids were running around and my dog was so happy to see me and our cats came running because we were home, and I'm looking around and I'm like Look at my family, like, look at what Seth and I created. And we're not going to be roses and sunshine all the time. I said in my blog, sometimes the snow and the rain just like floods out the roses and the sunshine. But I want to be roses and sunshine. And I know that if I focus on what I'm thankful for and my blessings, it's really hard to be crabby and negative.

Yes, you can't be grateful and miserable at the same time.

I knew you were gonna say that. That's one of your favorite lines. Say it again.

You can't be grateful and miserable at the same time. Um, or grateful and cranky.

Or my, my 12-year-old Ella is like— so I brought up moving. We're not moving. We're not going anywhere. I'm done.

You got it on tape.

I'm done. I'm not gonna complain, hopefully. That I want to move.

I'm gonna hold you to that.

Um, my 12-year-old rolled her eyes and looked at me in the car. We had a, an 8-hour car ride, and she was like, you're driving me crazy, like, I can't take it. And I was like, I'm doing this to her. I'm complaining about New York, and I'm complaining about my county, and I'm doing this to her. And how do I want to leave people feeling I want my 12-year-old to be happy to be in the car with me.

Yes.

I want her to come home and be excited to see me. I want my husband to walk in the door and see me smiling. I want my friends to leave me and go, oh, I loved getting to see her.

I don't want to be the negative person bringing people down.

So I think about how do I want people to feel when they're around me and when they leave me.

And light up the world.

I want to be light. I don't want to be darkness. Um, I don't— I'm not always aware of what I'm saying and what I'm feeling. I don't always identify it. And, you know, I might be scared, I might be, um, sad, I might be angry, and I might not even be aware of what's going on with me. So if I can say to Seth, you know, I'm really frustrated that every time I call the school that my kid is sick, I have to go get a COVID test. Like, that's really frustrating.

Yeah.

And I have to identify it. I can't always solve it. I mean, there's really not a solution to that, but not a solution that you want to do. I can't, I can't solve it. Try to fix it or try to shift my mindset if I don't even know what's going on with me?

Yes, you have to identify it.

So I've identified it. I'm tired of COVID tests. It isn't going to go away yet, right?

So you got to get over it, hopefully soon.

So I decided— so every month I do a challenge. So this month I'm doing the Light Up the World Challenge. So in my Whiny Pooza Mom group on Facebook, um, it's all free. It's literally just a supportive community. And we're going to do a challenge this month. It starts today. Today's December 1st. So it's a 5-day challenge to just light up the world with us. And we're commenting and we're sharing how we're doing that. And then I am going to have lots of fun being the Winey Palooza Hanukkah fairy. And I'm going to bring gifts and prizes out to people who participate.

And see, you'll be lighting up the world for them, lighting up the world.

Oh yes, I never thought about it. I didn't think about it that way.

So I can't promise you that I will never be negative.

I mean, you to be perfect.

I mean, my post tonight was not very positive.

I was like, I'm done. I— it's unrealistic.

It's unrealistic for me to think that I'm going to be positive 24 hours a day. And the, um, The lady that I spoke to today, she specializes in anxiety, and she said that she's successful probably like 10% of the time, and she specializes in it. And I know—

wait, successful with herself or successful with 90% or 10% of her patients?

She's successful with herself, with what she's trying to do with her children, with herself. She's not successful 100% of the time. I don't know that 10% is an accurate—

yeah, that seems really low.

Um, that's fine, but I think her point is, yes, that we may think that she's like— we look at people and we're like, she's happy 100% of the time. No, not 100% of the time, but we work on it.

Yes.

And when we identify something that is not so good, like she doesn't want her child to be anxious then we work on it. And maybe we'll be successful 10%, and maybe we'll be successful 30%.

10% is better than 0%.

That's exactly what she said.

Tayton says, give yourself some grace, have your moment, and move on. Light is warm. See, if you're cold, you need some more— share some light and it'll warm you up.

Yes. Um, I feel like we have to say it and feel it and acknowledge it.

Yes.

Before we can move on.

Absolutely.

You agree with that?

Yes.

So, um, anything else that you want to share?

I think you did a great job.

We talked about the challenge, we talked about the topic.

You have a podcast?

I do. I have lots of podcasts coming.

So Friday is Dr. Maggie Vaughn, and we talked about marriage. And I don't know if you know this, I have said it several times, but marriage is my favorite topic, and I could talk about marriage all day. And just loved talking to her, and we talked about patterns and changing things and wonderful things, and you're gonna love her. So I hope you'll listen, and I hope you listened to my 100th episode with my brother. I think that will definitely go down as one of my favorites.

I don't know why it was so hard to listen to.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

I usually listen. I listen every week.

Probably more emotionally attached to this one.

I listen every week because, um, I know you're gonna say don't be hard on yourself, but I want to learn. Like, I want to learn, okay, what do I like that I did? What did— what do I want to fix or do better? And I find that when I listen, I learn better from my guests than when I talk to them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. Because when you're doing the interview, you're in it. You're not listening to it as you do it. You would be more objective when you listen to it the next time because you weren't focused on doing the interview.

Yeah, it's true. It's 100% true.

Ella and Lily, who's singing us out?

Lily's not coming, so I guess I am.

So please keep the guests coming. You guys have given me awesome guest ideas, and you both can do it. And you've given me awesome topic ideas, so keep them coming. And thank you so much for watching and for listening, and happy Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah!

And happy December! Do you have a—

do you have a comment, or—

oh yeah, come on.

No, that's— she's got—

she's like— she's like in slow motion.

You're gonna trip over the wire. You gotta go the other way, Lily.

Sing us out.

Or you could do it like that.

Thank you for watching my Wednesday with the Green Family.

Cha-cha chicken.

Thanks, Lil.

Have a good week.