The Lazy Genius Podcast - #195 - Creating Your Own Holiday When There’s Nothing To Look Forward To

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

February and March struggle to bring the thunder. I mean, it’s just the way it is. We’re past the lovely winter holiday gauntlet, we’re past the energy around fresh starts in January, we’re still weeks away from spring break if you get a spring break and for sure months away from summer vacation. So we need something to look forward to. For real. So rather than just waiting for July or a vaccine or for any kind of gathering or celebration to count only when things are back to normal, we’re going to be proactive. Helpful Companion Links Episode #191: Naming What Matters in 2021 Listen to BJ Novak on The Tim Ferris Show I hang out on Instagram @thelazygenius more frequently than anywhere else on the Internet. Download a transcript of this episode This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there, you're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 195. Creating your own holiday when there's nothing to look forward to. Now right now, we're still in a pandemic, but if you're listening to this in non-pandemic times, first, hi, how's it going over there? This episode still works. February and March struggle to bring. the thunder. I mean, it's just the way it is. We're past the lovely winter holiday gauntlet. We're past the energy around the fresh starts of January. We're still weeks away from spring break. If you get a spring break, and for sure, we're months away from summer vacation. And right now, you throw the pandemic in there, I'm not going anywhere. Like, we're not going anywhere. We're still doing this. We're still mostly home day after day. A lot of you have kids in all online school or a hybrid. and it's hard to find any kind of routine when every day looks a little bit different. We're still in that.

So we need something to look forward to, for real. So rather than just waiting for July or for a vaccine or for any kind of gathering or celebration to count only when things are back to normal, we're going to be proactive. Y'all, I want all of us to create our own holiday sometime in the next few weeks, February or March. Try for February. You likely do not need two months to plan this. This is very, very simple.

know that this is like super specific and maybe even kind of silly and you're like I don't have time for this but silly is not bad and also if you recall from episode 191 called naming what matters for 2021 I shared that one of the things that matters most to me this year is finding joy creating joy keeping an eye out for joy and maybe even serving it up on a podcast episode platter for you guys. Joy is essential all the time for our mental health, not happiness, joy. And just like for the experience of being alive as a human on this earth in connection with other humans on this earth, we need joy. But as it's been said by me and many others, this year, 2021 feels extra important for that. We need some joy. So I want to show you how to

create your own in this very specific way by literally making up a holiday. out of nothing for just you and your people, whoever those people are. You ready? We need this, you guys. We need bespoke holidays. I am throwing you a lifeline. You might not have known you needed, at least in this particular form, but we're going to walk through this together. I've got a plan. I've got steps for you to create something that's fun and memorable and that matters to you. So these are the questions I want you to ask yourself and then answer in this particular order so that you are not spinning your wheels in no direction. Okay?

And if you're like, Ken I'm not going to do a holiday? You can just listen. Maybe by the end of the episode, you're going to want to. Okay. Question one. What do you want to celebrate?

Or what do you need more of in your life? All right. We're going to look at the first part first. What do you want to celebrate? You can be as random and weird as you want in this. And I think that's kind of preferred even. Like if you have a birthday coming up for someone you live with, that feels different than this. This is a thing to celebrate that you aren't already celebrating.

So it could be a literal made-up holiday like George's dad in Seinfeld with Festivus or, you know how we celebrate Mean Girls Day? Just because the script in that movie says October 3rd. Like it didn't mean anything until someone gave it meaning. So you can make the meaning. You can celebrate the first day of March just because. You can look at a list of weird national holidays and pick one in February or March that feels like something fun to celebrate at least this year. Next year you'll see. You don't have to like make this a tradition forever. For example, I looked up a few to share with you. February 9th is National Pizza

Day. I mean, that celebration creates itself. February 26th is tell a fairy tale day. So you could focus the whole day on a fairy tale and make food around it. and have someone or all the people in your family dress up for it or watch that movie of that fairy tale or whatever. Obviously, this one probably works in a house with little girls as opposed to teenage boys, but maybe not. You live your life. Just know I'm giving these as examples. March 3rd is I want you to be happy day. That feels like a fun thing to celebrate. Maybe everybody gets something that makes them happy that day. March 7th is National Cereal Day. March 14th is National Potato Chip Day.

For both of those, you could do like a big taste test and rank your favorites. You know, just buy like a bunch of cereal, buy a bunch of chips. There are all kinds of holidays already waiting for you if you don't want to come up with something yourself. Like if you Google weird national holidays, you will have so much fun looking. But the point is with this question is, what do you want to celebrate? Now, the second part of this, which might be necessary in helping you choose, is What do you need more of in your life right now? Do you need to laugh more? Connect with people and have a

conversation more? Do you need to make food that's not the same five meals that you've been making for a year? What do you need right now? What do your people need right now? You can either start there and make that the thing that matters most as you create your own holiday or you can use that thing that you need right now to narrow down your options when you're thinking about what to celebrate, when you're looking at that list. But first ask, what do you want to celebrate? And or what do you need more of in your life right now and then make it happen? And that's what the rest of this episode is. We're going to make it happen. Next question. Who needs to be part of this? Obviously, all that depends on a lot. It depends on what you're celebrating and what you need. And in this particular time period, what's safe? And I'm

allowed for you in terms of the pandemic. But who needs to be part of this? Okay. So just once you know what you want to celebrate and what you need more of, those names will probably come to mind. And it could just be the people who live in your house. It doesn't have to be outside of that. Okay. So the question after that, how can you do it? How can you celebrate this thing or get more of this needed thing in your life for a day? This is where you brainstorm all the possibilities. Now, the problem is we often start here. Like, how am I going to throw this thing? And then you're like, well, I don't know. And then you give up because you haven't named what you're after. And you haven't named who it's for. So you have to do those things first. Okay. But now you brainstorm. Now, you might not need to

brainstorm. You might already know what you want to do. Like for National Pizza Day, you're going to order a pizza from four or five different places and have a taste test with your family for dinner. Boom. Done. But it's still nice to think through the different elements of a celebration that even if you're already sure of. So writing down ideas is it never hurts. But this is the phase, to borrow a term that B.J. Novak uses, this is the blue sky period, the blue sky phase. So B.J. Novak, he played Ryan on the office and he was also one of the main writers for the show. I heard him on an interview a few years ago. I think it was with Tim Ferriss. And Ryan said that in the writer's room of the office, they would have something they called the blue sky phase. And in that, any idea was on the table.

The example that Ryan gave in this interview was Dwight goes to space. Now, you could very quickly shoot that idea down and be like, no, he can't. He cannot go to space. But the point of a blue sky phase is to let ideas live. Let them be what they are before figuring out how they're going to happen. By letting the idea live, you see how attached you are to it, how important it is, how much you want to make it happen? And then once you know that, the work in figuring out how Dwight gets to space is worth it. And the same is true here. If you want to have a gathering with three

families on National Pizza Day and you immediately shoot it down because you can't gather with that many people, you might not find a solution that will actually make it work. So brainstorm and give your ideas some blue sky time. See what gets you excited. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Next question is, what does this need to?

be. If you know what you want to celebrate, you know who you want to be part of it, you have some ideas of how you might create the special holiday, you can now name a little better what words describe your celebration. What does it need to be? Does it need to be big or small? And that's not just the amount of people. Big or small, grand or simple, thoughtful or silly, in person or virtual. Think about what it needs to be. Anything counts here. Keep what matters. in mind always, always, always. What does this need to me? How is this serving what you need more of in your life? Another way that you can add some legs to that question is to ask yourself how you want people to feel during this random holiday you're making up. What are they doing? Do you imagine yourself

or your people laughing, talking, eating, playing games, being competitive, quietly connecting, just being in the same room, but without the conversation you have every day? Like, what do you see? What do you imagine that can also help you answer what this needs to be? And then you plan it. You make the choice. On this date, we will celebrate this thing. This is our holiday. And then you do it. You can give it a funny name if you want, or at least like a memorable name. You can invite your people to be part of planning it. And when I say planning it, I don't mean you need like seven checklists and the hire an event coordinator. I mean, maybe you're just doing a movie. Like you're doing a movie night?

Or maybe you create, I love alliteration. Maybe you create like a month long holiday, like movie March or something. And everyone in your family or your friend group picks a movie you want to see and you watch it together. And whoever's movie it is gets to pick the dinner before or the snack you eat or something. It's just putting a name and a purpose to something. And then everybody's part of the choosing, right? You make the meaning. So when I say involve other people in planning something, I mean, that planning could be done in a 10-minute

conversation. It doesn't have to be big. Now, if you want to go big, do it. Like, do what you need. Do what matters. But I just don't want you to hear the word plan and think you need to make something huge out of it. You don't unless you want to.

But it's still great to have your people be part of it, even if that plan is super, super tiny. And I will say this too about the anticipation of said besie. spoke holiday that we're trying to plan. We often anticipate a letdown with things, especially things I think, I'm going to speak to the mom as out there. I think the things that we plan for our families, we're just sort of anticipating that everyone's going to complain about it. We don't always anticipate things well, or we think that by having like a long runway to a celebration, that the lead up is going to be better than the actual thing, like somebody's going to be disappointed. So let's not make it a big deal yet. Let's not even talk about it yet. And

while I get that, I often am that, I think we need to remember that anticipation, even very low-key anticipation, is something really fun. I think what happens is we see other people's experiences. Like you see a family that's done quarantine Olympics or something and that you see it on Instagram and they have silly challenges pretty often and you think, I want to do that. but you say it, you say it like that. You say it in a way that's already layered with disappointment. Like we could never do that. Your kids will think it's dumb. You're not creative enough to come up with the games, all kinds of excuses. But really, those people you see, they just chose to do something. They chose to make meaning out of something that didn't exist before just by saying it out loud

and then doing it. I know that this is a silly, random, not essential idea. but I think we all need something that's silly and random and not essential right now. Don't let your anticipated disappointment stop you from trying. You won't know if a made-up holiday for your crew will work until you do it. And if you and your people come up with something and it's not as fun as you wanted it to be, then don't do it again. Like it's no big deal. You don't have to put the pressure of a 25-year tradition on this idea.

Just create something for now in these next few weeks. Do it. And then let it be what it is. Have fun. Anything can be fun when the people make it fun. One thing that we are thinking about doing, like as a family soon, I don't know if it's going to be our February or March holiday. I have to like think about that. But one of the things we've been talking about is having a Little Debbie day, which I actually had looked it up and Little Debbie came, became an official brand in August, like August 23rd in 1960, you guys. Little Debbie is 60 over 60 years old. So,

we might actually, we'll probably hold off on doing this until August 23rd. It'll be like close to the beginning of school for us too, which is fun, make it really official. But I want to buy all the snack cakes, like a box of each little Debbie. And we do a taste test with just us, with other people. I don't know. That idea has been floating around with the kids and they're into it, which is so fun. And that's another thing I will say as we end. You don't have to come up with something and then it be law.

Like let it land in conversation and see what people say. you know, ask it dinner. What if we had a week soon where we watch a movie every night and everybody gets a pick one? And then wait for a response. If there's a lot of complaining immediately, don't give up automatically. Maybe you can ask another question to help people find their way. And then maybe if they're just not into it, you don't do that thing. Think of another idea and kind of float it out there. It doesn't have to be like you're a ringleader of a circus announcing some big thing that no one cares about yet. There's sort of a journey to be had in caring about something. So what do you want to celebrate? Or what do you need more of right now? Who needs to be

part of that? How can you do it? How can you make it happen? Leave some space for blue sky brainstorming. Make it feel like it needs to feel. Make it what you need it to be. Ask for help and ideas from your people. Let the planning and the thinking, even on the smallest scale, be part of the anticipation. don't let your cynicism keep you from doing something fun. And if you celebrate this year and never again, you still did something fun or unique or memorable, even if it was a dud. It counts no matter what it is.

And that's how we're going to create our own holidays because we don't have a whole lot to look forward to right now. I hope you have fun dreaming and thinking and creating something that makes you and your people happy. Thanks so much for listening. I'm always grateful for your ears. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that, more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life,

you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming you. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.