The Lazy Genius Podcast - #241 - A Quick Holiday Pep Talk

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

I always find that this week of Christmas I don’t need more information; I just need encouragement to be a person and exist in the information I already have. So this is just a quick word from me to you.   Helpful Companion Links Episode #197: How to Navigate a Faith Crisis And here’s how to find Erin Moon online and on Instagram Episode #87: The Lazy Genius Guide to Flexibility Episode #224: When Things Don’t Go According to Plan Magical post on Instagram Episode #132: Ten Steps to Creating Your Own Traditions Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) 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

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hey there, you are listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I am 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 241, a quick holiday pep talk. I always find that this week of Christmas, I don't need more information. I just need encouragement to be a person and kind of exist and the information I already have. So this is just a quick word for me to you. The first thing I want to say,

is that Christmas has a lot of faces. Some people adore it, some people tolerate it, some people survive it, some people genuinely dislike it. So let's start here. We're going to park here on the faces of Christmas for just a second. One of the hardest things about being a person is feeling strongly about something and knowing that someone else feels strongly about the same thing, but in a different way. We don't quite know how to be ourselves in life and in individual conversation with people when we disagree. That is true, obviously, of politics, religion, parenting, finances, and even Christmas. We feel bad because we have strong opinions about something that matters deeply to us and we worry that sharing those strong opinions will, or those strong feelings, will,

alienate other people who don't feel the same way. So for Christmas time in particular, I want to remind you to offer space for yourself and for others to feel whatever you and they need to feel. We can all exist together. We can be kind to each other in our different perspectives and let those perspectives all count. Now personally, I love Christmas. I like love Christmas. I love Christmas. In fact, I would say Halloween through the end of the year. It's my favorite two months of the year, November and December, including Halloween. I just adore it. We have lots to celebrate as a family.

We have several family birthdays. We have opening ceremonies to several parts of the season that I look forward to every year. We have family things. I have personal things that I love to do in those two months. I have a birthday myself. I just, I love November and December with my whole, whole heart. I also come from a family of divorce. So Christmas always reminds me of, frankly, the family that I don't have, you know, also cause my husband, he doesn't particularly love Christmas, like at all. So even within

myself and my family, Christmas has like some very different faces, right? I love it. I love it. But also those other things. Not to mention, November and December are also the two busiest months of the year, kind of for the same reasons. And if I'm not intentional about them, I will drown. even in the good things. And then, yeah, I get sad sometimes about the complication of families. Just a lot of things. I was a couple weeks ago I was talking with my church community group about this season. And one of the women in my group shared how much she dislikes Christmas.

Her family situation is complicated and hard. And she dreads a season where she has to be with a family that she feels disconnected from. And I have no doubt so many of you feel that way. And it makes a season that is full. full of joy for so many people, even more complex. And then those of you, those of us who really do love Christmas and experience the joy of it really fully, sometimes feel bad about doing that outwardly because we don't want to hurt people who don't like this season. So not everyone has to love Christmas. A person can love it and dread it at the same time. There are just so many

faces to how we experience it. So this is your permission to experience it however you need to and then this is also your invitation to experience it however you need to and leave space for others to do this same we can keep working those muscles of loving each other in the middle of being in different places i also want to take a minute to say a couple of words to those of you who are in tricky church situations um so this podcast is not a not a religious one and i don't often share faith publicly. That's mostly because I want this space to be welcoming to people of all faiths and beliefs. And you also don't have to be a Jesus person to have laundry problems. So this podcast is for all the people. But I also know that a decent number of you are people of faith.

And I would say a sizable number of those would identify as or once identified as Christian. And as such, the last two years especially have brought on a bit of a reckoning. for many of you. I've had a lot of friends leave their churches. I've had a lot of friends leave faith behind entirely. We are all unpacking and unlearning and relearning and sitting in really complicated emptiness around the idea of what churches, what faith is, who Jesus is, who Christians are, who we personally want to be in the world. There are a lot of layers, many of them deeply personal and exceptionally complicated. And since Christmas is a highly faith-based holiday,

I imagine there is some grief going into the Christmas season without a church home, without the same church family you once had, without the same assurances you once had about what you believe. Personally, this has been the most complicated season for my faith in my entire life. and while I'm so grateful for that, for that shaping, it's also just really, really hard. So again, there are layers and faces and relationships that are all interwoven into this complicated thing of faith, especially around this holiday.

So I honestly don't have any words, really, of like next steps, but I just want to name that out loud in case it needs to be named for you. perhaps you're feeling a certain way or have this layer of like this feeling that is unknown kind of tucked into all the rest of the layers that you normally have and you haven't quite figured out why like what is this random feeling i have maybe that's it maybe it has to do with with church church home stuff and sometimes knowing that that might be what it is is enough maybe a next step isn't essential right now but maybe just knowing it is enough also if you are interested in some words on kind of having a faith crisis. I had an amazing conversation with Aaron Moon on this podcast

about this very topic. We will put the link to that episode in the show notes. We'll be right back. 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. Okay, so let's talk for a second about expectations. I did an episode a couple of years ago called The Lazy Genius Guide to Flexibility. We'll put it in the show notes. If you feel yourself gripping onto this week needing to be a certain way,

that episode will likely be a very helpful, kind of more comprehensively. listen. But just as a reminder, your expectations are not bad. In fact, expectations can be really good. But the good happens when you name them. If you have secret expectations that don't get met, and also you have not shared them with anyone or spoken them, even out loud to yourself, your disappointment in those unmet expectations, it turns into resentment really fast. And I know you don't want that. You're a lovely person. with a soft inside and a desire to be wholehearted and kind to your people. This community is not made up of intentional harborers of resentment. I know you don't want that kind of thing to happen. So one of the

ways that it won't, at least as much, is if you name your expectations when you have them. If you're going to see Christmas lights, I want you to imagine what you hope it to be. What's the story look like in your head. Now imagine that story turned upside down. How are you going to feel then? So my family called me Eeyore for most of my childhood because I used to be kind of a downer. So I'm very familiar with choosing to not set any expectations because you don't want to be disappointed and kind of assuming the worst of any situation. But listen, that response is not great either. That's like a different kind of extreme. I'm just inviting you to be honest. Be honest about your expectations. Hold space for them to be unmet and maybe think now about how you might navigate that.

My friend Ryan recently said the phrase, make your decisions in slow time. And I latched onto that phrase so fast. This is obviously why we decide once, right? We make decisions one time so we don't have to think about those decisions again. But this kind of scenario, this kind of decision making, has a slightly different bent, doesn't it? You're naming what matters. in slow time in a time when you're not stressed. You're thinking about your expectations before those expectations might get met or not and deciding how you'll exist in the situation before you're actually in it. So make some decisions now in slow time. And one other word about expectations. I actually wrote a post about this on Instagram a couple weekends ago, but I want you to release your grip on the word magical.

Let's shift our definition a bit. We think magical is when everything is perfect, that it's ideal. Our kids think whatever we did was the best thing of all actual time. But I want to encourage you that even though it is so fun when things line up, when attitudes are good, when the weather is beautiful, when the lights are like extra twinkly, when the right song plays at the right time, just the going and the doing is enough. Magical is just that it happened because somehow it kind of happens. It just always happens. That's why I love opening ceremonies and traditions.

I love them. I have episodes on those things. I have an episode on opening ceremonies and I have an episode about traditions. That one is episode 132. It's called 10 steps to creating your own traditions. And those are 10 very lazy genius steps to do that. if you would, it's not like an actual, what am I trying to say? It's like, not like, here's how you make traditions. It's how you make traditions that make sense that aren't like trying to

manufacture the magic, right? But the point is, traditions and choice we've already made around this time of year, you know, those decide wants choices that you've made. Those things, they give us a framework for magic, no matter what else happens around that thing. It's just the doing. The doing is what is magical. So I've mentioned this before. This is just an example. My favorite weekend of the year, it happened two weekends ago. Honestly, last weekend was also a close second.

I'm in the middle of you guys. I'm in the middle of like my favorite, my favorite time. But two weekends ago was our annual Christmas opening ceremony. So every single year, every year. And we did it this year too. We leave the house at the same time on Friday night. We go to the same restaurant for dinner. We meet up with the same friends.

This year, we didn't have dinner with those friends, but we met them after. And then we walked the same route downtown during our cities like holiday celebration. And then we end at the tree lighting in the park at the end of downtown. And then we go home. We do it every year. We've done it for years. The next day, we usually put up our Christmas tree. We didn't this year because there were some other stuff going on that Saturday morning,

which was totally fine. We'll do it again. We'll do it another time. But then we leave the house. at the same time on Saturday morning, we pick up McDonald's for lunch, we drive downtown to the parade, we park in the same area, we sit on the same street, like on the same street corner, often we go with the same group of friends, and then we watch our city's holiday parade. Now, we do it every year. I mean, you guys, every single year. Now, do I love that we eat at

McDonald's? Not really, because I don't personally love McDonald's. I don't love that that's what we take with us. But also it's fine. We do it every time. The kids look forward to it. Now, is the parade always a hit? No. Have we had to leave halfway through because a kid was cranky and needed a nap? Many times, yes, most years, actually. Have we missed the tree lighting downtown before? Yes, we for sure have. But the point is, we do it. We do it every year and we just love the doing. We look forward to it. I'm also fully aware that it's my personal favorite and not the families. Now, the family loves it for sure. But I also know that I'm the one who loves it the most. It's my favorite weekend. It's not our family's favorite weekend. It's up there. But it's my favorite weekend. And that's okay. I don't

have to convince my family that it's amazing because we just do it. We just do it. And even though I do that we will look back on those weekends years from now as something we always did during Christmas, and maybe we'll even continue to do it, depending on like, whether we stay in this town or our kids live here when they're grown up or if the town even does it at all. I don't know. We don't do this tradition so that we will look back on it. That's not why we do it. We do it to experience it now. Just do the thing. Don't manufacture magic. Magic can have a different meaning than it has had before. And then the final word that I want to share with you is to just have fun. We get so caught up in making the things happen that we forget to just relax into it and have fun. Have fun. Have fun. Do

all your Christmas things. Drop down into it enough to experience it in the first place. I am the president of a club gets so wrapped up and stuff that you miss it actually happening. And I know we wanted a different way. At least some of the time and we don't always want to be wrapped up and all that. So just have fun and relax. This is a community that is really good at getting stuff done, but not as good always at relaxing when when things are just, they just are.

So I just encourage you to practice that a little bit this week. And that is a quick holiday pep talk on the Monday before Christmas. I want you to know that I'm really grateful for you. I hope you have a beautiful week with your people. I hope that you give yourself permission and freedom to experience all the faces of this season and leave space for others to do the same. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. Merry Christmas 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.