Episode 67: Fa-la-la-la-aaaaagh?! How to find ease this festive season

00:49 Welcome to Unfrazzle, a podcast for solo business owners with the big vision who are ready for a kinder more sustainable approach to productivity. I'm Louise Miller and each week i share bite-sized insights to help you step away from the hustle stop faffing and stay focused so you can make your brilliant ideas happen and make a bigger impact in the world So grab yourself a cuppa and let's get started The festive season is almost here and there are just a few weeks left of the year which means there's a good chance you might be running around like a headless chicken trying to get all of the things done. And not just all the things that need doing in your business but all the things that need doing at home too! It's exhausting isn't it? So today on Unfrazzle I propose a time out so you've heard me talk about the importance of the pause a million times

01:39 And it's particularly powerful when you use that pause to reflect and make choices that will help you find more ease when you start back up again. That is what I want to walk through today, I want for you enjoy these last few weeks of the year so let us take a pause together to think about what actually needs to get done between now and the end of December and how we might navigate with a little more intention and ease So I'm going to share with you a few different approaches that will help to give you that clarity. Depending on where you are and what you're up to right now, you can either hit pause and answer the questions as we go or identify time when you'll come back later. Grab your To-Do list Find somewhere comfy to sit – I like this kind of thing away from my desk so that i'm not distracted and can bring more relaxed vibe to the party

02:24 If you're feeling extra specially festive, you might want to bring a cuppa and mince pie. What I would encourage you to do though first before we start is just take a really lovely deep breath to get yourself settled. Now once you've done that let's look at that To Do list with a kind creative and critical eye and see whether any of these approaches i'm about to share with you might help relieve some pressure for you so the first suggestion is to let it go for now So at the start of this quarter I had every intention of researching podcasts and pitching to be a guest on a podcast every week, and that went really brilliantly for a while. But halfway through the quarter it became obvious that it would be really tricky for me to keep going with that whilst also promoting my purposeful planning workshop and opening the doors to Make It Happen Club for the final time this year

03:14 And when I realised that, did I leave podcast outreach on my to-do list and then feel like a stressed out failure every time I looked at it? No. I did not! I accepted that in saying yes to the promotion i'd chosen to do for The Workshop and Make It Happen Club, I needed to say no to something else. So I made a decision that its okay to take my foot off the gas with the podcast outreach when im launching something but will make up for that by going all in again with that in January So have a little think about that for yourself. Is there anything on your list that you know realistically, if you're really and truly honest with yourself isn't going to happen right now? And then give yourself permission to let that thing go just for now! The second suggestion I want to share with you is called Not Ideal but No Big Deal. Last year due to a miscalculation on my part

04:05 Tom and I found ourselves in a situation where, a few days before we needed to pack up the car and head down the M1 to deliver some gifts to my in-laws none of those presents were wrapped. And the paper tape that I needed to wrap them hadn't arrived yet so just for a bit of context...I go all out to make Christmas as sustainable as possible! I make my own wrapping paper out of brown packaging paper which looks really lovely with the addition of some cinnamon sticks and a bit of rosemary from the garden but the paper tape that I'd ordered online hadn't arrived yet so I couldn't finish the wrapping And I could feel myself getting really stressed. I had a full week ahead of me, didn't really have an opportunity to get out to where there's a shop that sells paper tape not many places sell it and i didn't have very much space for last minute wrapping so it dawned on me that what I could do is just take the unwrapped gifts with

04:53 And deal with it when I get there. Right, it's not ideal but it really is no big deal so I could easily just pop the presents in the car unwrapped and do some secret squirrel wrapping whilst we were away Is there anything on your list that's not going according to plan? Where in an ideal world you'd want it to happen a certain way but it's now looking increasingly unlikely that will happen So what could you do to bring a bit of good enough or that'll-do energy and acceptance to those things Letting go of perfectionism can really feel like a weight lifted, particularly at this time of year when we've got so much on our plate. And I think for a lot of us, we have these standards that we set really high and if we just lower those a little bit really no one's going to notice! So what have you got that you could kind of apply this not ideal but no big deal sort of mentality? Then the third approach i want to share with you probably unsurprisingly for me is all about slowing things down

05:48 So one of my 1-to-1 clients wanted to launch a course this side of Christmas, but over the last few months some unexpected things came up and other parts of her work required more time and energy than she'd anticipated. And yes she could have chosen to burn the candle at both ends and really pushed herself to stick to the plan But we both knew that if she did that, by the time Christmas arrived she would be utterly exhausted and with no energy left to enjoy time with her family. So she made the tricky decision to slow things down and postpone the launch So that doesn't mean that she's sitting back and doing nothing to move it forward. Far from it, she's creating the web page sending out a few personal invitations, she's had some positive responses already... It just means that she's taking small baby steps in the right direction rather than pushing herself to take the really big leap that she'd originally planned! So is there anything you've got on your list that you just don't have the energy for?

06:40 Could you slow things down a bit so that you're still moving forward but doing it in a gentle, sustainable way taking the pressure off yourself? So those are the three approaches I wanted to share with you that will help create more breathing room for yourself over the coming week. But just to be clear, I am not for a moment suggesting that you should give up on things you haven't yet achieved this year This is all about identifying which tasks you're willing to loosen your grip on so that you can clear space for the things that matter most. And for those things, you can then go full steam ahead! So let's just think about that for a moment... What's the thing that you are absolutely determined to get done before the end of the year? That now you've let go of some other things

07:23 So as always, I hope that this helps and look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you for listening to Unfrazzle. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who needs a dose of calm productivity in their life and I'd love it if you could leave me a rating and review as that will help more people discover this podcast. If you would like to hear more from me to help stop faffing and take back control of your time, you'll find the link to join my mailing list in the show notes and I would really love for you to join us! So thanks so much for your support and I look forward to seeing you next time