It’s that time of year again—the holiday season. Oh yes, it is knocking on our doors, like a door-to-door salesman that we simply aren’t ready to let in. If you’re staring at the calendar and asking yourself “How can it be here so quickly?!” You’re not alone. I believe executive moms around the world are doing this exact same thing. To help us all prepare, and most importantly, to empower us to look back and say, “That was truly the best holiday season!” we must have a plan. Welcome to your “No Regrets” Holiday Season mini-series.
Let me walk you through why this series is called “no regrets.”
I know that for most of us working in our executive careers, we simply accept that life is crazy, we are going to work 60 plus hours a week, and this is just how it is if we are going to be successful. We see it as a fair trade-off for what we have or even as “the rules” of the executive game.
However . . . we start to question this just a bit during the holidays. If anything, we tell ourselves we have worked hard, and we deserve to enjoy our holidays.
We also tend to think back to our holidays as children, and the memories we created, and we want to ensure we are the moms our children “deserve” by giving them some great holiday memories. Taking it one step further, we not only want our children to have those memories, but we also want to create some amazing memories for ourselves too.
Again, we have earned it, right? So with that, we start to think about how to have a little personal happiness without damaging our careers.
It starts with Halloween; getting the costumes, the candy, the decor, and preparing not only the kids but the house and the events. Then it goes to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and all of the December holidays. From mid-October to early January, we feel as though we must deliver at work and at home with equal levels of success.
If you work in a company whose fiscal year follows the calendar year or even one that has a fiscal year that ends in January or February, you are dealing with equal amounts of stress and the same number of demands.
You want to deliver at work. Heck, you NEED to deliver at work because you need that security. And yet you equally want to enjoy the holidays with your family and friends. You tell yourself, “The reason I work so hard is so that I can enjoy this time of year. Why am I not enjoying it?”
It’s time to learn how to have a little career success and personal happiness, what we here at Legend Leaders call a Legend Life.
Where do we start?
We start with how I always encourage us to start; we recognize our current reality.
How is work going for you?
How do you feel about work and the time you spend working each week?
How about your personal life, how is it going?
Are you satisfied/happy with the amount of time you spend away from work doing the things that make you happy?
Take an honest look at your career and your personal life. What’s good, what’s not so great, what do you keep doing during the holidays, and what do you think must change?
Grab the workbook to help you work through these questions and more.
And if you are already saying to yourself, “I can already see I’m going to struggle with making the changes in preparation for the holidays. I’m going to need help.” Send me a DM on FB (http://m.me/makinglegendaryleaders) with the word “HOLIDAYS” and I will send you some information on how we can help you.
Be Legendary!