Ep# 128: Holiday Time Off? 3 Mindset Hacks to Ditch the Guilt and Let Yourself Rest Now (and Beyond)
Episode Summary
Are you caught in a cycle of constant to-dos, wishing you could take more guilt-free breaks and truly enjoy the holiday season?
As the year-end chaos ramps up, this episode shows you how to break free from doing it all and embrace a balanced, joyful life for 2025.
In this episode, you will:
Discover the powerful shift that allows you to truly rest and recharge without guilt, setting the stage for a healthier, more balanced life.
Learn how to rewrite the "invisible contract" dictating your responsibilities, enabling you to embrace freedom and create your own rules.
Unlock a transformative technique to quiet the urge to "do more," breaking the cycle of overwork and creating space for genuine renewal.
Press play now to learn how to turn this holiday season into a time of true restoration and step into 2025 with clarity and energy!
Schedule a call with Jenna about joining the Clarity Accelerator--the same mastermind that we talk about in this episode--to dial in signature offers and strategies and a first-rate mindset.
https://www.theuncommonway.com/schedule
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The Uncommon Way is led by business coach Jenna Harrison, who helps women entrepreneurs feel confident, find their ideal clients effortlessly and avoid overwork so they can manifest money and abundance in their business and life.
This podcast empowers female entrepreneurs to overcome imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and limiting beliefs through somatics, mindset, and spirituality, create 7-figure offers, and build an online service business with clarity and alignment.
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Harrison: [00:00:00] What if you could make a critical investment in your future business and life this holiday season, all from the comfort of your sofa, and it wouldn't cost you a cent.
You're listening to the Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the podcast that helps women entrepreneurs get clear on signature offers and strategies. That's sell themselves so you can lean back and stop the hustle. You will learn to maximize your mindset, messaging, and strategy, and step into the uncommonly successful business and life you are creating.
Here's your host, top ranked business coach and reformed over analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Welcome, welcome back to the uncommon way. Wow, it's the end of the year. [00:01:00] How did that happen? As a business owner, it probably means end of year accounting. Maybe you're planning to launch something in 2025 and you're prepping now, you're making purchase decisions to help with write offs, and maybe it's a big sales month since your clients are looking to spend down some budget or create their own write offs.
It's a busy time. Not to mention whatever you have going on personally. Hosting family get togethers, buying presents, and if you have children, then you're helping with holiday parties or planning out whatever you're going to do with them over the vacay. And I've got a note for those of you that are listening to this episode later in the year.
Probably, you've still got a ton going on, right? Funny how that happens. So in this episode, we are going to try to sort out how you could possibly let yourself take a beat during all of this madness. How can you let yourself rest without feeling guilty [00:02:00] the whole time? Because yeah, we all know the benefits of some off time, at least you do if you've hung around here for a minute.
You know it creates a better life, a healthier life emotionally and physically. And it helps us accelerate in our careers because the most valuable parts of our brain are only accessible when we're grounded rather than all activated. But knowing something and actually doing something are two different things.
That's why in this episode, you will discover the powerful shift that allows you to truly rest and recharge without guilt, setting the stage for a healthier, more balanced life. You will learn how to rewrite the invisible contract, dictating your responsibilities, enabling you to embrace freedom and create your own rules.
And you'll unlock a transformative technique to quiet that urge to do more, breaking the cycle of overwork and creating space for genuine [00:03:00] renewal. But first, how are you doing? What plans do you have coming up? I am coming off a busy period here with the Black Friday promotion. We just did. It was the first time, so there was a good chunk of learning involved, but also, we live next to a construction project, so the new curriculum that I wanted to create, it all has to be recorded at nighttime.
And, good news, my mom is here visiting for six weeks, which is amazing. Dylan's about to get off school. For the holidays, we have more time here than in the typical U. S. schools, since Little Christmas is such a big part of this celebration, so he'll have about three weeks. And of course, we'll have to find lots of ways to keep him active and entertained.
So one thing we're doing is a trip to Austria, to Salzburg, where Mozart's from, to enjoy the Christmas market. And they apparently have Gorgeous one. And there are Christmas markets here too, but it's not the same as a snowy, wintery Christmas market, you know? And [00:04:00] then the coup de grace is in January when we are taking Dylan on a surprise trip to see Santa Claus in Finland.
There's a Santa's Village right on the Arctic Circle, and they offer reindeer sledding and northern lights viewing, and they're igloos, and they bundle you up in these, like, special thick weather protector suits so you look like the Michelin Man. I've heard that it is amazing. And since Dylan is seven now, I thought, it's now or never.
Right, his joy and excitement is going to be like, oh, it just gives me so much pleasure in advance. It's like a mom's dream, really. And they say money can't buy love, but it can buy some really magical experiences. I'm so excited. But I never would have created this for myself, for my family, if I'd stayed in my working harder not wiser patterns.
So let's talk about one of the key [00:05:00] components of creating your own work life balance. Decompressing. Mental and physical time away from your business, and also away from the rush and the stress in general. Cause that can show up in so many areas of your life. And we don't just want to transfer from business busy to personal busy.
That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about true resets. Because true balance isn't about doing all the things. It's about knowing when to pause and let the world keep spinning. So let's get into some tips. Number one, schedule it. You don't go from full speed to stop just like that. You know this.
You've got some ingrained habits, girl. Both patterns of thinking and patterns of being. Such as what it takes for your nervous system to feel safe and calm. Really, how many times have you finally gotten to that remote destination you've been looking [00:06:00] forward to, and you're laying there in the hammock with a drink at your side?
And found it almost impossible to just sit there. You're like, was there something I forgot? You pick up the phone, you put it down, you pick it back up. You decide, I just, I just want to take a walk and go explore a bit. So I'm saying this with love, you're probably not going to rest if you don't schedule it regularly and commit to that schedule right from the get go.
Otherwise, you'll just forget to do it. Ask me how I know. Or when the time comes, your brain will come up with a different idea. Maybe it'll be, if I just get this done first, well then I can take a break. When I first start working with a client who wants to break this patterning, we start like this. We've got to create some new ways of thinking and some new experiences of rest or downtime.
If we ever hope that our brains will be convinced to continue. Because [00:07:00] how's it going to know what's available on the other side if you never give it a chance to experience it first? And then next we work on how to lean into those decisions and stay committed without forcing them through willpower.
Here's one trick for something simple to tell yourself. I scheduled this now for a reason. Using my cerebral cortex. the highest part of my brain, and I like my reason for doing so. I'm not going to deviate from that just because the emotional centers of my brain are pinging now and they're leading me in the direction of something else at this moment.
I'm going to stay true to what I decided because I liked what I decided. A really simple mantra you can use to remind yourself of why you're doing it as you go through the week or weeks is Rest isn't a reward, it's a strategic investment in the life that I want to create. And good news, [00:08:00] what you schedule, that's totally up to you.
Just scheduling something's already a win. It isn't a contest, it's a pattern interrupter. So what's needed will look different for everyone. It may be that you are taking an hour each morning to go for a walk, or sit there with a cup of tea for a half hour looking out the window. Maybe it is a morning at a spa every few days, who knows?
But also, maybe it's just little tiny breaks of even two minutes throughout your day, maybe every two hours where you just take two To close your eyes, breathe deeply, and really feel slowness. Or maybe it's something like, after a meal, each time, I'm going to rest for 20 minutes. I'm not going to just rush straight in to cleaning up dishes.
You get to decide. You get to call the shot. Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, [00:09:00] your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.
Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn from Facebook ads to manifestation Just go to the uncommon way comm slash schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach All right. Let's talk about number two I suggest that you create a temporary time out rulebook.
So this is going to be a set of temporary rules just for the holiday season. We're looking at a short time frame like this for a reason. It is a brain hack. It's easier to stomach this if it's just temporary. Anybody can do something for just a short period of time, right? It's not life [00:10:00] changing. You don't have to worry about this.
You're just experimenting with it. So, feel free to let everyone know that you are trying this and enlist their support. You can tell people that's what you really want for the holidays, support to give yourself a break and replenish for the year ahead, because here's what's going on. A part of your brain thinks that you have created a contract.
A contract with your clients, your team, your children, friends, community, your relatives, and your spouse. As if you're all on the same page about exactly what a good fill in the blank should do. A good consultant, a good boss, a good mom, a good daughter, a good partner. And so when you tell these very people about your plan, you can feel like, okay, I am temporarily renegotiating our contract.
But, between you and me, this [00:11:00] contract, it doesn't actually exist. The invisible rules that you're following, They were made up. You get to write your own contract. Now in fairness, these rules, they don't come from nowhere. You have internalized lots of observations from your parents and movies and people in your social circle and social media, and you've internalized things that people have said or written over the years.
But your brain took these snippets and then tied them all together and made a bunch of meaning about it. If I act this way and do these things, people will approve of me. And, if I act this way and do these things, I will approve of me. I'll consider myself a badass and better than those sloths who just lay around.
If I just do enough and satisfy enough, I'll be worthy. I'll feel like I've done what I can to control [00:12:00] this crazy world and this uncertainty that I feel about my business and the desperate fear that I feel deep down about not being loved or being abandoned or going broke or that my children will grow up to be bad people or that something terrible will happen to them, that there will be some sort of retribution because I Didn't do enough.
It is exhausting, isn't it? Because you are running a race you can't win, that you'll never win. Because you are the judge and you keep moving the finish line. I'll never forget this one moment when I realized how my own fears and beliefs were making my life so much more difficult than it needed to be. I was at my wit's end because it was so challenging taking care of my one and a half year old full time and building my business too.
And yet I was so concerned [00:13:00] about creating a secure attachment and believing that I had to spend quantity, not just quality, but quantity with my child. Now, my friend who was from Sweden was so shocked when I was talking about this because Children routinely go into daycare at one or so there, and nobody worries that this, in any way, creates an attachment disorder or abandonment issues.
And now, it took me a good six months before I could finally let myself try daycare, and then it was only for a few hours a few days a week. But, I was surprised to see just how much my child flourished and loved all the extra stimulation, and how our time together improved so much at the same time. Okay, here's another one.
Beauty standards. I remember when I was young, wanting slim hips and a flat behind and large breasts, because that's what we aspired to in the 80s. But [00:14:00] then I went to Greece, and I was told, oh, I would have the perfect body if only, oh, how unfortunate, my breasts were smaller, and my hips were bigger. And they pointed me to ancient Greek statues depicting the ideal female form.
And sure enough, they had thicker hips and smaller breasts, which interestingly is more in the direction of today's coveted body type. Look at how this type has changed for women back and forth over the ages. Now, I know you know this, but it's just really helpful to bring up at times like these When we're contemplating changing something that just seems so ingrained and natural, and we kind of need to pluck ourselves out of that situation and say, wait a minute, we can see all these other things that aren't necessarily fixed and static, and this is one of them, how we work, how we live our lives.
We've been engrossed in it for [00:15:00] centuries, but this is, it's just a blip. It doesn't have to be real unless we keep making it real. There are no rules except the ones we make up, either by ourselves or what we allow others to dictate for us. We can make our own rule. So what kind of contract do you want to have?
What would life look like realistically for a woman, if you got to decide? Think about your daughter, or a younger woman that you really love. What would be appropriate, or I guess when would it be appropriate for her to feel guilty? What would be realistic and deserved for her, right? Would she have to earn rest?
Or would rest just be a natural and even strategic bodily function like sleep? Okay, you got that picture in your head of how she would be living? Okay, well now what if you allowed yourself to live that? Now, You may [00:16:00] say, I can't write now because of these circumstances. Okay, fine. But if we don't get clear on where we're headed, we'll never actually get there.
So let's just not surrender and say this is the way things are, because we're powerful, powerful beings who can create whatever we want. And remember, you can do all of this guilt free, cuz it's just temporary. They'll be fine. Whomever needs you to do whatever thing for them, they'll be fine. Whatever you are hoping to do or accomplish, it's okay.
You don't have to hover around the kitchen, cleaning up with five other women who really aren't doing anything, because There's no room for them to all be cleaning, but they also don't want to be perceived as lazy or unhelpful, so they prefer to get in the way. No. We want to break those cycles. Let someone else clean up.
Y'all can take turns, right? Tell your clients you're taking time off. [00:17:00] Tell them the thing is going to be late. Let your kids turn their socks inside out and wear them a second time. Whatever you decide, it's okay. Okay, number three. Don't expect this to feel easy. Rest is not easy for people like us. For us independent do it all high achievers, it will feel easier to just get up and do the thing and get it done, or conform to whatever appropriate behavior we're used to, than it will to not do those patterned behaviors.
Bustle about rather than let others do anything will feel better. To check in or write the post, even though maybe nobody's gonna see it. This is why we include somatic work, or body based work, in the Clarity Accelerator, and it helps my clients achieve such emotional mastery. Because patterns aren't just a brain issue, [00:18:00] it's been patterned into your body, too.
And many of my clients, they want to achieve a three day work week while still growing their business. And that is not going to happen without a multi pronged approach. Here's a good way for me to explain it. There's a payoff for our behaviors, right? That's why we do them. So when we're constantly doing, there are all sorts of payoffs.
We've talked about some of them already, right? We, we get to be perceived as superwomen. We We like when people shake their heads in amazement and they're like, whoa. We like when our auntie pats us on the shoulder and says, you do too much, you need to take some time for you. That helps us feel recognized and deserving and competent and valued and so many other things.
But, there's also the payoff to your nervous system. Buzzing about keeps you in a state that feels normal and therefore safe. When you stop that, your body feels unsafe. So yes, traditional [00:19:00] cognitive based coaching helps, but since it's also in your body, you also need to take a body approach to unwinding it.
When you're on the sofa with your feet up, letting your in laws clean the dishes, or maybe for you it looks like you're taking a slow walk through the woods as per your schedule, or whatever you're doing, you might get the urge to bounce back into your normal half. Don't feed the urge, but don't try to suppress it either, because it will just come back stronger.
Instead, feel it. Don't Be like, oh, I hate this. This feels terrible. I don't know how I'm going to do this. Don't build more story around it. Don't stay in your head. Get really curious, like, oh, gosh, interesting. This urge to get up feels really strong. I can feel that kind of in my shoulders, like this ticklish desire to move, I can feel it right there and I can also feel it [00:20:00] in my throat, I don't know, like I want to say something or scream.
And then as you're paying attention to those sensations and what they feel like, and you just keep breathing and you just keep watching it, chances are they tend to dissipate. If not, that's okay. Move around a little, stretch those shoulders, roll that neck back and forth, but make it clear, because you're setting boundaries after all, that you're not interested in switching plans, but you're here for your body and your nervous system as it has a tough time with your decision.
Okay, you got this, let's make the best of this very deeply nurturing holiday period and let's turn it into the most nurturing yet. You now know how. You know the powerful shifts that really allows you to rest and recharge without guilt [00:21:00] and how to rewrite that invisible contract that's dictating all of your responsibilities and how to quiet that urge to do more.
And really break the cycle to create space for something really beautiful in 2025. And really potent and productive in 2025. All right, my friends, I hope you have a wonderful holiday period. I'll be back next week with some pre recorded content that I think you're going to love. It's super short and snappy for you during this time of the year.
Thanks for joining us here at the Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business in life, including the Clarity First strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit theuncommonway. com. See you next time.
