I've spent so many holidays where I've kind of intended to do some work but not really planned when or what, and then didn't really feel like it at the time, so I didn't, but I felt guilty about the fact I wasn't working because really I should, in inverted commas, be working, and then I also wouldn't do any of the really fun stuff that I wanted to do either because I should be working so I shouldn't do that stuff. But then when I did work, I'd feel guilty about the fact that I wasn't resting and really I probably needed to rest and I wasn't spending more time with my friends and family and doing the other things I'd intended to do over the holidays. And it just turns into this big pile of guilt where whatever you do, you just feel bad about it. And you don't get either the work done or the rest, or the quality time with your families. And just finish the holiday feeling a little bit like well, I don't know where that went. And now it's turn time and we're back on again till Easter. It's not a good feeling. I know you felt it too. I don't feel it anymore because of some of the things I've put in place. So let me share those with you today and let's figure out how not to feel guilty over the Christmas break.
Hello and welcome to episode 14 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And we are going to be talking about feeling guilty over the holidays and how we can avoid it. I know you've experienced this. More and more the holidays become a time where we get to catch up on work. Where we get to finish things off that didn't happen over the autumn term, where we just want to get ready for the new year so that we can start not feeling quite so stressed. But then at the same time, we're exhausted and we need a break.
And it's really hard to balance out those things. So we tell ourselves, we'll just do what I feel like through the holidays. And in reality, all that means is that we have to make decisions all holiday long and usually they don't come from our best self.
So today we're going to think about where do these thoughts that generate guilt even come from? What are they? And how can we use that information to make more intentional decisions about what we want to do this holiday?
I'm going to once again refer you back to my old episode from last year about how to rest through the holiday period. So that one, I'm not repeating the content here, that one is a lot about planning exactly what you want to be doing, when you want to be doing it, and talking about the benefits of doing that. So make sure after you've listened to this episode, you go back and check that one out because they're super complementary of each other. But I want to start today's episode by asking you, why do you feel guilty? And for some of you, you might feel guilty about working over the holidays.
You might want to work, you might be genuinely excited about doing your work, but you feel bad that you're not spending more time with your family or spending more time resting. For others of you, you feel guilty that you don't really want to work and you think you should. You think good PhD students will work over the holidays, good academics will work. And you feel bad that you don't feel like that. Some of you will be feeling like you're gonna feel guilty either way, whatever you pick, you're going to be disappointing some part of your life and you're going to feel guilty regardless.
And so my first message today is to remember where these feelings of guilt come from. If we think about our self coaching model, where we have circumstances, we have the facts of the situation, we have the thoughts that we have, the feelings we experience because of those thoughts, and then the actions and results that we take.
If we remember that model, guilty is on the feelings line. It's an emotion. And what that means is it comes from the thoughts we're having, and they can either be the thoughts that we're actively having now, or they can be the kind of wider beliefs that we have. So you might have a thought, or a wider belief, that good academics write over Christmas.
You might have a thought that I need this time to get ahead of next year. You might have a thought that my family will be disappointed if I work during the holiday. It's a whole bunch of different thoughts that you might be having, but that's where the guilt is coming from. It's coming from these thoughts that we have, and often it's magnified by the fact that our thoughts are contradictory to each other.
We can simultaneously believe that other people expect us to work over Christmas, believe that we shouldn't have to work over the holiday period, and believe that there are some bits that we'd quite like to do. We can believe all of those things, and it's in those contradictions that the most intense emotions happen, because we're telling ourselves things where we can't win, where we're going to end up feeling guilty one way or another, because they're mutually exclusive of each other.
Unless we plan specifically what we're going to do, they're mutually exclusive of each other. But the good thing about knowing that it's our thoughts that are creating these guilty feelings is we can choose which ones we spend more time thinking
instead of just allowing these often contradictory thoughts to pop up and believing them as absolute truths, we can look at them and go, okay, I've got all these thoughts. I've got all these beliefs. Some of them come from my childhood. Some of them come from the things that adults said to me when I was very little.
Some of them come from the supervisors around me and the things I hear there, the academic context that I work in. They come from a whole bunch of places. But I get to decide which ones I'm internalizing. I get to decide which ones I'm repeating. Other people might put these things in my head. Other people might expose me to these ideas. But I choose the ones that I spend time on.
And so what we get to do is we get to examine each of these thoughts in turn. Is it true that a good academic in inverted commas would work over the Christmas holiday? Do you believe that? How are you defining good? How are you defining work? How much work? How do we know that good academics do that?
What if some good academics work over the holiday period, and some don't? Is this an all or nothing thing, that if you do, you're a good academic, and if you don't, you're bad? How much is enough to make you good? When we start to query these thoughts like this, we start to see how fuzzy they are, and how hard to pin down they are.
Is doing one hour of work over Christmas enough to make you a good academic? Is there a minimum quantity we have to do to be a good academic? How are we defining this anyway? In what ways does not working over the holiday period make you a good academic? Because often we have this really vague notion of what a good academic is, but even that's contradictory because a good academic is somebody who produces lots of work and is efficient and so on, but it's also somebody who could stay in this career for a long time. It is also somebody who's a good role model for the people around them and doesn't put other people under pressure. It's also somebody who doesn't send emails on Christmas Day. There's a load of definitions of a good academic. Which version of a good academic works over Christmas and which version of a good academic do you want to be?
Now, some of you might be listening to this going, but I love my work and Christmas is my opportunity. The festive period is my opportunity to spend a little bit of time on the bits that I love. And if that's where you're at, happy days, let's plan it like that.
But let's make sure that it's being driven from a desire to do the thing rather than trying to assuage a guilt, that you should be doing that thing. And if you do want to be doing the work, then how do we assuage any guilt you have about the other things that society tells you you should be doing?
Because we then get to pick holes in those ones too. So some of you may believe a good parent wouldn't work over Christmas. A good parent would be there with their kids all the time. But again, what are we calling a good parent? How wide is your definition of a good parent? Is a parent who has a job where they actually have to go into work over Christmas a bad parent? How much time do you have to spend with your kids in order to be a good parent?
Again, it's a really loose definition that we're beating ourselves with, that we're not a good parent, we're not a good academic, we're not a good friend, we're not a good self carer, without really choosing what that means. The best way to reduce your guilty feelings over this period is to just take a minute to define it for yourself. What would make this a good holiday for you. What would please, what is the balance that works for the academic side of you, the social side of you, the resting side of you and any other sides that you want to feed during this period? What's the best combination? that works for you in this period.
I talked about a method of thinking through these things a while ago, of thinking of your life as a plate, that you've got a series of foodstuffs on your plate at any one time, and this can be really useful to plan your holidays. So I want you to think about this upcoming period as a plate, okay? And I want you to first of all think, when does it start and when does it finish? So what's the point at which normal life stops and becomes the festive period. And what's the point at which we revert to normal?
Because often that gets a bit fuzzy around the edges, doesn't it? As to when do we start to taper down to Christmas? Do we gradually break back up? So decide the size of your plate. What time period are we talking about?
So for me, for example, I I'm recording this on the 15th of December. I have my last client facing work today. I'm working the 18th and 19th on kind of behind the scenes stuff. And then I'm not working from the 20th of December through till the 2nd of January. That's a no work. And then I've got three days where I'm doing behind the scenes work. And I recommence with my clients and all my classes and those things from the 8th of January.
So that's the boundaries of my plate. First job is figure out what are the boundaries of your plate? And you want to take into account the people around you. So my husband's a teacher. He finishes on the Tuesday, the 19th. So that's partly why I'm working through while he's still working and then I'm not working while he's off. So that's kind of set my boundaries. You may have children. You may just get to decide this stuff. You may be traveling. So just decide what the boundaries around this plate are.
And the important thing to remember about a plate is It's a fixed size. Now, over Christmas, we get pretty good at stacking our plates high, metaphorically and literally speaking, but it's still a fixed size.
It's a fixed amount of time, and there's 24 hours in all of that. And what we get to decide is what proportion of our plate do we want to spend in inverted commas on different things? What bits of our plate do we want to fill with different elements because often what we do is we think, Oh, I, what I really need is I need to rest, but I really need to get on top of things. And I really need to clean the house and I really need to see my family and my husband's family and everybody else. And I need to spend time with the kids and they need to do this. And I need to start my new health regime that starts January 1st, et cetera, et cetera.
And what we don't think is, okay, what proportions of all of this stuff. So when you've established how big this plate is, how long this time period is, now you get to decide, what proportion of that do I want to spend on my own? What proportion of that do I want to spend with my immediate family? My extended family? What proportion of that, if any, do I want to spend working? And I don't want to present this plate as any right answer. You could spend 100 percent of this time working. And if that's what's right for you, then happy days. But let's love it. Let's go look at this plate. I'm so excited that I'm going to get this work done.
I'm so grateful I've made the decision that I'm not going to visit people this Christmas. I'm so grateful that I get to focus on this thing I really care about. Let's love the choice you made. And similarly, you may decide you're going to do no work at all whatsoever. And you're going to fill your plate with family and self care and fun and interesting things.
Maybe you fill your plate with jobs at home, projects that you want to get done that you don't normally have an opportunity to do. Happy days. But then as we plan in the proportions, we also get to plan the thoughts we have about it. So that we're not in the family portion of our plate, and telling ourselves we should be in the work portion of our plate. Because we get to decide that we like this combination. that we've planned and when we hear ourselves feeling guilty, which we will, we get to reply to it and we get to say, no, no, but I shouldn't be working. I know you think we should, because that's what society tells us. That's what I tell myself a lot. But remember, we decided, we decided that today was for this. And so we don't need to feel guilty because we're doing what we planned.
One thought that really has helped some of my clients with this is thinking about what productivity even means. Because I hear a lot of clients say, I really struggle to not be productive. I find it really hard to do nothing. And firstly, no one's telling you, you have to do nothing. You get to decide what you do. If you want to jam pack your Christmas full of activities and games and trips and seeing people and all of these things, jam pack it. That's fine. It doesn't mean you have to work if you don't want to work, if you feel like you need something other than work. So no one's saying, the options here are not working or doing nothing.
There's a whole array of life in between those. And I want you to think about what that could be for you. What do you want to pre plan? Now I'm not suggesting you make some big to do list for Christmas, but thinking, what things do I enjoy doing? What would give me the vibes I want? What would give me the experience I want that's not working? I want you to remember as well that productivity isn't only work. The way I define productivity, and I'm sure you won't find this in the dictionary, but I like it, so I'm giving it to you guys. The way I define productivity is when I do exactly what I intend to do. I am productive. when I do the thing I intended to do.
And that's useful for me for two reasons. One, it helps me to recognize all the ways that I'm productive that aren't just working or doing something concrete. For example, if I decide that I've got a day with my little nieces and nephews, then my intention for that day is to have lots of fun with my nieces and nephews, to have a chance to actually have a chat with my sisters, so I can actually see how they're doing and have a nice natter with them. So it's kind of two sides there. Spend time with the little people. Spend time with my sisters. And so if that's my goal for the day, then being productive is doing those things. Being productive is being present and intentional and having fun with my nieces and nephews.
And being productive is making sure that I actually spend some time talking to my sisters rather than just kind of coordinating children. So those are the things that count as productive for that day. I don't need to do anything else. I don't need to have cleaned the house in order to be productive. I don't need to have done some work because the intention for that day is creating connection. And by the end of the day, I have created connection. So it was a productive day.
Reading is another one. So I have this thing. Not sure why sitting down reading feels really luxurious, but luxurious in a way that makes me feel slightly guilty like I should be doing something else. And it's something that I'm actively coaching myself on, that if I'm reading whatever I'm reading, I can say to myself, no, this is something you're intending to do more. So there's nothing else you should be doing. If you are reading, you are doing something that you have an intention to do more than you do at the moment. So that's okay. And I kind of actively talk my way down from it.
The second reason I like this is because it enables me to be a little bit more intentional about the time when I'm not working. Because rather than it being, Oh, I'm not doing much that day and feeling a bit discombobulated by that, which I think a lot of us do when we don't have things sort of planned. Some of you might be like, oh no, I love a day where nothing's planned and I can just potter, but other people can feel quite uncomfortable with that.
It enables us to go, okay, so why am I doing this? What is the intention here? Okay, the intention is to physically rest my body. And if the intention is to physically rest your body, then you can do whatever you like as long as you're physically resting your body. So rather than telling yourself off for spending too much time messing about on your phone, you can say, no, I can mess about on my phone because my goal for today is to actually rest my body.
If the goal for your day is to make your physical body feel better, then you might say, you know what, I am going to spend a couple of hours messing about my phone, not worrying about it too much because I need to rest. But I also feel better when I go for a walk. I also feel better if I spend a bit of time stretching or whatever feels good for you. So you get to plan a day that includes those things.
If your goal for the day is connection, you get to think ahead, Oh, how can I, how can I make this a really lovely day?
So one of the things I ended up talking with a client about this week is jigsaws. So there's something about the winter holiday and jigsaws that for me is synonymous. But one of the things I love about jigsaws is the potential for incidental connection. So I used to run team building courses in the Lake District and it was residential. So in the evenings, there'd be times where they weren't structured activities and people would just be kind of hanging out and it was a really mixed cohort. They were all PhD students. They came from all over the world and some of them knew each other really well. Some of them wanted to go to the pub and stuff and others didn't, and they didn't know each other. They didn't want to drink. And some of them were more introverted and things like that. And I always used to want to try and help people feel included, but without forcing people to have conversations if they, you know, if they just needed some time to themselves.
And one of the things that really helped with that was having a jigsaw out in the social area. So I'd get a jigsaw out and I would just sit and start pottering with the jigsaw. And what I would find is that people would wander over and join in. And often when they wandered over and joined in for quite a bit of the time, we're just doing the jigsaw. We're sort of asking to pass things over and dah, dah, dah. Sort of mutual work side by side, but other times we would start talking, but it would be very low pressure talking because we're not sitting, looking at each other. You can have long periods of silence in between the chat, but we had bits of nice conversation.There's evidence that side by side conversation is a lot less intimidating, a lot easier to be open. It also makes it much easier for somebody else to come over and join in. So if you're sat having a face to face conversation with somebody, it can feel quite bold to just walk up and join in the conversation.
Some of you may be very happy with that, but a lot of people feel awkward about interrupting a conversation. Whereas actually, if you're doing a jigsaw, it's really easy to just come over and join in doing the jigsaw and be like, Oh, can I just do this corner? Yeah, yeah, of course. And you don't feel like you're forcing yourself into a conversation, but you will end up in that sort of interaction.
So jigsaws. Big tip for the Christmas holidays. But you get to plan what does being productive look like for you in this holiday. Is it lots of walks? Is it lots of lie ins? Is it clearing out that room that's been annoying you for ages? Is it having actual conversations with your family? Because sometimes it's so easy over this busy period to spend time with everybody but not time with anybody.
So I've, you know, I've got a big family. I have four sisters. I have originally four parents, we lost my dad now, but four parents, I now have eight nieces and nephews. I have a lot of friends. I now have my husband, my stepdaughters. It's really easy to jam pack in all these visits where loads of people are there, but you don't actually have decent conversations with any one of them, especially when the kids were little.
Now the kids are a bit bigger, it's an awful lot easier. But there were Christmases where I came back and I was like, I've spent all day with my family and I don't think I've had a single conversation about anything other than, you know, what do they want for lunch? Who's got the spare chairs? We need to figure out where this is. Whatever it is. And we haven't actually had a conversation about anything.
Whereas when we can be intentional and decide that is the goal. Then we can make sure that we do have that time to sit down and I'd say, you know, how actually are things with you at the moment? How's that going? Oh, I haven't spoken to you about that for a while. How's that? And actually be intentional.
Now, one of the best ways, because what people often say to me is, this sounds all very good, Vicki, but I plan what I'm going to do and then I don't do it. And I have two answers for that as well. So first answer is usually you don't really plan. So when I worked with clients this week, and I've said, you know, what are your plans for Christmas?
People have given really vague answers. You know, I'll do some work. I'll probably do this. I might do that. And that's not planning. That's where it becomes hard to follow your intentions because you haven't really specified what your intentions are. I might do some work over the holidays is not a plan.
There is no way of getting to the end of the holidays and going, yes, I did that. Because what's might? What's some? What's work? Who knows? So. First thing, when you tell me you've planned and you don't do it, you usually haven't planned. I want really specific plans, exactly what are you doing and exactly when, or exactly what are you not doing.
The second thing is what people don't do is they don't anticipate the barriers to doing that thing. And this is going to become a big deal when we start thinking about New Year's resolutions and all that jazz, in a couple of weeks time. But we go, oh, I'm not going to work this holiday and set that as our intention.
But we don't think about what's going to make that difficult. And usually the work thing, what's going to make that difficult is emails coming in that we're still checking. it's the thought I should be working. It's hearing that other people are working. All of these sorts of things. And so we get to plan for those barriers.
The other way around, if you decide there is a piece of work that you want to get done, maybe you've got a grant application due or you've got a review process in the new year and there are things you want to do, the other things that can get in the way are not really feeling like doing it, oversleeping, , unexpected invitations, and you get to anticipate what those might be and plan for them.
So we do this a lot in exercise psychology. I've talked about it before in previous episodes. But if you want to run more, you need to think what's going to stop you running. What are the thoughts that will stop you? What are the environmental conditions that will stop you? What's the work stuff that will stop you?
And you get to plan in advance what you're going to do in those situations. Does it mean you do it every time? No, of course not. Does it mean it's much more likely that you will? Yes. Because instead of going, oh, it's raining, I can't run. You go, oh, when it's raining, I do squats inside instead. Or when it's raining, I put on that nice new raincoat that I got and I go anyway. So you get to decide, and it's the same true with Christmas.
I want you to think once you've planned out what you want this festive period to look like, what are going to be the barriers to achieving that? And then once you've done that, you can start to plan from a really curious place. How will I overcome those barriers?
The final part of this, because they're often a big barrier, is other people. So the final part of this podcast is how do we manage other people, and other people's expectations over Christmas? Because often this is the time when our supervisor is simultaneously telling us that we need to get some rest and that we need to catch up that thing we haven't done. We often get very mixed messages from supervisors. And where our friends and family are telling us what they expect us to be doing over Christmas. I have a few hints for you here. They're related to not feeling guilty about rest, but they can apply to anything where you're having other people sort of think they have an input into what you do and say.
First thing I want to remind you is how other people feel is in their models. Our model is our circumstance. The thoughts we have, the feelings we have, the things we do and the results we have. We are responsible for our own models. If we are upset, it's because of the thoughts we're having. Now we might decide that's justified. That it's an entirely appropriate thought, based on the circumstance that we're in, i. e. the behavior of other people. We may decide it's completely reasonable to want to be upset about it, because of that behavior and the thought we have about it. But we're still responsible for that upsetness. We get to say, yeah, I am upset, and I'm upset because I think this, and I stand by that. I stand by the fact that that was unacceptable behavior from you, and so I'm upset. We take responsibility for our own models, and other people are responsible for their models. You cannot make somebody else frustrated. You create their environment, their circumstance, and they have thoughts about you that make them frustrated.
The reason we know that's true is because different people will have different thoughts about you. The same behavior will make some people think you're hilarious and other people think you're the most annoying person they've ever met, because they have different thoughts. And that's how we know that their feelings are their responsibility.
We're not saying be selfish. I've touched on this in previous episodes, not saying be selfish and just, you know, do whatever you want. But you get to decide what's appropriate behavior for you and what's okay. And you allow them to be responsible for the feelings that they have about it.
Because when we run around trying to make everyone happy, we're trying to make our supervisor happy, we're trying to make our inner critic happy. We're trying to make our family happy. We're trying to make our kids happy, our parents happy then the one person we don't make happy is us, and we usually don't make all of them happy either, because what they want is contradictory.
Whereas if we can focus on what I want, and what makes me show up as the best version of me, and allow other people to manage their own feelings about that, then suddenly we're in a much calmer place.
Suddenly we're able to engage in the ways that we want to engage. We become an easier person to be around because we're not sort of saying to our supervisor, yeah, yeah, I will, I'll get that done. And then saying to our kids, yes, yes, I will take you to Santa's grotto. Yes, yes, that's fine. And then realizing that you've committed to two different things at the same time, and now you're just snappy with everybody because you're telling yourself you've messed up.
We get to be responsible for our own feelings. So if you hear yourself saying, I have to do this or my mum will be disappointed, I have to do this or my supervisor will be cross, you don't. You get to pick. And if you decide to do something because you predict your mum will be disappointed if you don't, know that that is a choice.
So that is a reason. You could decide to spend time with your mum because you know she'll be disappointed if you don't. But, you're not doing it for her feelings, you're doing it for your feelings. Because when she feels disappointed, you feel guilty and you don't want to feel guilty. So if you choose that because people will be disappointed that you don't visit them, you are going to visit them, let's just own that as a choice.
I want to go and see them. I want to go and see them because I don't want them to be disappointed, and I suspect they will be disappointed if I don't. But that means it's what I want to do. Rather than what we often do, which is I've got to go because otherwise she's going to be disappointed. I don't really want...by the way, mom, if you're listening to this, I do not feel like this. I am very excited to see you at Christmas. There is nothing about guilt that makes me come and see you at Christmas. I see you all the time. for those of you who don't know, I moved back closer to my mom. So she's now about 400 meters away from where I live and I see her all the time. But for other people, it's not like that.
And what we end up doing is going, Oh, she's going to be disappointed if we don't come home, so I have to, but I don't really want to. And so we end up turning up in that mode, like, Oh, I don't really want to. And similarly work. I have to do my work. I don't really want to, I'd rather be with you lot, but I have to do this..
And it's just a horrible way to do anything. You don't turn up and be productive with your work when you're like that. And you don't turn up and be a fun family member when you're like that either. If we can say, you know what, I know that you'll be disappointed if I don't come. And I actually don't want that. I want to be a daughter who shows up and comes, but that's what I want. So I'm going to do what I want and I'm going to turn this into something that's really nice and what I really want. So we take responsibility for our own models. We accept that when we choose to do something, it's because we want to do it. We actively want to do it. And we allow other people to be responsible for their models.
Now what does that look like? Because everybody else doesn't do this coaching stuff that we do, and so they might not realize that they're responsible for their own models. And so they may be saying things like, oh, you're really disappointing me not coming home this Christmas.
I wish you didn't have to spend so much time working. Or your supervisor's saying, you know, are you really taking 10 days off? I can't remember the last time I took 10 days off. I just, you know, I can't even imagine doing that. You know, surely you want to be doing some work. How do you manage when other people think you are responsible for their emotions?
And the key is establishing boundaries. And to establish a boundary, you have to be really clear as to what a boundary is. So this is the final thing I'm going to teach you today. A boundary is something you impose on yourself. So a boundary is not saying to your supervisor, please don't email me over Christmas.
That's a request. You can ask that. That's fine. But it's up to your supervisor whether they do that or not. They get to pick because they're autonomous adults who get to choose these things. So that's a request. That's not a boundary. If you email me over Christmas, I'll be really cross. That's not a boundary. That's a threat. A boundary would be, I'm not planning to check my emails over Christmas. So if you message me, I'll get back to you on the 2nd of January. That's a boundary. You're telling somebody this is where my boundary is. And this is what I'll do. I'll just not reply. So they know in advance what those conditions are.
And the key thing is you have to believe they're reasonable. And as long as you believe they're reasonable then you enforce your boundary. So you say, yes, I will come and visit the family, but we're only staying till four and I am going to bring my own food for my child because, you know, they have some specific things that they eat. So that's, that's my boundary. That's what I'm going to do. You get to set boundaries that are to do with your behavior and what you will or won't do if they don't honor your boundary.
And that can just help so much with all of this, you can specify out to your supervisor when you will be available, what you will be doing, to your heads of school if you're an academic. You get to specify to other people how long you'll come for, what you'll do and what you won't do. But all from the place of the things that you are in control of. And you get to remind yourself. That you are allowed to make these boundaries. You're an autonomous adult who is responsible for their feelings and responsible for their own behavior and this is what you need this holiday.
If you want to hear more about dealing with annoying things people say at Christmas, I have an episode about that too. I think it was episode nine or 10 last year, something like that. And it's mostly for PhD students, but it will be applicable to some of the academics as well. It's about how to manage when people say things like, Haven't you finished yet? Oh, you've been a student forever, haven't you? And all those annoying things that people often say during these family periods. So make sure you check out that episode too. It will really build on this work on boundaries.
So, to conclude. We've got this wonderful time of year coming up. Let's decide in advance what we want on our plate. Let's be really specific about that, which makes it so much easier to stick to. Pick what works best for you. Remember why you want that. Try not to renegotiate with yourself as you go along, because now when you don't feel like doing the thing that you said you were going to do on that day, you can say, yes, but this is what we decided. This is what makes up the best plate. It might not be exactly what I want to do right now, but it's what makes up the best plate overall. It's what makes up the best combination that I'm looking for. And you can remind yourself of that as you go along.
Be compassionate, when you make a plan like this, you also don't have to stick to it 100%. But at least this way you know what you haven't stuck to and what you have stuck to. And make sure you celebrate those partial successes. A successful holiday is not one in which you do absolutely everything you intend. It's one in which, overall, the plate was roughly what you wanted it to be. So celebrate those partial successes, and enjoy this festive period.
There is an episode coming out on Christmas day and on New Year's day. Rest assured they are pre recorded. I am not working over this period, but they are there if you want them or they'll be waiting for you in the new year if you're putting boundaries around your podcast listening as well.
Thank you for listening and I will see you at some point over the next few weeks.