November 2022
Listen to hear:
Tips for celebrating the holidays while practicing self-loyalty.
Welcome to the ninth episode of Ask Nancy Jane. These episodes are designed to answer the questions you've submitted via email or on the Ask Nancy Jane page in the portal to get extra help in Self Loyalty School. They're meant to be a place to get that extra support or insight if needed. You can listen to these episodes anytime.
All these episodes are released on the last Tuesday of every month, and I will try to make it no more than 10 minutes. So as a reminder, if you have questions, you could submit them to questions at selfloyaltyschool.com or head over to the Ask Nancy Jane page in the student portal.
This month no one submitted the question, and since we are in the holiday season, I wanted to offer some tips for practicing self-loyalty throughout the holidays. I have three themes I want to talk about. The first one is it's hard. The holidays are hard, no matter what you feel about the holidays. Whether you love them or hate them or dread them or are amazed by them, they're freaking hard because you will feel everything you've learned has just gone out the window. Everything you've learned in self-loyalty school disappeared in December, and I just want to tell you that's okay. The key isn't not falling down the anxiety rabbit hole. It is catching yourself as quickly as possible when you do, so that may be less quick in December, and that's okay. What we don't want to be doing is beating ourselves up because we got stuck down an anxiety rabbit hole.
Here it is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I admit I've already been down a couple of anxiety rabbit holes, and we haven't even gotten full-fledged into the holidays yet. So just prepare yourself. It's okay. It's a hard time of year, and it's also an amazing time of year. It's a wonderful time of year, so make the holidays yours, whatever that looks like for you.
So this season, make sure you pull something out that is just for you. That is how you want to celebrate the holidays. Doesn't mean it's a solo task that you're doing. I know what makes the holidays the holidays is spending time with my nieces and nephews, and in the past couple of years, we've developed a tradition where we do a game night. That has become the thing I want to do that cements my holiday season spending time with my nieces and nephews. So I make sure that that's a priority for me.
Another favorite part of the holidays for me is cooking. I love cooking for my family and making food. So the holidays remind me that that's something I love doing even when it gets hard, when it's anxiety-provoking, and when I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off in the kitchen. I know this is something I love doing, so it's very much back to that idea of values. What are your values when it comes to the holidays? Make sure you're pulling those out.
Okay, the second thing I want to say it's kind of a cliche tip, but it's one that I use a lot during the holidays when I tend to run all over the place and be very scattered. One task at a time. I love this very cliche tip because it reminds me when I'm running errands and going from store to store to slow down and pull back. Let's concentrate on this store; let's not concentrate on five errands from now let's concentrate on this errand. When I'm cooking dinner and concentrating on one task at a time each time I'm going to cook.
So my husband and I use a subscription service for some of our meals, and a couple of times a week, we'll get a meal sent to us that's the recipe card and all the ingredients, and then I make the meal. I have found the key to this concept is that I have to follow the directions exactly one step, two step, three step, four steps, but how I tend to cook is I tend to be all over the place, so it pains me. So, last night I was making a meal, and I knew I had to chop the onions first. Not while the water was boiling, not while I was cooking the meat, but just chopping the onions on their own. I wasn't doing anything else while I was chopping the onions. Nothing else was happening. I was just chopping onions, and I said to my husband, "This pains me to just do this one task at a time and not jump ahead, but I know if I don't if I jump ahead, I will run into problems, and I will be crazed in the kitchen, and it won't be any fun."
And that's exactly what happened. I did the onions and was glad I did because it quickly went off the rails in the kitchen, and had I been trying to multitask, I would not have been able to pull the meal out the way I did yesterday. So this tip applies whether you are wrapping gifts, at a church service, eating dinner with family, or shopping. I don't care one task at a time practice it for the holidays.
The last thing I want to talk about is asking for help. This is something we don't do well overall with high-functioning anxiety, but it's really something we don't do well during the holidays; because we want to be able to do it all. Last year around the holidays, my husband said to me."You know you aren't a bad person if you can't do it all."
I nodded and smiled, believing him that I wasn't a bad person.
And then, in all his wisdom, he said, "You know you won't be a better person if you do it all yourself." That stopped me in my tracks. I turned and looked at him, and for a minute, my brain was processing what he said.
"Wait a minute, you mean I won't be better?" I said And then I laughed out loud because I knew I wouldn't be bad if I couldn't do as much, but I was telling myself I would be better if I didn't ask for help—such a toxic message. In reality, I won't be bad or good. I will just be me. If I ask for help, I will be me, and if I don't ask for help, I will be me, just more miserable. :)
We know we won't be bad people if we ask for help, but we tell ourselves we will be better people if we don't. Pay attention to how much that belief comes up for you. The truth is we attach our workload to our worthiness. The more we do, the better we are. This is a lie that keeps us stuck in the hustle and overworking. We feel shame, it triggers our anxiety, we over function to prove the shame wrong which leads to more anxiety, and then we beat ourselves up for not being able to do more with less anxiety. And round and round we go.
A couple of thoughts on the practicality of asking for help: Asking for help brings some practical problems: what if they say no? What if they are annoyed at me? What if they don't do it as well?
1. They can always say no to your request, and you can always negotiate. For example, you ask your spouse to help by doing the laundry, and he says he doesn't have the time. He has a work deadline. You can counter by asking if he has time to sort the laundry and start one load, and you will finish it.
2. They might get annoyed that you are asking for help. This is hard. We don't ask for help because we don't want anyone mad at us. AND part of building self-loyalty is knowing people will get annoyed, and that is ok. They can be annoyed and do what we ask them, and they will get over it.
3. They probably won't do as good of a job. A challenging part of asking for help is letting go of the final product. They will do it differently and maybe not as well as if you did the task (gasp!) I know for us perfectionists, that can be so hard! Remind yourself that it doesn't have to be perfect.
Asking for help is a necessary evil that gets easier with time.
Okay, folks, I hope you have a great holiday season. I'll be back here for Q&A at the end of December. If you have any questions, please send them to selfloyaltyschool.com or head over to the portal and fill out the ask Nancy Jane Form, and I'll answer them in the next Q&A lesson next month.
I will see you next month. Take care.