Holiday Tip #11: Choose Energy Giving Thoughts
I created the Holiday Tips series for ambitious high achieving women trying to juggle everything this holiday season -- closing out the fiscal year at work, coordinating holiday events, hosting, cooking, cleaning, communicating, shopping, wrapping. The mental load is extra heavy this time of year, and I'm hopeful these holiday tips will help make things a little lighter for you.
Connect with me on Instagram @execcoachleanna or LinkedIn to tune into the full series.
Hi everyone. Coach Leanna, the executive coach for moms here with another holiday tip for you. One thing that I know from coaching many women and studying mindset work is that the stories that we tell ourselves and the sentences in our brains really shape our experience of the world. They impact how we feel and also what we do.
And so. I think it's really important all the time, but especially around the holiday season when things get so busy to check in and notice what we are telling ourselves. What are some of the sentences that are running in the background all the time that may be not helpful? So for example, if we are constantly saying, I have so much to do, I'm never gonna get everything done, this is so overwhelming, then that is going to create certain feelings.
Okay. Think about what those kind of sentences feel like in our bodies. It feels like we are just drowning, right? It feels like we'll never get our heads [00:01:00] above water. It feels very disempowering. It feels frustrating. And then of course, we're judging ourselves for it, so we have to be really intentional about catching those thoughts, those energy drainers, and replacing them with energy givers. And I think probably the best energy giver is something along the lines of, I am capable. When we shift into I am capable of doing this, I have done this before, I know how to do this, if I don't know how I can figure it out, I know I can figure it out, when we shift into those kinds of thoughts, think about what kind of feelings that creates for us. We feel confident, we feel capable, we feel more calm, we feel more in control, and we feel more hopeful rather than feeling just like in despair and like we're never gonna be able to get all of this done.
So that is a huge thing, is to notice those energy draining thoughts that you're having [00:02:00] and catch your brain in the act of offering those sentences and say, actually no, I don't think that's true. It's not true that I'm not capable because I've done this before and I know I can do it again, and maybe I can even do it differently this year. Maybe this year I'm not gonna do it at the expense of myself.
Or maybe this year I'm gonna do it a little bit more intentionally. You get to decide how you wanna approach that. But I think at the end of the day, what's most important. Is that you remind yourself of your potential and of your capability, and you might have to say that over and over and over again.
We have tens of thousands of thoughts a day, and 80% of them are repetitive. And so if your thought is often, I can't, I can't, I can't. I don't know how, I don't know how, I don't know how. Then you're gonna start to believe that that's true and it's not.
You are totally capable of doing this. Follow me for more tips at @execcoachleanna. Thanks.
