369: Finish Strong: A midlife woman’s guide to thriving through the holi-daze.

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Courtney Townley 0:01
If you’re a midlife woman who normally travels through the holiday season feeling stressed and overwhelmed and even a little resentful, you have come to the right place. You know, the final quarter of the year for most midlife women is the most stressful time of year because there’s so much opportunity to put more on our plates. We still have the responsibilities that we’re contending with all year long, and now we’re in a season of adding a lot more to our plate to try to make the holidays really special for the people around us, and ultimately, that is a very quick path to putting our own self care on the back burner, which causes us to roll into the New Year feeling absolutely spent. And that’s not how most women I work with want to start the new year.

Courtney Townley 0:59
So in this episode of the grace and grit podcast, I am going to remind you, dear listener, what it really means to finish the year strong, how to continue to honor your self care, even through the holidays, and why boundaries are a nutrient, especially this time of year and so much more. And before we get into it, just a reminder, a lot of women could use a little help this season to travel with more ease and grace. So if this episode lands for you, please pass it on. Welcome to the grace and grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host, Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 2:01
Welcome to the Grace of Grit Podcast. I’m your host. Courtney Townley, thank you so much for taking the time to be here now. It’s been a hot minute. If you are a regular listener of the show, I owe you an explanation. I have never, in my business, taken a pause as long as I have these past few weeks without some kind of explanation. So here it goes.

Courtney Townley 2:27
I started October with a bang. We had our annual Grace and Grit retreat here in Montana. We had women from all over the country fly in to spend four days on a 3000 acre ranch on the foot of the Blackfoot River, and it was spectacular. This was my only, my second year of hosting a retreat, and I really didn’t think that we could make it better than my first year. The first year just blew up. Blew my mind how amazing and magical it was. But I gotta say, year two brought even more magic.

Courtney Townley 3:02
So the month started with so many wins, and I was in such a great place. And I was actually planning to fly to Texas after the retreat to help my father through a surgery that he was getting to help manage his Parkinson’s. I was totally unprepared for what I was walking into, and I ended up spending nearly three weeks in Texas dealing with a lot of challenges that were showing up medically for my father, not just because of the surgery, but from a lot of previous health things that I was unaware were not being managed. So I am still in the thick of that, and I really had to extend myself a tremendous amount of grace to and the way I did that was looking for spaces I could pull back to reclaim some resources so I could really deal with what was right in front of me. And unfortunately, the podcast had to be one of those things. So I am back.

Courtney Townley 4:05
I am still working through these challenges with my dad, and I will be back and forth to Texas A lot over the coming months, but I feel like I have a little bit more footing now, having assessed kind of what’s truly going on and still in the still in the midst of finding solutions and all the things, but I do feel like I can now dedicate my resources to parts of my business that unfortunately I had to pull a little bit back from over the past month. So forgive me if you are a regular listener, but I am back and, you know, not making excuses, but I do like my reason for pulling back from the podcast, and I hope you understand.

Courtney Townley 4:48
So today, the episode is titled, Finish Strong: A midlife woman’s guide to thriving through the holi-daze. And I spell days, D, A, Z, E. Because that is often how it feels for a lot of women the holidays just feel like they’re moving through it in a daze. Now, before we get into the logistics of this podcast, I do want to remind you that we’re approaching 400 episodes of this show, and this is certainly not the first time I have approached this topic, and so we have a guide that you can sign up for that will direct you to a lot of the other podcast episodes that I have done previously on this very topic. They’re nuanced. They’re not speaking directly to what I’m speaking about in today’s episode, but they will be useful to those of you who are really rumbling this holiday season. So if you want to get your hands on that guide, you can just head on over to graceandgrit.com/thrive. Once again, that’s graceandgrit.com/thrive.

Courtney Townley 6:00
So what does it really mean to finish the year strong? I think it’s really important we start here. Because a lot of people think, oh my gosh, here she is, and she’s gonna tell me that I have to get to the gym and really, like, you know, create PRs in the gym and reach my personal bests in other areas of my wellness during the holiday season, that is not at all what I am talking about. Finishing the year strong at the most fundamental level, really just means finishing the year with a little energy left in the tank. Because if you don’t, the new year will begin very rough for a lot of us who live in the northern, northern hemisphere. We are in the throes of winter. So there are a lot of challenges that show up in the winter. Right? People tend to get more sick. We tend to need more rest, and when we show up in January, already bowled over. It does not bode well for our health.

Courtney Townley 7:04
I see a lot of my clients and people that I work with really struggling with immunity challenges through January and February, largely because of their lack of self care around the holiday season. So finishing strong just means that we aren’t exhausting and depleting all of our resources. It also means that you’re maintaining integrity with yourself through the final stretch of the year, so you are showing up in the holiday season in a way that feels congruent with how you want to be showing up. And finishing strong means that we’re wrapping up the year feeling somewhat physically, mentally and emotionally resilient.

Courtney Townley 7:51
And if you’re hearing me say all that and and thinking that is not me, that is not normally how I finish the year, these four tips that I’m going to give you today, there’s four main things I want to speak to that can really shift the way you wrap up your year. So getting into, how do we actually finish the year strong?

Courtney Townley 8:13
Number one, we have to respect our resource availability. So respecting your resources during the holidays means that you recognize, as a human that you have limits. You have limits with time. You have limits with energy. You have limits with your finances and your emotional bandwidth and understanding that you have limits, you intentionally manage them in a way that aligns with your well being and your values. So honoring your resources is about setting realistic expectations for yourself and the people around you to avoid overextending and burning out during a season that often demands more than usual. So the first question here that I think is really important to ask yourself going into the holidays is, what is your resource availability right now going into the season, how many resources do you really have on board?

Courtney Townley 9:23
And the way that I like to think about this is, if you think about the image of a battery, you know, we have the sort of the the battery that shows that it’s at full capacity, it’s all charged up, or we see that it maybe only has half a bar, or that it’s kind of getting into that zone of needing to be charged. So if you were to think about your own resource availability as a spectrum similar to that, where would you put yourself on that line? Are you at full capacity? Do you have tons of resources on board feeling super energetic and like you? Handle anything and everything. If you are, like the majority of my clients, and certainly I am in this camp right now, I am rolling into the end of the year at less than half of capacity. So I’m probably closer to a quarter of my battery being full right now. And that is really important to acknowledge, because when I acknowledge that I only have a little bit of resources on board right now that can help inform the commitments that I’m actually making during the holiday season.

Courtney Townley 10:44
When we acknowledge that maybe energy and resources are running a little bit low, we can look for ways to consider what might need to be let go of in order to reclaim and or reserve resources for our own peace and happiness during the holidays. So right now, given what I just shared with you about my dad and also sharing that I know that I’m only I only have about 25% of my resources on board right now. You can bet your bottom dollar I am going to use that to inform how I travel through the next four to six weeks, because if I neglect to acknowledge it, I will over commit, overextend, and that will lead to nowhere good.

Courtney Townley 11:39
Acknowledging that I have limited resources right now means that I’m really hyper focusing on what needs to happen in order to travel through the holidays with my wellness intact. And for me, that looks like I was going to host Thanksgiving this year. I’ve asked my mother to take on that responsibility, because I just don’t have it in me to host Thanksgiving this year. I also really need to be flexible in my plans, because I don’t know what’s going to happen with my dad, so I’m having those conversations with my family. So it’s not a surprise when we have to pivot, or we have to let something go or do something differently than we have in years prior.

Courtney Townley 12:25
So again, the first question is, what is my current resource availability?

Courtney Townley 12:31
The second question I would encourage you to ask is, are the commitments I am making this season honoring my current resource availability? Super powerful questions can really heighten the level of awareness and help you to plan much more effectively to roll into the New Year feeling strong. The second thing I would recommend is really be honest about what you are truly hungry for this season. A lot of us don’t go into the season thinking about how we would like the holidays to roll right? We just get very reactive during the holidays, doing everything like we have in years past, and maybe that serves you.

Courtney Townley 13:19
But for a lot of women that I work with, it really just leads to more burnout and stress. And when we’re burnout and stressed, what do we do? We over consume, we overspend, we overeat, we over drink, we over dramatize, we over everything, because we are reactive and we’re also trying to self soothe. So most of my clients don’t over consume because they’re hungry for food and alcohol. I’m not saying there aren’t holiday foods that you really look forward to. I’m sure there are, but largely the women I work with over consume during the holidays because they don’t respect their resource availability. They are feeling burnt out and dysregulated in their nervous system because they aren’t honoring what they are truly hungry for, which is usually rest and maybe connection, like a deep, meaningful connection with the people around them. They are hungry for feeling joy and happiness and peace during the holiday season.

Courtney Townley 14:37
And what those things demand is often counter to the way that they have rolled in holidays past. A lot of women want to feel calm. A lot of women I work with want to feel validated for their efforts. And here’s the great thing is. When we actually recognize what we are truly hungry for, we can honor that hunger with proper nutrition, right? So when I honor that I’m really hungry for some rest right now, but I’m forcing myself to be at a party I don’t want to be at with people who are really depleting me and aggravating me. I am going to look for ways to self soothe. In comes the alcohol, in comes the over consumption of food that doesn’t serve my body. Because I’m looking for ways to numb and avoid the situation I am in rather than honoring what I actually need.

Courtney Townley 15:45
Once you identify your true needs, you can choose actions that satisfy those needs authentically, instead of masking them with temporary distractions like overeating, over drinking or over committing. So the question I would encourage you to ask here is, what am I truly hungry for when you find yourself in the kitchen looking for food, but you know you’re not actually hungry, hand on heart, what am I actually hungry for right now? And be willing to hear the answers, which are probably not what you think they’re going to be, and honor them and see where that gets you.

Courtney Townley 16:37
The third thing I would recommend is that you know your non negotiables for the holiday season. I call these your anchors. And anchors are things that help us, literally, to feel anchored in our life and in our chemistry. They help us to not spin out in reactivity. And I always think that there, I always kind of talk about there being two camps of anchors. There are universal anchors, anchors that all humans seem to do well with. We all tend to do well with a good night’s sleep. We do well when we nourish our body on the regular we do well when we take time for movement. Right? These things make us more resilient. They make all humans more resilient. The dosage matters, of course, but that is true for all humans.

Courtney Townley 17:30
But then there are personal anchors, things that just bring you alive as a human, that make you feel nourished and taken care of, that may not be true for me, I need a lot of space. I need a lot of alone time. I need a lot of time to process. I have noticed over the years that when I have ample time to be in relationship with myself, I like how I show up with other people. Not everybody needs that to the degree that I need it, but that is an anchor for me, and so absolutely, during the holiday season, I am looking for ways to honor that anchor. Now, you can’t honor every anchor during the holiday season. That’s not a reasonable expectation, but I would get really clear for yourself about a few anchors that you want to not negotiate this season. For me, one of those is sleep. And second to that is having time and space for myself, for reflection, for recovery.

Courtney Townley 18:40
Maybe for you, it’s something different. Maybe it’s time in nature. Maybe it’s just the practice of mindfulness or presence. Maybe you have a gratitude practice that really helps you to stabilize yourself in every situation. What are your anchors? That is the third question, honor those and the fourth and final thing probably will come as no surprise. It’s such a powerful one, which is ditch the drama. Do not indulge in unnecessary emotional labor this holiday season. If you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that I am a huge fan of feeling your emotions and processing your emotions.

Courtney Townley 19:26
However, I am not a fan of making your emotional landscape harder than it needs to be. And we do this because we weave really elaborate stories and we make really big assumptions about people and about their behavior that really makes us suffer emotionally more than necessary. But there’s a lot of other ways that we create unnecessary emotional labor during the holidays, so these are the some of the things that I want you just to kind of be aware. Aware of and notice your behavior around one of those things is committing to planning and hosting everything, taking full responsibility for organizing the holidays, the meals, the decorations, the accommodations without any help or acknowledgement, will cause you a lot of unnecessary emotional labor.

Courtney Townley 20:24
Ask for help delegate, ask some other people to do it, bring, bring people in to support you. But you don’t have to assume that responsibility yourself. You don’t have to assume it at all. Are you someone who feels like you have to buy all the gifts so you handle all the shopping, the wrapping, the planning for holiday presents, even the gifts from other people. So you buy your partner’s gift for his family or her family. You buy your kids gifts for your partner, right? We don’t have to take these things on.

Courtney Townley 20:59
In fact, we are robbing people of the opportunity to grow in those areas by constantly doing the work for them. So not only are we taking on unnecessary emotional labor, we’re actually trying to take on other people’s labor, which causes a lot of unrest and challenges for us during the holidays. Are you someone who feels compelled every year to maintain traditions that you’re really just not that into, so caroling and baking or sending holiday cards or 1000 other holiday traditions that exist

Courtney Townley 21:40
if you’re not invested, if the people around you aren’t invested, you’re creating a lot of unnecessary emotional labor for yourself, because you’re going to have to rumble with resentment and annoyance and frustration because you’re literally doing something you don’t need to be doing.

Courtney Townley 22:00
There’s a great quote about traditions that I have long loved. I don’t know who said it, but it is traditions are simply peer pressure from dead people like when was the last time you asked yourself why you really maintain certain holiday traditions? If you love them, more power to you keep going, but if they do not create joy for you, you might want to reconsider that. If you are someone who is always trying to play Peacemaker during the holidays, you’re literally trying to manage other people’s emotions. You’re trying to make everybody happy. You’re trying to make everybody get along. You don’t have that power, my friend, and you’re going to create a lot of unnecessary emotional labor in the process of trying to do that many of us, I can certainly identify with this. We absorb others, other people’s holiday stress, so we take on the emotional fallout of other people’s holiday anxiety, or their financial stress, or their irritation with travel logistic logistics. I did this last year.

Courtney Townley 23:12
My dad came up to Montana, and he was so stressed, like weeks leading up to it, the entire time he was traveling here, I think I had more anxiety than he did about the whole thing. So again, we take on a lot of unnecessary emotional labor by trying to own other people’s emotions or trying to control other people’s emotions. And similar to that, we often through the holidays, just try to put on our happy face and we pretend to be okay, which again, creates a lot of unnecessary emotional labor, because internally, we’re feeling tons of friction. We might be feeling exhausted or unhappy or whatever the thing might be, but when we suppress it, that’s a lot of freaking work.

Courtney Townley 24:05
Either do something to process it, go for a walk, journal, take some time for yourself, whatever you need to do. Or if you’re in a position to be able to do so, express that in healthy ways. Have a conversation that you need more help. Have a conversation that you don’t want to be doing something that maybe has been a tradition for years. It feels so hard in the moment, but man, does it bring us a lot of relief on the other side to have those conversations rather than just gritting our way through it and kind of being pissed off the whole time. So a question here that’s really useful to ask is, where am I creating unnecessary emotional labor for myself this season?

Courtney Townley 24:56
So quick recap, four things we talked about here. Two. To be able to travel through the holidays with a lot more ease and grace and finish the year strong. Respect your resource availability. Stay honest about what you are truly hungry for this holiday season. Know your anchors, the things that help you to stay grounded and proactive rather than reactive, and say no to unnecessary emotional labor. Take responsibility for unnecessary emotional labor. I hope this was helpful. I hope there was something in here that helps you to get through the holidays with a little more sanity, energy and all the things intact. And again, like I said, there is so much more that we have done on this podcast around helping you travel through the holidays more easily.

Courtney Townley 25:55
If you want that holiday guide, all you have to do is head on over to graceandgrit.com/thrive, and it’ll direct you to other podcast episodes that we have done. And there’s even journal prompts and other things to consider in that guide. Share this with someone who you think could benefit from it, because a lot of women rumble this time of year. I know I’m not telling you something you don’t know there, but sharing is caring, so spread this far and wide again. Thank you so much for being here. I am wishing you a very strong start and finish to your holiday season. I’ll see you soon. Take care.

Courtney Townley 26:41
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible. You