87. Five useful thoughts

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Hello, darling heart, and welcome to the drink less, live better podcast.

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This is the podcast that helps you to see that drinking less doesn't need to be stressful, lonely, or boring.

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I'm your host, Sarah Williamson, and I decided to have a year alcohol free with a little life experiment and haven't looked back.

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With my experience and training, I now help other people with their alcohol free or drink less adventures.

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You can find out more and sign up to my 5 day drink less challenge at drink less live better.com.

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I'm here to tell you that you can relax, connect, and have fun without alcohol in your life.

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Join me here each week to find out how.

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This week, I'm going to give you 5 useful thoughts of mine about Christmas, about this holiday season, about the time that

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perhaps we're going to take away from work and spend with some family or our loved ones.

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I've found it really, really useful this year to decide upfront what kinds of emotions and feelings I want to feel through this December.

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Perhaps you'd like to do the same.

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On my list are the following words, calm, peace, love, kindness, rest, quiet, and understated.

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I can't tell you how much I love the idea of an understated Christmas, just the right amount of everything and not too much.

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What's on your list for emotions or feelings you'd like to feel this holiday season?

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My second useful thought is to identify the activities that make you feel nurtured and identify the activities that make you

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feel depleted, add a few more of the nurturing ones, and take out, where possible, a couple of the depleting ones.

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My nurturing activities are reading a good book, watching a good film, staring into the fire.

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My depleting activities is too much time away from home, too much time with too many other people, or perhaps not quite the

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right kind of people and really any time at all in any shops.

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My third useful thought is about traditions old and new.

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Which are the traditions that it's really time to let go of.

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This year I got out our Christmas tree and I decorated it but I put the bag back in the loft that had all of the garlands

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and miscellaneous random decorations for putting around the rooms because I just didn't feel like putting them up.

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It didn't feel like going against any kind of decorating tradition, and I don't care if anybody else has got any judgment about it.

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A new tradition I'm taking on is keeping my Sundays free in December.

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This year, I very intentionally left Sundays without activities in them, and as a family, we've enjoyed a Sunday where we

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spent the day with my family completely unplanned and unstructured.

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And last Sunday, we took our boys shopping because it's what they wanted to do, and it was lovely.

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We didn't have anything that we had to say no to and we could just say yes to ourselves.

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My next useful thought is don't have complicated conversations around the holiday season.

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If there's something big that you need to discuss within your family, is it possible you could leave it till the new year?

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If it's not urgent, it doesn't have to be done this month.

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Just put it gently to one side.

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And my 5th useful thought is this is a holiday season, this is a time away from what you usually do, but whilst it's your holiday, it's also other people's.

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In the past, I was very guilty of trying to, get my family members to indulge in my idea of what Christmas should look like,

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and that might have involved eating Christmas lunch and then playing family games, but not all of my family love playing family

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games, and now I embrace the idea that we're all happily ish under the same roof together.

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Somebody might be reading a book in front of the fire, somebody else might be drawing in the den, somebody else might be relaxing

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in the kitchen, we're all doing our own thing, It's not forced fun together and we're all relaxing and peaceful in the same space, and that is enough.

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That makes my holiday happy, and it makes everyone else's holiday a bit more relaxed.

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I hope you find these 5 useful thoughts useful.

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I shall display them as an Instagram post this week, and you can save them if you need a reminder over the coming weeks.

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Please give a Christmas gift this year that will cost you nothing.

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Rate, review, and subscribe to my podcast.

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I'll tell father Christmas to keep you on his nice list if you do. Thank you.

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Check out the show notes on this podcast or any other episode.

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You'll find details about the drink less, live better 2023 retreat.

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You'll see a link to a hidden podcast episode to help you with your 5 PM cravings, and you'll be able to read about my one to one coaching program. Thank you for listening in today.

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Come back again next week, and p s, I believe in you.