There was a viral post about how Christmas is a part-time job a while back and it's true. I just celebrated the holidays with my family for the first time in a decade. Theoretically my holidays were lovely. There was an abundance of food, family, and friends. There were no kitchen mishaps or arguments about politics. Yet, instead of starting the new year feeling grateful to have had this time celebrating with everyone, I feel like I've survived something.
Cue the tiny violins. I found myself wondering how I can be miserable while having such a nice time.
After finally having a little time uninterrupted by all this pesky merrymaking, I think the issue is a lack of cognitive flexibility. I was approaching the holidays as if it were a project. And it is a project! There is a lot of planning, managing inventory, scheduling, purchasing, wrapping, setup, cooking, and cleanup. Applying my project management skills was a useful way to ensure things went relatively smoothly.
The trouble is, I never switched out of project manager mode. Even when we were sitting around the table, even when I wasn’t hosting dinner, I was still mentally tracking things to keep us on schedule. I rarely stopped to enjoy the moment I was in. Instead, I was busy thinking about what needed to happen next. It’s all too easy for me to treat life as an endless to-do list, even when the “tasks” are things that are supposed to be fun.
We talk a lot about all the hats we wear. I need to get better at making sure I’m wearing the right hat at the right time! Since I never took my project manager hat off, instead of experiencing the moments of connection that feed my soul, the holidays were an exhausting blur.
Life is full of things, like cooking and shopping, that can be a delight or a chore, depending on our approach. Without realizing it, I made the choice to stay so focused on productivity that I totally lost sight of the goal of the holidays — being with people I love.
THIS