Four Ways We Lose Ourselves During the Holidays

Holidays are supposed to be a time of joy, but between family, travel, financial pressure, and trying to keep everybody happy, it's easy to lose sight of your own needs. So joining us now for four ways that we often lose ourselves during the holidays and how to avoid doing so is best-selling author and retreat facilitator, Elias Patras. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So what do you mean when you say people lose themselves, especially during the holidays? So think about this. People stop checking in with what they need and start focusing on everyone else. We say yes when we want to say no. We take responsibility for everybody's feelings. And before we know it, we're believing the entire holiday depends on us. We get stuck in what I call a mind trap. What are the four mind, and it's an acronym, M-I-N-D traps that you see? Correct, correct. So M is manage. it's trying to control everything so nothing goes wrong this is where we have the control freaks impress is keeping everyone happy even at our own even at our own pace or their own pace and that's being the perfectionist impress is keeping everyone happy i'm sorry i already said that uh not enough is believing everything has to be perfect we have our perfectionist and do it for you is fixing everyone else's problem even when they haven't even asked and that's known as the fixer and there are some people who are operating in all four you know people who like to control things because they want everybody to be happy and it's just heightened during the holidays do you think because it's the holiday season there's added pressure just with everything else that's happening there is there is and what's interesting we can fall right back into those old family roles without even realizing one minute we're adults and boom you know we're 14 years old again and that's why you know those the holidays bring up so much and we're trying to people please we're trying to fix we're trying to make everything perfect and we lose our sense of self we lose who what we want from the holidays what we want to give because we're so busy thinking about everyone else well elias how do we begin to change that though i mean it's a tall order if you got all of that happening and you're trying to mitigate it at the same time what are some practical ways we can make things better. The first thing that I tell clients is, what do you actually need right now? Make that the one small change. For example, stop using the word perfect and start using the word excellent. That one change is so much pressure in my life because we pour so much energy into others that we forget to give to ourselves the same care. How would you treat your best friend do you give that same feeling that you are that those actions to your best friend but you don't give it to you yeah and there's things that we would say to ourselves that we would never allow anyone else to say we have to overall just treat ourselves better and i think too for a lot of parents out there and i've seen this if they're not maybe in a good financial place they feel the pressure of wanting to do big things for their children in terms of gifts and presents over the holidays and they can carry that additional weight. But at the end of the day, it's about the memories that you create overall. So you have to keep that first and foremost. So true. And what we're doing, we don't even realize it. We're teaching our children how to become that perfectionist, that fixer, that people pleaser, and that control freak by what we do. So it just carries from one generation to another. You got it. Thank you so much because children certainly learn what they live. So we have to start with ourselves because they're often mirroring our behavior. So, Elias, thank you so much for giving us something to think about as we head into this holiday season, because it is certainly just around the corner. I mean, Makia, Halloween is this Saturday. I know, right? It's so hard to believe the last week of October at that. Next, we'll be talking about Thanksgiving. And then Happy New Year, right? All right, guys. So to come this morning, Christina Apple.