Ep. 104 3 Ingredients to Decrease Stress & Anxiety & Increase Midlife Holiday Calm

Are you tired of feeling drained and overwhelmed by holiday preparations?

In this episode of Creating Midlife Calm, MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker, reveals a powerful approach to designing a holiday season that centers around peace, gratitude, and genuine enjoyment. MJ shares her tried-and-true method for letting go of the pressure to create a "perfect" Thanksgiving, allowing listeners to focus on what truly matters to them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

1. Practical strategies to let go of holiday perfectionism and embrace a fulfilling, calm, and enjoyable Thanksgiving.
2. Tips to realign your holiday activities with feelings of happiness, gratitude, and calm—without sacrificing tradition.
3. Insight on creating a balanced holiday experience that prioritizes what brings you joy and connection, rather than stress.

Transform your holiday approach to be more joyful, calm, and centered—press play to start planning a Thanksgiving that nourishes the soul.

Listen to Fan Favorite  Ep. 93 5 Simple Sleep Hacks To Help You Sleep Better Tonight!

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About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support. 

Transcript

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M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover three ingredients that will help you create a holiday that doesn't feel so overwhelming. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today's Thursday and I'm following up on Monday's episode where we explored the science of gratitude and how it can make you feel better not only with yourself, but with your friends and your family. In this season of Thanksgiving, where we're really encouraged to take some intention and move our attention towards gratitude, I shared with you three gratitude practices. So did you choose the gratitude board or did you just move through your day saying thank you to all those who are helping you? Or did you take a twist and turned that spirit of gratitude on yourself, thanking yourself for all the many tasks and worthwhile projects that you do day in and day out. If you haven't listened to that episode, I encourage you to take the 10 minutes and listen to these simple gratitude practices that don't take any time and cost no money. Because if I want to help you create midlife calm, I don't want to give you practices that cost time or money. So keep it up because one of the things the science tells us is if you practice gratitude, it actually helps you feel less anxious because your mind moves from the negative, anxiousness, to the positive, feeling grateful and thankful. And it really is cumulative. The more that you do this, the better you feel. It's actually like getting some medicine without going to the pharmacy or getting a shot. At the end of episode 103, I told you that I was going to share with you a delicious family recipe that I could guarantee would make your Thanksgiving better. Here goes. When you begin to plan your holiday and you make your list of all the things you need and what you want to do, When you have that list completed, I invite you to add three more ingredients, not at the bottom, but at the top. These are the ingredients: happiness, calm, and gratitude. I want you to now look at the list that you've created and ask yourself, At the end of Thanksgiving night, will I feel a sense of happiness? Will I be satisfied? Will I be grateful? Will I be calm? Or will I be so exhausted that I'm actually pissed? The secret recipe I am giving you is to use these words, use these feeling states, Use the spiritual concept of thankfulness like ingredients. One of the secrets of enjoying holidays is to not expect so much of yourself. I don't know about you, but I grew up with a picture of the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving. It just was a few dishes and people around the table. And then in my midlife, Pinterest seemed to rob that simplicity and now the expectations and the possibilities of the hors d'oeuvres we make, the pies we bake, and the turkeys we stuff is endless. If you are a cook who aspires to be on HGTV, have at it. This may be the best two weeks of your year. If you're in the middle or if you don't like to cook at all, I am inviting you. to dose your holiday with these three ingredients. As you plan, as you prepare, ask yourself, am I asking too much of myself? Am I asking too much of my family? Am I not asking enough of the people who are coming? If you begin to look at Thanksgiving or any holiday, to be honest, through the lens of, at the end of the day, I don't want to be a bitch. I'd actually like to enjoy the holiday. I'd actually like to cultivate happiness, gratitude, and calm. You're going to be able to do your holiday a bit differently. if you'd like a real life example of this, I would encourage you to listen to Episode 98, where I share a little memory from Thanksgiving past where I did not practice this advice that I am currently preaching to each and every one of you. If you're like many of my clients who I've had this discussion with over the years, this might sound great on a podcast or even better in my office. But once you get home, you might find the pull to going back to the old way, the traditions, all the expectations. And you might say to yourself, I can just do this one more year. You know what? You're right. You can do this one more year. What I want to invite you to do is to consider not doing it one more year if at the end of the day, you're not happy, grateful, and calm. Give yourself permission to look at your list and be honest. Which of those items are the most important? Do you want to do? Which of those things on your list feel fun to you? Maybe you love to make pies, but the idea of making four is just way too overwhelming. Bake two, buy two. Maybe every year you make cranberries and sweet potatoes because isn't that what they had at the first Thanksgiving? At the end of the night, you're frustrated at throwing them out or putting them in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator, knowing nobody will ever touch them. I invite you to look at that list and those kinds of items, do prayer hands, bow in front of them and say the following, thank you for your service. You will no longer be needed at our holiday table this year. I think you're getting my message. what I'd love for you to do this year in order to cultivate calm is to give yourself permission to be calm. To not just make potatoes, but to make happiness. And you're going to do that if you let go of some of the burden and some of the holiday trimmings that weigh you down, that make you angry. If you're a person that finds it difficult to delegate, sit with a friend, sit with a family member and have them help you delegate. Maybe you're a person that doesn't like to do any of it and you'd love to go out to eat, but you feel like you'd be disappointing your kids and your family. Give it a try. It's one day. If everybody hates it, you don't have to do it next year. The meaning of Thanksgiving is for us to stop and be grateful. So you want to create a day that actually gives you space to do that. For some people, changing traditions is difficult, but have the conversation that this year you would like to do things differently. And could they just give it the old college try? In this episode, I've shared with you my favorite recipe to create a Thanksgiving that really is full of happiness, gratitude, and calm. It was actually After the pie debacle that I talk about in episode 98, that led me to this tradition of creating holidays around the words happiness, gratitude, and calm after you make your list, after you have your plan for the day, then at the top of the list, write the words, happiness, calm and gratitude. And look at that list and be honest with yourself. If you feel dread, if you feel burdened, if you have that voice that says, this isn't fair that I have to once again, do all of this this year, I encourage you to make a second list and give yourself permission to create a holiday that doesn't feel so burdensome. Give it a try. Thanks for listening. I hope you have a good week of planning and I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.