December 15, 2025 • 31 mins
What stresses you out over the festive season? Happiness Lab listeners sent in their holiday woes so Dr Laurie and guest Rainn Wilson (The Office star and host of Soul Boom) could weigh in with some science-backed advice.
In the second part of our Holiday Survival Guide, Dr Laurie and Rainn discuss what makes the perfect gift, how to slow down to enjoy the festivities, and why your smart phone should join the elf on a shelf.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Happy Holidays, Happiness lab fans. This is supposed to
be the most wonderful time of the year, but many
of us kind of wished December came with a survival guide,
which is why we asked you to tell us all
your holiday stresses so that I and my special seasonal
(00:36):
guest actor Rain Wilson can help find some solutions. You
probably know Rain from Dwight on the Office or his
countless other acting credits, but Rain is also an author
and a podcaster with lots of wise things to say
about spirituality and what it means to be human. If
you haven't already, you should check out his show soul Boom.
Last time, Rain and I discussed dining table dynamics like
(00:59):
how to diffuse political arguments over dessert and how to
deflect annoying questions about your lack of a love life.
But we only scratched the surface on all the seasonal
woes you asked us about. Oh, let's dive back into
that conversation. So I'm just curious, like, when you think
about holidays, what do you think about? Although I guess
there's one thing you think about when you think about holidays,
which is you think about your wife whose day is holiday?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Correct?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
My favorite holiday holiday is Holiday ron Horn, my wife.
So during the holidays, I'm thinking about holiday. But listen,
I I am a member of the Bahi faith. We
have our own set of holidays or holy days. But
I also grew up celebrating Christmas with big parts of
(01:43):
my family, and I have positive memories. My favorite holiday
is Thanksgiving because I feel like if you can put
the thanks and Thanksgiving and really just enjoy eating together
and connecting over a table, it's incredibly powerful. But yeah,
I have good experiences and pleasurable thoughts, but I know
(02:04):
it can be fraught for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Okay, we're going to have interesting conversation because in my
instant reaction about holiday is not that it is awesome.
It is like you say, the holidays are coming, and
I feel my Cortissoult levels going up a little bit
in my stress hormones. And yeah, I'm not a winter
holiday fan. I'm a Halloween girl. I like the costumes,
I like the spooky, I like the candy. Thanksgiving's fine,
(02:29):
but the winter holidays, yeah, my stress levels rise. So
I'm going to need your help here.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Here we go okay, gift giving holidays feel the good
time when we're supposed to be giving people stuff, and
it means that we sometimes get sucked into the consumerist
culture that makes us feel kind of crappy. And this
was something that Rachel brought up. She noted that her
holiday happiness sucker is the stress of gift giving. How
much to spend? Is it a good gift? Do they
(02:56):
actually want it? Who do I have to buy it for?
Feeling shame or guilt if someone got you a gift
and you didn't match the gift. How can we get
past the consumerism in the holiday season? And I think
the answer correct me if I'm wrong wing, But I
think the answer is not princess unicorns in the Office.
I think that that's like maybe not the answer.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Is that I was actually gonna say that it is
exactly the answer.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Because if everyone just gave each other princess unicorns, the
world now.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Princess Unicorn dolls is for anyone you know, Office fan,
unicorn fan, princess fan, toy fan.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It scratches every itch. For those who don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
An episode of the Office in which Dwight is buying
up all the princess unicorn dolls because they're the hot
toy of that year, and it's the catchphrases my horn
can touch the sky and it's a unicorn girl with
a big horn. I think you can actually buy princess
unicorns out there. I think they market them. But yeah,
(03:54):
I think it's a it's a great episode and a
great stocking stuffer. Do you know one thing that drives
me crazy, Laurie is like the pressure to bring something
over when you go to visit someone or to have
dinner with them, Like you've got to bring a bottle
of wine or flowers, maybe chocolates, but or something from
(04:16):
your garden or a little plant, right, but those are
and like why do we do that?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
We don't have to do that it.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I don't like it when people show up, like here's
wine I don't drink. Here's some chocolates. I'm trying to
lose weight, you know. Here's some flowers. Great, they'll be
alive for four days and then I got to throw
them out and.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Dump out the stinky water. Like why do we keep
doing that?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
It's well this I know you don't go through this,
but this is like on extreme overdrive in the holidays, right,
families try to one up each other and really worried
about that, and so yeah, I mean, given that you
experience it in the context of the going over the
folks houses for the gifts, like, how do you deal
with it? I mean one of those strategies I like
to tell people about is to try to get back
(05:03):
to the best kinds of gifts, which are your presence,
maybe a fun experience, curiously asking someone deep questions about
their lives. Those are the things that are going to
make them feel much better than you know, a parasox
or you know, a new gadget or something like that.
So getting back to the you know, the reason behind
the season, as cheesy as it sounds, the.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Reason behind the season, I love that.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, I think a framed photograph is always good, and
you can get up maybe even a photograph they sent
you throughout the year or something like that, get it
because a lot of people, you know, we have these
libraries of like fifteen thousand photographs in our photo library
that we only occasionally pop up in memories. People rarely
(05:47):
stop to get them kind of printed out and put
on their shelves. So I'm just just bonus, I'm not
really dealing with the psychology behind it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
But bonus, a photograph is always a great stocking stuffer.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And the beauty is I think relative to other gifts relatives,
like you know, I don't know, an iPhone or a
trip to Europe or something. It's actually pretty cheap.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, pretty cheap.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And I guess a different thing that comes up in
the holiday season, which is the stress of finances, partly
about gifts, but partly about you know, having the best
holiday presentation and how much food you buy and all
this stuff. Traveling to visit family members. This can be
a time when people are feeling like they just don't
have enough any advice for kind of that crunch feeling
where you're like, I just feel like I don't have
(06:31):
enough money right now.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, I mean I think that if you have to cancel,
I think that that's.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Fine to take care of your finances.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And I just think on the family's part, we have
to always be very cognizant of, like, you know, what
percentage of someone's salary or savings are they doing. Because
flying has gotten way more expensive by the way, I
don't know if you've noticed it, but used to kind
of be able to fly anywhere for like, oh, two hundred,
four hundred and six hundred bucks kind of get anywhere.
(07:01):
Now it's like double triple that. It's a big investment.
So we have to just be very sensitive to people
are financially Yeah, but I don't know, what do you think?
What do you tell folks when they're struggling with their
balancing commitments and obligations and they want to be a
(07:23):
part of the family, but you may not be able
to afford it, And maybe that makes brings low self
esteem because you feel like, oh, I should have more
money to be able to spend three thousand dollars to
travel my family for a Christmas trip.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah. Well, I think this gets back to figuring out
what things are really about and maybe something I know
you talk a lot about in Soulboom, which is like
coming up with your own rituals. Right, we have the
rituals that we're supposed to do. You know, we fly
to the family and we have all these presents or
whatever it is. But we can get creative with the
rituals if we figure out the value that's under it,
like the values that we're spending some time together, right,
(07:57):
you know, maybe that means we get together over zoom
and we play some like you know, goofy games. We
go back to like old COVID COVID days, like connecting
that way if you can't fly out, or we do
no present. You know, maybe all the presents are just
crafts or something we make for each other, or it's
photos that we print out, drawings that we give each other,
write poems for each other. It sounds cheesy, but really
(08:18):
what we want to be doing is showing our togetherness
and connection. And you know the latest gadget isn't really
going to do that.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well said, yeah, I love that all right.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Here.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
We had lots of questions on gift giving. I know
this is not your domain of expertise, and so maybe
i'll have I'll have you ask me the question.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
I like this one because it really feels a little
bit out of an office Christmas special, like maybe it
actually happened on the office, but you can yeah, you
can tell me. Okay, here it is.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
This is from an anonymous viewer. I once gave an
office mate a foot massager, the very same gift she
had given me the year before, which I had forgot.
Then I had to make up something about how I
knew she liked it so much that I got her
one two very embarrassing. Taught me not to regift. That
(09:06):
sounds like an episode of the Office right there. That
is something absolutely so many characters, Dwight, Andy Michael could
regift be like I got you that last year, Like
oh no, no, I knew you.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Liked it, so I got you a new one. But
I'm a huge fan of regifting.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
In fact, I talked about people coming over like they'll
give like little things or chocolates, or sometimes it's like coffee,
and we have this secret stash of like the stuff
we've been given and we're going to take that out.
I have a little baggy, a beautiful little baggy with
some gor and mat coffee beans in it that someone
gave and I can't wait to go over to someone's house.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I'm just gonna grab it off the shelf and be like,
I got you some coffee. So I'm a big fan
of the regifting.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
But yes, you think there's nothing wrong with this, maybe
write down on a little post it note who gave
you the coffee so you don't give it directly back
to that person When you find it in the regifting.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I'd like to live dangerously. Let's go for it. I
live on the edge.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I may give it back to the exact same person
who gave it to me. That's how I roll. But yeah,
I think regifting is awesome.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Okay, all right, Well we'll leave that one in there.
I think maybe a piece of advice for this particular
person is a little bit of self compassion. We all
give gifts that like bomb Sometimes I have occasionally given
a gift to someone that I gave them the year before,
not regifted, but just like literally the same gift because
I didn't have a good idea of what to get them.
And so that's a time to take a deep breath
(10:37):
and say, nobody's perfect. Everybody gives crappy gifts. Sometimes it's okay.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
It's the thought that counts.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
The thought that counts, which is a nice transition to
how we can have thoughts that don't feel so overwhelmed
during an holiday season. Next holiday woe that we heard
lots of folks bringing up is how we can prioritize
balance and rest in a tough holiday season. One anonymous,
a listener on Instagram, said that her holiday woe is
(11:03):
that it's so hard to be marry with so much
to do? How do we find way is to take
stuff off our plates during the busy holiday season?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Boy, that's great.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I feel like this should have been an episode for
the Office ladies.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I feel like.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Jenna and Angela would have like nailed these questions so much.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Well, we could do. I could call them up and see,
we'll do a second round and I'll do exactly the
same questions with them with.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
You, I love it, or they'll do next year's Christmas episode.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But yeah, you know my favorite analogy.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's used a lot and people have probably heard it,
but it's like they say on the airlines, like when
the oxygen mask drops, like you put on your own
oxygen mask first so that you can put it on
your kids later and other people's And that's kind of
how life works, Like we have to take care of
ourselves first so that we can be there for other people.
(11:57):
And the purpose of that is so that we can
be there for others and be a service to others.
So it's super important to get enough rest, not overwhelm,
you know, ask people for help again. That perfectionism, and
I would love to hear a little bit more about
how perfectionism works and it oftentimes takes us so far
away from joy.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Just that that pressure we put on ourselves.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
To exceed expectations, to get self esteem from what we
do instead of who we are.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Because I think a lot of that, Like if you're
if you're really that busy that you can't be merry, you're.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Doing Christmas wrong. Something's wrong. If you're so busy there's
not time for joy. I'm sure that's not what Jesus
and the saints wanted from us.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah. I think the key is that we need to Again.
It gets back to this idea of vigilance, right, like
you kind of have to notice what's going on. And
it gets back to this idea that negative emotions are
telling us something really important. We were talking before about
grief and sort of noticing our sadness. That means we
need space and time to deal with it. I think
we really need to notice and allow during the holiday
(13:12):
season is overwhelmed, Like you know, when you're baking the
cookies and you're slamming the sugar around, You're like like
that's telling you, Oh, this is a signal, like like
the tire you know, button coming on. In my car.
This is a signal that my you know, overwhelmed tire
light is coming on and I need a break, you know,
I need to maybe do a little bit less, less events,
less stuff, take something off the plate. When we think
(13:35):
about having a happier holiday, and we often think what
we could add, you know, we need more presence, if
we need more time, or more Christmas carols, or more
whatever it is. We often don't think of what we
can take away. But I feel like the solution to
so many of our holiday woes is take something off
our plate, for example, taking some work off our plate.
This was something we heard a lot, which is that
(13:56):
a lot of people have a hard time being merry
in the holiday season because they experience a lot of
work stress. Julia on Instagram says, helly, I saw your
post about the holidays. Here's my woe. It's hard for
me to stop and settle into a relax rhythm without
thinking about work anyways, that you can fight workoholism in
the holidays that you're settling in with the hot chocolate,
But back of your mind is like you have to
(14:18):
edit that podcast, those emails in your inbox, who's going
to answer them?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah, I just I think that workoholism is something that
has to be unpacked. So it often comes from kind
of a most overused word of the decade, trauma, But
there oftentimes is a trauma component to workoholism, of like,
I'm only going to get love by accomplishing, yes, and
(14:47):
not only that, I've got to accomplish a lot, not
just accomplish the regular amount. I've got to accomplish more
than anyone else, and that is going to get me love.
It's going to get me noticed, get me acceptance, get
me embraced, get me complimented.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And if that is the.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Case, that's going to take a little work that's going
to take years, not months, to kind of undo about.
It's kind of like it's similar to like a deprivation mentality.
There's so many people that grew up poor and they
just feel like they need to earn in order to survive,
even though they've got plenty of money, but like a
(15:27):
kind of a panic sets in.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It's like the old stories about.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
People that grew up in an orphanage, but they and
they're living in a multimillion dollar house later on in life,
but they still hide cookies under the mattress. And this
is a phenomenon, this actually does happen where there's a
feeling of safety.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Of having that cookie under the mattress.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
So, yeah, workoholism, you know, a deprivation mindset. These are
kind of cookie under the mattress moments, and you've got
to go back to the beginning of like, hey, where
did this come from and why?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
So sometimes it's.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Hard in the holidays, you just got a lot of
it's the end of the year, you got a lot
of stuff due, and it's it's just how it shakes
down being prepared planned, say, here's going to be my workdays.
Here's the days I'm especially with phones and emails. I
took email off my phone nice because I feel like,
you know, I could check my email three times a
(16:23):
day from my computer. I don't need to be checking
my email Lourie twenty times a day and getting back
to people.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I always feel this compunction. I got to get back
to them right away.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
The itchiness, the itchiness, yep, yep. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, It's like I could slow it down five pm.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I'll get on. I'll respond to three or four emails
and then move on.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
But you know, I've got to unpack this workoholism, see
where it comes from, and recalibrate to feel like I
am enough. I'm going to have enough self worth. I
don't need to accomplish so much and be so perfect
in order to get love.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, this is great because there's two pieces of advice
in there, one kind of local for the holidays and
one broader local is do little silly hacks to get
the work out of your holiday celebration. So if that
means just deleting your email app just for one week
in December while you're home with the family, great, and
then it'll ma get a little bit harder, give yourself
(17:22):
a little bit of friction to go to the normal
itchy finger check your email or jump into work. That's
the kind of local.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
And let me say part two of local one another
thing that really works because I am a phone addict. Okay,
straight up, Phone on a shelf, Elf on a shelf.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Phone on a shelf.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yes, yeah, your holidays here, you heard it here, Phone
on a shelf, Folks, Phone on a shelf. Have your phone,
don't worry, just put it up on the shelf, have
it not in your pocket. Interact with people you feel
that itch just go over to the shelf. You can
check it real quick. If you want to take a photo,
go get it, take the.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Photo, put it back.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
But this will reduce I don't know what the data is,
but for me, when I do something like that, I
would say I'm interacting with my phone ten times less,
but I'm not missing out on anything.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, this is the sad thing about human psychology is
how easy it is to put in a little bit
of friction. Like it's not like you put your phone
in Antarctic, Like it's just on.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
A shelf or a safe or something, or it's safe.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You have to crack it. No, it's just on a shelf.
But just not being in your pocket, in your hand,
right next to you on the dinner table. It just
makes it a little bit trickier to go for it.
And yeah, you'll just use it a little bit less.
So phone on a shelf, hashtag phone on a shelf
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
There you do, hashtag phone on a shelf.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
My wife and I used to host these kind of
youth events when my son was a teenager and preteen,
and we would always have a basket and all the
phones go in the basket and because a bunch of
fifteen year olds doing activities or playing games or what
have you, is so much better when they're not just
(19:03):
on the phone documenting everything, looking all the time.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And maybe families can do that. Can you have over
the holidays?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
You find a great deal more connection and mental health
by putting phones in a basket or kind of say hey,
for this dinner, I've got a basket.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Everyone, let's put your phones.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
What do you think and you could decorate the basket.
It could have little pieces of holly or like you know,
Minora symbols or whatever your own faith tradition is to
put the phones in a basket.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Or characters from like one floor of the Cuckoo's Nest,
because it has to do with mental health, so you
know deranged human beings and say we're not going to
end up like these people, and we're going to put
our phone in a basket.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
But that might be something you want to communicate ahead of.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Time, to say, Hey, for our Christmas dinner, I have
this idea, what if we put our phones away, and
not just in our pockets, but away. We got off
track here a little bit, but there was something else
you were going to bring up.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Oh, but yes. But there was the meta point, which
I love, which is workaholism. You're not going to solve
it between you know, December twenty fourth and December twenty sixth.
It's a bigger issue that you need to process some
trauma and so on. And I think this is a
broader point for everything we're talking about here, Like some
of our families have some deep seated stuff. Some of
(20:19):
us are going through some grief that's really hard. Some
of us are navigating lots of perfectionism beyond just the
holiday dinner table. Take a breath. You don't have to
solve everything over the holidays, but noticing those moments of frustration,
noticing the pain points during the holidays gives you a
nice checklist of things that you can pay attention to
in the new year when you get a little bit
(20:39):
of a breath later. So it's kind of you know,
if your tire light comes on, you don't necessarily have
to immediately screech off the road and deal with your
tire light then, but you kind of take some time
to put it in the queue to deal with later.
I think when these holiday wokes come up, it's often
a great signal to us that like, Hey, something I
might need to pay attention to down the line.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
You make a great point here, which I think encompasses
all of the questions we've been talking about, which is like,
what needs to be handled over the holidays and what
needs to be handled over the eleven months that or
ten months at aren't the holidays? Yes, yes, whereas like
wow I am a perfectionist, or wow I'm a workaholic,
or wow I feel lonely when I'm in groups, or
(21:20):
you know, I feel a pressure to have the perfect
gift or whatever it is. There's stuff to be worked
on throughout the year so that you're better prepared for
the holidays. And then there is stuff to kind of like,
like you say, quick fixes and hacks and little things.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You can do to make your holidays better.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
But there may be you know, some a real tough
conversation you have with yourself with your therapist about Hey,
I want to I want to work on X, Y
and Z so that I can go into the holidays
next year with more joy and more freedom. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Big picture, we.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Know, Guitar, my last set of holiday challenges that we
all need to do better about. And this is why
I'm especially excited to have you on the show because
our last holiday challenge is ways that we can create
more meaning enjoy, and I think you, of all the
people I know, have done I've had some of the
best insights into what we can do to deal with
this crisis of spiritual meaning that we have all the time.
(22:31):
But I think this comes out a lot during the
holiday season. I know soul Moon talks a lot about
what we can do to fix our spiritual crisis, any
soulful ideas, rituals, strategies we can use to feel a
little bit more spiritually connected during the holiday season.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
A lot of people equate spirituality with religion for a
very good reason. There's a big overlap between spirituality and
religion in the Venn diagram. A lot of people view
it as kind of synonymous with faith, synonymous with let's
say church on Sunday or something like that. So the
(23:07):
first thing to do is kind of separate spirituality from
faith or religion or religious practice or the religion you
grew up in, because a lot of times what the
holidays can do is that can reignite a kind of
a religious trauma that maybe you underwent, perhaps you are
forced to go to church seven days a week, or
you were forced to be an aultar boy, or you
(23:28):
were pressured in certain ways that you find very uncomfortable
and triggering later on in life. And so a lot
of people are really resistant to anything having to do
with spirituality because of certain religious trauma.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
So that's very real.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
But I think putting the rituals of whatever faith denomination
you're involved in aside, what is spirituality, Well, it's a
recognition that we are something more than the material, that
whether whatever you want to call it, soul, heart, spirit essence,
(24:04):
life force, that there's something in us about us, in
our consciousness that is more than just you know, an
animal with a big brain in a meat suit. At
least that's how I view it, and people who walk
a spiritual path like to view it. So there's certain
things that go hand in hand with this concept that
(24:24):
we are spiritual beings having a human experience for eighty
ninety years on the planet, and it's connecting with love,
it's seeking greater humility, it's service to others, it's increasing
our compassion to see kind of universal divine qualities in people.
So all of these kind of spiritual ideas can be
(24:47):
brought out at family gatherings over the holidays and help
give our lives meaning and most importantly, just help increase connection,
because we all know that it's through connection that we
find the greatest joy and happiness. So these tools compassion, service, humility,
(25:08):
love of can give our lives meaning and can also
give us joy and happiness.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
And I think there's so much room to bring those
in more during the holiday season, even for maybe some
of the not so great parts of the holiday season.
You know, we talked a little bit about grief, thinking
about loved ones that have passed and so on. I
think these are moments for developing little rituals where you
can connect with them during these tough times in the
holiday season. The holidays are all about nostalgia, where you
think back to your past and have these moments of like, man,
(25:36):
it's been ten years since we've been having Nana's lasagna,
and that can kind of give you a sense of
awe about the time passing and so on. So it's
like these rituals are open for us in the holiday season,
not just going to some you know, like religious service,
but really developing your own tiny moments. And this is
something I know you've talked about a lot in soul
Boom too, that it's often not like the big things,
(25:57):
it's like the tiny moments of wonder and connection that
seem to matter a lot. Any recommendations for noticing and
finding the tiny things that matter during the holidays.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Well, you talk about a lot. Is gratitude.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Love gratitude, Love me some gratitude.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
It's a superpower.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
So holiday gatherings can when you feel overwhelmed, like oh,
Aunt Connie's wearing that perfume again, and Uncle Ronnie won't
shut up, and Aunt Nana's chewing with her mouth open
and so and so as being passive aggressive like help
shift your mindset to one.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Of gratitude, like what are you grateful for?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
So everyone's healthy, that we all get to be together,
that there's great kindness here, That I'm grateful for the
childhood that you know, my parents help give me. And
we can do that internally. You can do that with
a list. It's really it's also, as you know, more
helpful to share that gratitude with someone. Yes, could do
(26:58):
it by text, but it's even better over the phone
or in person. To share a gratitude takes it to
the next level. And maybe this is something to bring
into instead of you talked about spiritual practices, little things
like instead of grace or in addition to grace, go
around the table and one thing you're grateful for. It's
some easy icebreaker. It connects people, it opens their hearts.
(27:22):
It shifts things away from politics and division in less
than and stress.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
There's so many different ways to harness the power of
gratitude for these kind of events.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, and another thing we know about gratitude is that
it can be a virtuous cycle.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know, you say one thing you're grateful for about
your aunt at the dinner table. You know, I always
love your cookies. You know, it makes me grateful every
year when they come. But then that boosts her ability
to notice the good stuff in life because kind of
shifts her negativity bias ever so slightly towards the positive.
Then she sees it better. And so you can develop
these spirals during your holiday get together where if you
(28:02):
seed some gratitude early on, it makes it easier for
other people to find gratitude and joy later. Thing I
wanted to end with, which in theory, should be part
of the holiday season, is our sense of awe and wonder.
So often during the holiday season. I think we want
to get certain positive emotions. We want to eat delicious
stuff and feel good that way, or we want to
get a good gift or have surprise. And I think
(28:24):
one positive emotion that's really available to us that we
forget is the power of wonder during the season. Any
advice for how to get in a little bit more
wonder during the holidays.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, I just got to meet.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Daker Keltner.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Daker Keltner who wrote the wonderful book called Awe and
the number of health benefits and psychological benefits to feeling
awe and wonder our legion and it usually and can
start in nature, and it can again be another precious
(28:58):
point of unity between people who are feeling like politically
divided or overwhelmed or what have you. You know, noticing
a hummingbird or a tree or you know, or growth,
the moon or the stars. It's a powerful emotion and
it actually increases your health. And just like gratitude, And
by the way, gratitude is something you can just express.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You can have a secret agenda to express gratitude.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
You can be like, hey, Aunt Connie, I'm grateful every
year you make your brownies and you bring them and
they're just so delicious.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I'm really grateful for you bring in your brownies each year.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
It could just be that simple can change a whole
someone's whole day. And awe and wonder go hand in
hand with curiosity and expressing those can have the same effect.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I love your idea to get a little bit more
nature in I feel like I do this a little
bit when I'm off in the Midwest for the holidays.
Just take a little walk outside and look at the stars.
Often very cold, so you know, bring your hat and
your mittens and all the things. But just like these
tiny moments of experiencing nature, even in the midst of
a busy, busy day, it can really slow you down
(30:06):
and give you that sense of awe and wonder. Ray,
and thank you so much for wondering about the holidays
with me. I don't know if we've solved everybody's holiday
it woes, but I think everybody's going to go.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
I think we did.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah, I think we solved everybody's holidays woes.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
A happier holiday to all and to all good night?
Is that the same?
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I forget something like that and to all a good
podcast Doctor Lori Santos and the Happiness Team. It's such
a pleasure to see you again and speak with you,
and what a wonderful service you're providing some holiday inspiration
and guidance at one of the most stressful times.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Of the year.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I hold my conversation with Rain Wilson shared at least
one piece of advice that will help you have a
happier and more RESTful holiday season. That's all from the
Happiness Lab for twenty twenty five. But not to worry,
because twenty twenty six is just around the corner and
we'll have some advice for making your new year as
happy as possible. If you've been feeling stuck lately, you're
in luck because this January will be back with a
(31:04):
whole series on ideas for getting unstuck and moving forward
into twenty twenty six. That's all next year on the
Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos,
Pushkin, Happy Holidays, Happiness lab fans. This is supposed to
be the most wonderful time of the year, but many
of us kind of wished December came with a survival guide,
which is why we asked you to tell us all
your holiday stresses so that I and my special seasonal
(00:36):
guest actor Rain Wilson can help find some solutions. You
probably know Rain from Dwight on the Office or his
countless other acting credits, but Rain is also an author
and a podcaster with lots of wise things to say
about spirituality and what it means to be human. If
you haven't already, you should check out his show soul Boom.
Last time, Rain and I discussed dining table dynamics like
(00:59):
how to diffuse political arguments over dessert and how to
deflect annoying questions about your lack of a love life.
But we only scratched the surface on all the seasonal
woes you asked us about. Oh, let's dive back into
that conversation. So I'm just curious, like, when you think
about holidays, what do you think about? Although I guess
there's one thing you think about when you think about holidays,
which is you think about your wife whose day is holiday?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Correct?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
My favorite holiday holiday is Holiday ron Horn, my wife.
So during the holidays, I'm thinking about holiday. But listen,
I I am a member of the Bahi faith. We
have our own set of holidays or holy days. But
I also grew up celebrating Christmas with big parts of
(01:43):
my family, and I have positive memories. My favorite holiday
is Thanksgiving because I feel like if you can put
the thanks and Thanksgiving and really just enjoy eating together
and connecting over a table, it's incredibly powerful. But yeah,
I have good experiences and pleasurable thoughts, but I know
(02:04):
it can be fraught for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Okay, we're going to have interesting conversation because in my
instant reaction about holiday is not that it is awesome.
It is like you say, the holidays are coming, and
I feel my Cortissoult levels going up a little bit
in my stress hormones. And yeah, I'm not a winter
holiday fan. I'm a Halloween girl. I like the costumes,
I like the spooky, I like the candy. Thanksgiving's fine,
(02:29):
but the winter holidays, yeah, my stress levels rise. So
I'm going to need your help here.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Here we go okay, gift giving holidays feel the good
time when we're supposed to be giving people stuff, and
it means that we sometimes get sucked into the consumerist
culture that makes us feel kind of crappy. And this
was something that Rachel brought up. She noted that her
holiday happiness sucker is the stress of gift giving. How
much to spend? Is it a good gift? Do they
(02:56):
actually want it? Who do I have to buy it for?
Feeling shame or guilt if someone got you a gift
and you didn't match the gift. How can we get
past the consumerism in the holiday season? And I think
the answer correct me if I'm wrong wing, But I
think the answer is not princess unicorns in the Office.
I think that that's like maybe not the answer.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Is that I was actually gonna say that it is
exactly the answer.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Because if everyone just gave each other princess unicorns, the
world now.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Princess Unicorn dolls is for anyone you know, Office fan,
unicorn fan, princess fan, toy fan.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It scratches every itch. For those who don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
An episode of the Office in which Dwight is buying
up all the princess unicorn dolls because they're the hot
toy of that year, and it's the catchphrases my horn
can touch the sky and it's a unicorn girl with
a big horn. I think you can actually buy princess
unicorns out there. I think they market them. But yeah,
(03:54):
I think it's a it's a great episode and a
great stocking stuffer. Do you know one thing that drives
me crazy, Laurie is like the pressure to bring something
over when you go to visit someone or to have
dinner with them, Like you've got to bring a bottle
of wine or flowers, maybe chocolates, but or something from
(04:16):
your garden or a little plant, right, but those are
and like why do we do that?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
We don't have to do that it.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I don't like it when people show up, like here's
wine I don't drink. Here's some chocolates. I'm trying to
lose weight, you know. Here's some flowers. Great, they'll be
alive for four days and then I got to throw
them out and.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Dump out the stinky water. Like why do we keep
doing that?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
It's well this I know you don't go through this,
but this is like on extreme overdrive in the holidays, right,
families try to one up each other and really worried
about that, and so yeah, I mean, given that you
experience it in the context of the going over the
folks houses for the gifts, like, how do you deal
with it? I mean one of those strategies I like
to tell people about is to try to get back
(05:03):
to the best kinds of gifts, which are your presence,
maybe a fun experience, curiously asking someone deep questions about
their lives. Those are the things that are going to
make them feel much better than you know, a parasox
or you know, a new gadget or something like that.
So getting back to the you know, the reason behind
the season, as cheesy as it sounds, the.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Reason behind the season, I love that.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, I think a framed photograph is always good, and
you can get up maybe even a photograph they sent
you throughout the year or something like that, get it
because a lot of people, you know, we have these
libraries of like fifteen thousand photographs in our photo library
that we only occasionally pop up in memories. People rarely
(05:47):
stop to get them kind of printed out and put
on their shelves. So I'm just just bonus, I'm not
really dealing with the psychology behind it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
But bonus, a photograph is always a great stocking stuffer.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And the beauty is I think relative to other gifts relatives,
like you know, I don't know, an iPhone or a
trip to Europe or something. It's actually pretty cheap.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, pretty cheap.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And I guess a different thing that comes up in
the holiday season, which is the stress of finances, partly
about gifts, but partly about you know, having the best
holiday presentation and how much food you buy and all
this stuff. Traveling to visit family members. This can be
a time when people are feeling like they just don't
have enough any advice for kind of that crunch feeling
where you're like, I just feel like I don't have
(06:31):
enough money right now.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, I mean I think that if you have to cancel,
I think that that's.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Fine to take care of your finances.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And I just think on the family's part, we have
to always be very cognizant of, like, you know, what
percentage of someone's salary or savings are they doing. Because
flying has gotten way more expensive by the way, I
don't know if you've noticed it, but used to kind
of be able to fly anywhere for like, oh, two hundred,
four hundred and six hundred bucks kind of get anywhere.
(07:01):
Now it's like double triple that. It's a big investment.
So we have to just be very sensitive to people
are financially Yeah, but I don't know, what do you think?
What do you tell folks when they're struggling with their
balancing commitments and obligations and they want to be a
(07:23):
part of the family, but you may not be able
to afford it, And maybe that makes brings low self
esteem because you feel like, oh, I should have more
money to be able to spend three thousand dollars to
travel my family for a Christmas trip.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah. Well, I think this gets back to figuring out
what things are really about and maybe something I know
you talk a lot about in Soulboom, which is like
coming up with your own rituals. Right, we have the
rituals that we're supposed to do. You know, we fly
to the family and we have all these presents or
whatever it is. But we can get creative with the
rituals if we figure out the value that's under it,
like the values that we're spending some time together, right,
(07:57):
you know, maybe that means we get together over zoom
and we play some like you know, goofy games. We
go back to like old COVID COVID days, like connecting
that way if you can't fly out, or we do
no present. You know, maybe all the presents are just
crafts or something we make for each other, or it's
photos that we print out, drawings that we give each other,
write poems for each other. It sounds cheesy, but really
(08:18):
what we want to be doing is showing our togetherness
and connection. And you know the latest gadget isn't really
going to do that.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well said, yeah, I love that all right.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Here.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
We had lots of questions on gift giving. I know
this is not your domain of expertise, and so maybe
i'll have I'll have you ask me the question.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
I like this one because it really feels a little
bit out of an office Christmas special, like maybe it
actually happened on the office, but you can yeah, you
can tell me. Okay, here it is.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
This is from an anonymous viewer. I once gave an
office mate a foot massager, the very same gift she
had given me the year before, which I had forgot.
Then I had to make up something about how I
knew she liked it so much that I got her
one two very embarrassing. Taught me not to regift. That
(09:06):
sounds like an episode of the Office right there. That
is something absolutely so many characters, Dwight, Andy Michael could
regift be like I got you that last year, Like
oh no, no, I knew you.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Liked it, so I got you a new one. But
I'm a huge fan of regifting.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
In fact, I talked about people coming over like they'll
give like little things or chocolates, or sometimes it's like coffee,
and we have this secret stash of like the stuff
we've been given and we're going to take that out.
I have a little baggy, a beautiful little baggy with
some gor and mat coffee beans in it that someone
gave and I can't wait to go over to someone's house.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I'm just gonna grab it off the shelf and be like,
I got you some coffee. So I'm a big fan
of the regifting.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
But yes, you think there's nothing wrong with this, maybe
write down on a little post it note who gave
you the coffee so you don't give it directly back
to that person When you find it in the regifting.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I'd like to live dangerously. Let's go for it. I
live on the edge.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I may give it back to the exact same person
who gave it to me. That's how I roll. But yeah,
I think regifting is awesome.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Okay, all right, Well we'll leave that one in there.
I think maybe a piece of advice for this particular
person is a little bit of self compassion. We all
give gifts that like bomb Sometimes I have occasionally given
a gift to someone that I gave them the year before,
not regifted, but just like literally the same gift because
I didn't have a good idea of what to get them.
And so that's a time to take a deep breath
(10:37):
and say, nobody's perfect. Everybody gives crappy gifts. Sometimes it's okay.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
It's the thought that counts.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
The thought that counts, which is a nice transition to
how we can have thoughts that don't feel so overwhelmed
during an holiday season. Next holiday woe that we heard
lots of folks bringing up is how we can prioritize
balance and rest in a tough holiday season. One anonymous,
a listener on Instagram, said that her holiday woe is
(11:03):
that it's so hard to be marry with so much
to do? How do we find way is to take
stuff off our plates during the busy holiday season?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Boy, that's great.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I feel like this should have been an episode for
the Office ladies.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I feel like.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Jenna and Angela would have like nailed these questions so much.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Well, we could do. I could call them up and see,
we'll do a second round and I'll do exactly the
same questions with them with.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
You, I love it, or they'll do next year's Christmas episode.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But yeah, you know my favorite analogy.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's used a lot and people have probably heard it,
but it's like they say on the airlines, like when
the oxygen mask drops, like you put on your own
oxygen mask first so that you can put it on
your kids later and other people's And that's kind of
how life works, Like we have to take care of
ourselves first so that we can be there for other people.
(11:57):
And the purpose of that is so that we can
be there for others and be a service to others.
So it's super important to get enough rest, not overwhelm,
you know, ask people for help again. That perfectionism, and
I would love to hear a little bit more about
how perfectionism works and it oftentimes takes us so far
away from joy.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Just that that pressure we put on ourselves.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
To exceed expectations, to get self esteem from what we
do instead of who we are.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Because I think a lot of that, Like if you're
if you're really that busy that you can't be merry, you're.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Doing Christmas wrong. Something's wrong. If you're so busy there's
not time for joy. I'm sure that's not what Jesus
and the saints wanted from us.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah. I think the key is that we need to Again.
It gets back to this idea of vigilance, right, like
you kind of have to notice what's going on. And
it gets back to this idea that negative emotions are
telling us something really important. We were talking before about
grief and sort of noticing our sadness. That means we
need space and time to deal with it. I think
we really need to notice and allow during the holiday
(13:12):
season is overwhelmed, Like you know, when you're baking the
cookies and you're slamming the sugar around, You're like like
that's telling you, Oh, this is a signal, like like
the tire you know, button coming on. In my car.
This is a signal that my you know, overwhelmed tire
light is coming on and I need a break, you know,
I need to maybe do a little bit less, less events,
less stuff, take something off the plate. When we think
(13:35):
about having a happier holiday, and we often think what
we could add, you know, we need more presence, if
we need more time, or more Christmas carols, or more
whatever it is. We often don't think of what we
can take away. But I feel like the solution to
so many of our holiday woes is take something off
our plate, for example, taking some work off our plate.
This was something we heard a lot, which is that
(13:56):
a lot of people have a hard time being merry
in the holiday season because they experience a lot of
work stress. Julia on Instagram says, helly, I saw your
post about the holidays. Here's my woe. It's hard for
me to stop and settle into a relax rhythm without
thinking about work anyways, that you can fight workoholism in
the holidays that you're settling in with the hot chocolate,
But back of your mind is like you have to
(14:18):
edit that podcast, those emails in your inbox, who's going
to answer them?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah, I just I think that workoholism is something that
has to be unpacked. So it often comes from kind
of a most overused word of the decade, trauma, But
there oftentimes is a trauma component to workoholism, of like,
I'm only going to get love by accomplishing, yes, and
(14:47):
not only that, I've got to accomplish a lot, not
just accomplish the regular amount. I've got to accomplish more
than anyone else, and that is going to get me love.
It's going to get me noticed, get me acceptance, get
me embraced, get me complimented.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And if that is the.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Case, that's going to take a little work that's going
to take years, not months, to kind of undo about.
It's kind of like it's similar to like a deprivation mentality.
There's so many people that grew up poor and they
just feel like they need to earn in order to survive,
even though they've got plenty of money, but like a
(15:27):
kind of a panic sets in.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
It's like the old stories about.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
People that grew up in an orphanage, but they and
they're living in a multimillion dollar house later on in life,
but they still hide cookies under the mattress. And this
is a phenomenon, this actually does happen where there's a
feeling of safety.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Of having that cookie under the mattress.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
So, yeah, workoholism, you know, a deprivation mindset. These are
kind of cookie under the mattress moments, and you've got
to go back to the beginning of like, hey, where
did this come from and why?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
So sometimes it's.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Hard in the holidays, you just got a lot of
it's the end of the year, you got a lot
of stuff due, and it's it's just how it shakes
down being prepared planned, say, here's going to be my workdays.
Here's the days I'm especially with phones and emails. I
took email off my phone nice because I feel like,
you know, I could check my email three times a
(16:23):
day from my computer. I don't need to be checking
my email Lourie twenty times a day and getting back
to people.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I always feel this compunction. I got to get back
to them right away.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
The itchiness, the itchiness, yep, yep. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, It's like I could slow it down five pm.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I'll get on. I'll respond to three or four emails
and then move on.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
But you know, I've got to unpack this workoholism, see
where it comes from, and recalibrate to feel like I
am enough. I'm going to have enough self worth. I
don't need to accomplish so much and be so perfect
in order to get love.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, this is great because there's two pieces of advice
in there, one kind of local for the holidays and
one broader local is do little silly hacks to get
the work out of your holiday celebration. So if that
means just deleting your email app just for one week
in December while you're home with the family, great, and
then it'll ma get a little bit harder, give yourself
(17:22):
a little bit of friction to go to the normal
itchy finger check your email or jump into work. That's
the kind of local.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
And let me say part two of local one another
thing that really works because I am a phone addict. Okay,
straight up, Phone on a shelf, Elf on a shelf.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Phone on a shelf.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yes, yeah, your holidays here, you heard it here, Phone
on a shelf, Folks, Phone on a shelf. Have your phone,
don't worry, just put it up on the shelf, have
it not in your pocket. Interact with people you feel
that itch just go over to the shelf. You can
check it real quick. If you want to take a photo,
go get it, take the.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Photo, put it back.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
But this will reduce I don't know what the data is,
but for me, when I do something like that, I
would say I'm interacting with my phone ten times less,
but I'm not missing out on anything.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, this is the sad thing about human psychology is
how easy it is to put in a little bit
of friction. Like it's not like you put your phone
in Antarctic, Like it's just on.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
A shelf or a safe or something, or it's safe.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You have to crack it. No, it's just on a shelf.
But just not being in your pocket, in your hand,
right next to you on the dinner table. It just
makes it a little bit trickier to go for it.
And yeah, you'll just use it a little bit less.
So phone on a shelf, hashtag phone on a shelf
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
There you do, hashtag phone on a shelf.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
My wife and I used to host these kind of
youth events when my son was a teenager and preteen,
and we would always have a basket and all the
phones go in the basket and because a bunch of
fifteen year olds doing activities or playing games or what
have you, is so much better when they're not just
(19:03):
on the phone documenting everything, looking all the time.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And maybe families can do that. Can you have over
the holidays?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
You find a great deal more connection and mental health
by putting phones in a basket or kind of say hey,
for this dinner, I've got a basket.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Everyone, let's put your phones.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
What do you think and you could decorate the basket.
It could have little pieces of holly or like you know,
Minora symbols or whatever your own faith tradition is to
put the phones in a basket.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Or characters from like one floor of the Cuckoo's Nest,
because it has to do with mental health, so you
know deranged human beings and say we're not going to
end up like these people, and we're going to put
our phone in a basket.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
But that might be something you want to communicate ahead of.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Time, to say, Hey, for our Christmas dinner, I have
this idea, what if we put our phones away, and
not just in our pockets, but away. We got off
track here a little bit, but there was something else
you were going to bring up.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Oh, but yes. But there was the meta point, which
I love, which is workaholism. You're not going to solve
it between you know, December twenty fourth and December twenty sixth.
It's a bigger issue that you need to process some
trauma and so on. And I think this is a
broader point for everything we're talking about here, Like some
of our families have some deep seated stuff. Some of
(20:19):
us are going through some grief that's really hard. Some
of us are navigating lots of perfectionism beyond just the
holiday dinner table. Take a breath. You don't have to
solve everything over the holidays, but noticing those moments of frustration,
noticing the pain points during the holidays gives you a
nice checklist of things that you can pay attention to
in the new year when you get a little bit
(20:39):
of a breath later. So it's kind of you know,
if your tire light comes on, you don't necessarily have
to immediately screech off the road and deal with your
tire light then, but you kind of take some time
to put it in the queue to deal with later.
I think when these holiday wokes come up, it's often
a great signal to us that like, Hey, something I
might need to pay attention to down the line.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
You make a great point here, which I think encompasses
all of the questions we've been talking about, which is like,
what needs to be handled over the holidays and what
needs to be handled over the eleven months that or
ten months at aren't the holidays? Yes, yes, whereas like
wow I am a perfectionist, or wow I'm a workaholic,
or wow I feel lonely when I'm in groups, or
(21:20):
you know, I feel a pressure to have the perfect
gift or whatever it is. There's stuff to be worked
on throughout the year so that you're better prepared for
the holidays. And then there is stuff to kind of like,
like you say, quick fixes and hacks and little things.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You can do to make your holidays better.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
But there may be you know, some a real tough
conversation you have with yourself with your therapist about Hey,
I want to I want to work on X, Y
and Z so that I can go into the holidays
next year with more joy and more freedom. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Big picture, we.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Know, Guitar, my last set of holiday challenges that we
all need to do better about. And this is why
I'm especially excited to have you on the show because
our last holiday challenge is ways that we can create
more meaning enjoy, and I think you, of all the
people I know, have done I've had some of the
best insights into what we can do to deal with
this crisis of spiritual meaning that we have all the time.
(22:31):
But I think this comes out a lot during the
holiday season. I know soul Moon talks a lot about
what we can do to fix our spiritual crisis, any
soulful ideas, rituals, strategies we can use to feel a
little bit more spiritually connected during the holiday season.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
A lot of people equate spirituality with religion for a
very good reason. There's a big overlap between spirituality and
religion in the Venn diagram. A lot of people view
it as kind of synonymous with faith, synonymous with let's
say church on Sunday or something like that. So the
(23:07):
first thing to do is kind of separate spirituality from
faith or religion or religious practice or the religion you
grew up in, because a lot of times what the
holidays can do is that can reignite a kind of
a religious trauma that maybe you underwent, perhaps you are
forced to go to church seven days a week, or
you were forced to be an aultar boy, or you
(23:28):
were pressured in certain ways that you find very uncomfortable
and triggering later on in life. And so a lot
of people are really resistant to anything having to do
with spirituality because of certain religious trauma.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
So that's very real.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
But I think putting the rituals of whatever faith denomination
you're involved in aside, what is spirituality, Well, it's a
recognition that we are something more than the material, that
whether whatever you want to call it, soul, heart, spirit essence,
(24:04):
life force, that there's something in us about us, in
our consciousness that is more than just you know, an
animal with a big brain in a meat suit. At
least that's how I view it, and people who walk
a spiritual path like to view it. So there's certain
things that go hand in hand with this concept that
(24:24):
we are spiritual beings having a human experience for eighty
ninety years on the planet, and it's connecting with love,
it's seeking greater humility, it's service to others, it's increasing
our compassion to see kind of universal divine qualities in people.
So all of these kind of spiritual ideas can be
(24:47):
brought out at family gatherings over the holidays and help
give our lives meaning and most importantly, just help increase connection,
because we all know that it's through connection that we
find the greatest joy and happiness. So these tools compassion, service, humility,
(25:08):
love of can give our lives meaning and can also
give us joy and happiness.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
And I think there's so much room to bring those
in more during the holiday season, even for maybe some
of the not so great parts of the holiday season.
You know, we talked a little bit about grief, thinking
about loved ones that have passed and so on. I
think these are moments for developing little rituals where you
can connect with them during these tough times in the
holiday season. The holidays are all about nostalgia, where you
think back to your past and have these moments of like, man,
(25:36):
it's been ten years since we've been having Nana's lasagna,
and that can kind of give you a sense of
awe about the time passing and so on. So it's
like these rituals are open for us in the holiday season,
not just going to some you know, like religious service,
but really developing your own tiny moments. And this is
something I know you've talked about a lot in soul
Boom too, that it's often not like the big things,
(25:57):
it's like the tiny moments of wonder and connection that
seem to matter a lot. Any recommendations for noticing and
finding the tiny things that matter during the holidays.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Well, you talk about a lot. Is gratitude.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Love gratitude, Love me some gratitude.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
It's a superpower.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
So holiday gatherings can when you feel overwhelmed, like oh,
Aunt Connie's wearing that perfume again, and Uncle Ronnie won't
shut up, and Aunt Nana's chewing with her mouth open
and so and so as being passive aggressive like help
shift your mindset to one.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Of gratitude, like what are you grateful for?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
So everyone's healthy, that we all get to be together,
that there's great kindness here, That I'm grateful for the
childhood that you know, my parents help give me. And
we can do that internally. You can do that with
a list. It's really it's also, as you know, more
helpful to share that gratitude with someone. Yes, could do
(26:58):
it by text, but it's even better over the phone
or in person. To share a gratitude takes it to
the next level. And maybe this is something to bring
into instead of you talked about spiritual practices, little things
like instead of grace or in addition to grace, go
around the table and one thing you're grateful for. It's
some easy icebreaker. It connects people, it opens their hearts.
(27:22):
It shifts things away from politics and division in less
than and stress.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
There's so many different ways to harness the power of
gratitude for these kind of events.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, and another thing we know about gratitude is that
it can be a virtuous cycle.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know, you say one thing you're grateful for about
your aunt at the dinner table. You know, I always
love your cookies. You know, it makes me grateful every
year when they come. But then that boosts her ability
to notice the good stuff in life because kind of
shifts her negativity bias ever so slightly towards the positive.
Then she sees it better. And so you can develop
these spirals during your holiday get together where if you
(28:02):
seed some gratitude early on, it makes it easier for
other people to find gratitude and joy later. Thing I
wanted to end with, which in theory, should be part
of the holiday season, is our sense of awe and wonder.
So often during the holiday season. I think we want
to get certain positive emotions. We want to eat delicious
stuff and feel good that way, or we want to
get a good gift or have surprise. And I think
(28:24):
one positive emotion that's really available to us that we
forget is the power of wonder during the season. Any
advice for how to get in a little bit more
wonder during the holidays.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, I just got to meet.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Daker Keltner.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Daker Keltner who wrote the wonderful book called Awe and
the number of health benefits and psychological benefits to feeling
awe and wonder our legion and it usually and can
start in nature, and it can again be another precious
(28:58):
point of unity between people who are feeling like politically
divided or overwhelmed or what have you. You know, noticing
a hummingbird or a tree or you know, or growth,
the moon or the stars. It's a powerful emotion and
it actually increases your health. And just like gratitude, And
by the way, gratitude is something you can just express.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You can have a secret agenda to express gratitude.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
You can be like, hey, Aunt Connie, I'm grateful every
year you make your brownies and you bring them and
they're just so delicious.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I'm really grateful for you bring in your brownies each year.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
It could just be that simple can change a whole
someone's whole day. And awe and wonder go hand in
hand with curiosity and expressing those can have the same effect.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I love your idea to get a little bit more
nature in I feel like I do this a little
bit when I'm off in the Midwest for the holidays.
Just take a little walk outside and look at the stars.
Often very cold, so you know, bring your hat and
your mittens and all the things. But just like these
tiny moments of experiencing nature, even in the midst of
a busy, busy day, it can really slow you down
(30:06):
and give you that sense of awe and wonder. Ray,
and thank you so much for wondering about the holidays
with me. I don't know if we've solved everybody's holiday
it woes, but I think everybody's going to go.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
I think we did.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah, I think we solved everybody's holidays woes.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
A happier holiday to all and to all good night?
Is that the same?
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I forget something like that and to all a good
podcast Doctor Lori Santos and the Happiness Team. It's such
a pleasure to see you again and speak with you,
and what a wonderful service you're providing some holiday inspiration
and guidance at one of the most stressful times.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Of the year.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I hold my conversation with Rain Wilson shared at least
one piece of advice that will help you have a
happier and more RESTful holiday season. That's all from the
Happiness Lab for twenty twenty five. But not to worry,
because twenty twenty six is just around the corner and
we'll have some advice for making your new year as
happy as possible. If you've been feeling stuck lately, you're
in luck because this January will be back with a
(31:04):
whole series on ideas for getting unstuck and moving forward
into twenty twenty six. That's all next year on the
Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos,
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