How to Find Peace During The Holidays Episode 2: Changing Perspective and Considering Your Capacity

CAMILLE WALKER [0:00]

It's more about framing your mind and knowing what could come, and then creating space for you to have peace.

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CAMILLE [0:14]

So, you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family, and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know. This is Call Me CEO.

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CAMILLE [0:35]

This is Camille Walker with Call Me CEO. And I am doing a special series right now about how to find peace in the holidays. If you're listening to this episode right now, this is actually episode number two. You can go back to the last episode I did about setting expectations and how to find peace around that, refocusing. So, I did a little allegory about running a marathon. I recently saw my brother and my sister run a marathon in New York City and was really impressed and moved by the runners that I saw there and the capabilities that each of us share. And this episode, in particular, is about changing your perception.

Now, one thing that we talk a lot about is that we live within our minds that our expectations and our perceptions are what frame the world. So, starting within ourselves is a great way to find peace. So, in this episode, I'm going to talk about some practical ways that I find peace and also some lovey-dovey woo-woo stuff with how to find peace too.

But first and foremost, I want you to know that changing the way that you perceive yourself and the way you see the world is integrally related. How we see ourselves and our perception of ourselves will change the way that we see the world. Because changing the way that we set our expectations for our own achievements or to-do lists and expectations will help to reduce our stress if we set expectations that actually do our capacity justice.

Let's talk about capacity a little bit. Okay. So, I read something recently. It was around the time that the pandemic started. And there was someone saying, "I'm stuck in my house all day long. I have things I could be doing or I should be doing, but I cannot get myself to do it." And in response to that and I wish I can remember who it was that said this, but they said, "It's not that you aren't able to do it physically or with the time that you're given, but that you may not have the capacity to give of yourself in that way with what is in demand of you at that time."

And what does that mean? Because capacity really brings into focus what it is where we are mentally. It's not so much about the time that we have or exactly what the circumstances are, but what is the circumstance? What is the scenario that you're in right now that gives you a higher or lower capacity and how do you set your expectations around that?

If you are going through a hard time, if you have had a falling out with a loved one, if you're dealing with illness, if you have had bouts of depression, if you have sick children, if you're going through a transition in your life like a new job or a birth of a baby, there are lists that you can rank the stress that you're undergoing, just by the nature of creating transition in your life. And if you're allowing yourself to change perspective with what it is that you're dealing with, that can help you to give yourself grace. Grace is giving yourself the capacity to make space for where you are emotionally and mentally.

And I want to read to you because I'm doing this definition thing right now where I'm really nailing down what it means for these different words. And so, capacity is the maximum amount that something can contain or it is the amount that something can produce. So, if you are at your maximum of what you can contain emotionally, physically, spiritually, perhaps the amount of what you can produce is reduced.

And I don't know about you, but the holidays are especially packed full of things. They're not all bad things. It's just stressful things. And so, I want you to think right now as you made that list from the first episode, how can you put into play those expectations that you want with the capacity that you have? And how do you relate those to each other in a way that you can have practical application?

So, to narrate this a little bit, I'm going to tell you about something that I love to do in my life that helps me to change my perception and also give myself expectations that I can reach. And I know that there are different times in my life where I've been in production mode when I was building my virtual assistant program that I released this last summer, I was in a high production mode. I was in a driving force. I was staying up late nights, getting up early mornings. I was working really hard.

And I knew that when my first group of graduates finished up, which by the way I'm going to be launching it in the beginning of this next year, I knew that this season of fall, this quarter, I needed rest a bit. I needed time to reflect and I needed space to evaluate how I felt about that experience. And I'm really grateful that I have the capacity to be having other businesses that I'm running like this podcast and my blog where I have the capability to do that where I can take a step back with that certain project and take a good look at it to really focus on perspective of if that is something that I wanted to pursue and also to take time for me.

Because right now, I am in a really healthy space physically. I've been getting up and going to Pilates about five days a week. And I wouldn't say every day. I've been doing that for a couple of months like three to five times a week, I've been doing that for about two months. And my mental health and my physical health is in such a better space than it was when I was pushing and driving hard and eating treats and working at my computer for hours and hours. And it's not that either of those is bad because I was able to produce something really wonderful and help a lot of people create their businesses from scratch and I loved it. I loved teaching it. The creation was really fun. The marketing was hard.

But it gave me the chance to take a step back and think, "Oh, I really loved putting this together, but my health has suffered and I might need to take some time reevaluating how I'm spending my time and have a recoup period." It was a time that I had stepped back and looked at the capacity which my family and their needs also came into play because my husband started a new job this year and my kids have had like they all do, a lot of needs emotionally and physically, all those things.

And so, my capacity to build my business and to really push it in these last few months has gone down. That doesn't mean that I'm unhappy with that. It just means that I'm accepting that space, that expectation, and knowing that my perception is that right now, I have the capability to give to my family and to my husband and to my health more than I do to building a new product and that's okay.

So, I want you to think about, let's say, for example, you're hosting a family a party and that there might be someone there that might put you on edge or that you're really having to be careful about what you say or what you do. I don’t know whatever the situation is. I want you to think about what expectation you have and allowing space or the capacity for the unknown to exist without letting it take over your experience. And if it's something where you need to remove yourself, if something or someone's certain behavior starts triggering you, that you give yourself space and time to remove yourself from that space. It's not that you have to change that person. It's more about framing your mind and knowing what could come, and then creating space for you to have peace.

So, I really hope that as you're listening to this episode that you're considering what is your perception on having peace during the holidays and what does that mean for you and how you could create more peace during that time? So, I told you I was going to share some of our practical approaches to creating more peace with your perception and this is a quick list. It's not a one all, be all, but these are some things that have helped me and people that I know.

First and foremost, I am a woman of God. I love connecting with my Heavenly Father and creating time to talk with him. I don't pray as often as I'd like to and often it happens in in-between moments when I'm catching myself alone in the car and I pray out loud or this is weird, but sometimes it happens when I'm finally sitting down for the day or using the restroom or it could be at night when the kids are to bed and I have a moment to myself. Whether you believe in a higher power, the universe, or simply taking time to meditate and process your own thoughts and emotions and giving space to breathe, that's where you can fill and grow your capacity.

Oftentimes for me, it's not about creating more, it's about creating less and creating space for more capacity. And that can mean number two, saying no to things that maybe we feel obligated to say yes to or maybe something we've always done in the past, but for this year, evaluating where we are and saying, "I don't think I have the capacity for that." And it doesn't mean that you don't like that person or you don't want to go or you don't enjoy doing the thing, but maybe it's a balance and check of yes or no.

I read the book The Power of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. She's the creator of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice and many other things. She's a brilliant woman. She loves to work. And her book, The Power of Yes, was something that I really enjoyed reading. I think I read it maybe four or five years ago. And one thing that really stuck out to me from that book is that she says, "When you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to something else."

And the reverse is true when you're saying yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So, I don't know if that means it's spending less time with your spouse to make your time for your girlfriends or it's making time for your health and alone time, saying yes to that, and saying no to spending every day, all day with your kids or maybe it's saying no to that Christmas party that you don't have energy for. I don't know what that yes is.

But what I would encourage you to do with this is to think about what your yes is to be this year for your holiday experience. What do you want your yes to be and knowing that you'll be saying no to someone or something else? But when you're taking power of what the yes is, it should be something that really rings true with your core.

And a way to really create peace for that and knowing what that is, is number three, which is journaling. Take time to sit down with your thoughts. And if you're like me, you love pro and con lists. I've been doing those for years or maybe it's just a brain dump where you're writing out what you would love to happen this year or maybe ideas of what you think might be really fun.

There have been years in the past where I've had little ones at home. I still do, but I would write down a bucket list for the holidays for the Christmas break specifically and we would make it together, write it on a big poster, and put it up on the wall and check them off and put them all on the calendar. And it was so much fun and I still love that. But the last few years, that hasn't been where my capacity has been. The capacity was something different.

And so, I want you to think about what your capacity is and create expectations around that, so that you can change your perception. To plan that you don't know exactly what's going to happen, but you can change your perception of how you see yourself, how you consider your capacity, and then how you want that to frame what you're going to do moving forward, so that you can create a holiday that you love full of peace.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you'll stay tuned for our next one. And please follow on social media, I'm on Instagram @camillewalker.co and @callmeceopodcast. I would love for you to reach out to me. And thank you so much for listening today. Any rating or share that you do on social is so helpful. It means so much to me. Thank you.

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