Holiday Overload - It's Coming!
December 5, 2025
Here it comes- Holiday Overload!
Every year it happens. Stress over everything goes through the roof. Buying the right gifts. Do we go to the kid’s house or do they come here for Christmas? Or do we just stay home and have Christmas alone, just the two of us? What do we cook for dinner? Everyone expects certain holiday foods. Turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, stuffing(yech!), etc. One year we cooked enchiladas for Thanksgiving. The world did not come to an end but it almost did. And I loved it!
What If...
What would happen if we just bought gifts for everyone that we thought they would like. Something special and unexpected instead of asking everyone what they want or need? Those are the best gifts. When I was a kid my aunt from Nebraska would always surprise me with the most amazing Christmas gifts. She never asked me ahead of time what I wanted. She just bought what she thought would be fun for me and shipped it to Texas. I was always excited when the package arrived because I knew something very unexpected would be inside. One year it was a telescope. What an amazing gift for a 10 year old! I could look at the moon, the stars, and spy on my neighbors. Another year it was a sleeping bag. Very unexpected gifts all very enjoyable for me. And for her? No stress! Buy it. Send it. Done. No worries.
Holiday Surprises
This year my wife’s daughter and her husband hosted Thanksgiving in their new house. About mid-morning the unthinkable happened. We smelled burning electrical connections and lights in the oven started flashing. The oven and stove stopped working. Luckily they still had their old house, so she packed up food and took it to the old house to finish cooking and then brought it back to serve. I could see the stress she was feeling. I don’t think she knows how much everyone appreciated all she did for that dinner.
Now the stress of that day is over and hopefully it will become one of those memories they laugh about for many years. All the stress we feel at the holidays usually comes down to one simple thing. We are worried about what other people think of us. Will they like our gifts? Will they think my house isn’t clean enough? Will they think enchiladas for Thanksgiving was a stupid idea? The thing is in a year from now they won’t even remember if your house wasn’t up to their expectations. They’ll forget how the food tasted and they might even think that enchiladas for Thanksgiving isn’t such a bad idea after all.
What does this have to do with financial momentum? We do the same thing with our businesses. We stress over what other people will think about our business, our social media posts, our YouTube videos and how we look and sound on camera. We let fear of what people think of us cause us stress and so we don’t do many of the important tasks we need to do to grow our business. I do it all the time and it takes effort to get past it. I experience it every week writing this newsletter. I love Bob Proctor’s view of this problem.
He says:
“I don’t care what other people think of me. What they think of me is none of my business.” He is exactly right. What other people think of us is none of our business.
So when it happens to you and me let’s say it out loud.
“I don’t care what other people think of me. What they think of me is none of my business!”