We're halfway through the holiday season and it's time for a check in. In this episode, Taylor reflects on how she's really feeling about the holidays so far and encourages us to truly feel our feelings, no matter what they might be.
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Welcome back to another episode of Inner Warmup. My name is Taylor Elyse Morrison, I'm the creator of Inner Workout and the host of this here podcast. Thank you for being here. Let's kick it off with a little activity. If you want to play along, go ahead and place your hand on your heart. Let your eyes drift closed if you'd like and out loud, or in your head, tell yourself you're doing a great job. Maybe say that a few times if you need it. Because it's true, you are doing an amazing job. I feel like I'm channeling my inner Kris Jenner right now “you're doing amazing, sweetie.” If your eyes are closed, you can blink them open. The question that we've got on the table today is how are you feeling this holiday season? We've been talking about this honest holidays concept, and instead of forcing ourselves to be happy around this time of year, we're allowing ourselves to feel at all.
And where we are right now is we're on the other side of Hanukkah, if that’s what you celebrate. We've got Christmas and Kwanzaa and New Year's coming up. You've survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, your feeds are probably still flooded with the ads though. You might have end of the year things coming up at work, maybe you're completing reviews, or you're planning your goals for you or your team for the coming year. There's a lot going on. And like I said, it's all of this happening with this background of songs and music that you might hear in the store that's telling you what a wonderful season this is. And that may be your reality, maybe it really does feel wonderful for you. Maybe parts of it feel wonderful for you and parts of it feel difficult. Maybe it's only feeling difficult. Wherever you are at today, I just want to give you space in the season to be honest with yourself and to check in. I always do these right alongside you. And before I pressed record, I just started thinking okay, let's check in Taylor. How am I feeling right now? How am I feeling during this holiday season?
And it's all over the place, surprise. I am really excited about a couple of gifts that my husband and I bought for our parents. I am physically having to hold myself back. I saw my mom over this past weekend and I was like, please just let me tell you, it's so good. You're gonna love it so much. I love giving gifts to people, especially when I know that it's something that they will really value. And to just let them know how much they mean to me. So that's something that is just bringing me a lot of joy is knowing that I'm going to get a chance to give these gifts to people that I love. I'm excited about seeing family. My husband and I, even outside of pandemic times, we switch off who we spend our Christmas with. And this year, we are thankfully able to see my family and I've got tons of little second cousins who are not also little anymore. And this will be the first time in two years that I get to see them. And I have a cousin who lives out of the country who is coming back and there's just a lot of reunions that are happening.
And so I'm really excited just for a sweet time to be with people that I care about and people that I haven't seen in a long time and especially with the kids. I'm 29, the youngest of them is like five, the oldest is probably 12. There's a big age range there. Some of them think that me being 29 is young and cool. Some of them think that I am out of touch, but to get to see them and their personalities and really their joy and excitement around the holidays is something that I can already tell is going to be really life giving to me.
Something that I'm enjoying in the present moment, because I just realized the last few things that I've shared are things that I'm looking forward to, and not actually things that I'm experiencing right now. So right now, I'm enjoying cheesy holiday movies, and TV shows. What did I just watch on Netflix this weekend? Single all the way. That one was cheesy and predictable, but sweet. And there's just something really fun for me of putting something mindless on in the background. And one of my hobbies is playing chess. So a lot of times I'll be playing chess while I have a cheesy movie in the background, and I'm curled up under a blanket, and it's like, peak holiday hermit season for me. And those are the things that are really, I guess, the more positive sides of the holiday season. For me, I haven't really felt much of anything about the rest. So those are my positive things. I don't have like a super negative emotion around the holiday season. I'm just very blase about it.
My husband brought our tree up from the basement. We haven't decorated it. We did buy a wreath. It's what is that called? It's some type of preserved plant so it can stay alive all year long, and we hang it up, but I haven't done that. We bought some holly from Trader Joe's. Holly? Is that what I'm thinking of? Boughs of holly? I don't think it's actually called…that this is really funny that I cannot think of it in real time…but basically like the swag of a fur or whatever type of Christmas tree that you put over your entryway or doorway. We bought some of those. I haven't put it up yet. It's like I'm trying to get myself into the mood to put on Christmas music and decorate. But I'm just realizing that doesn't feel super important to me. So later tonight, I'm going to see if I feel called to to it. But if not, I might just be like, okay, the only really holiday decoration that we're going to do is this little waxed Amaryllis plant that we bought, and a Christmas tree scented candle.
And maybe that's as far as we go this year. It was really nice for me to take a moment and just reflect on how I'm actually feeling about the holiday season. And I kept it really tight and focused on just the holiday aspect of the season. But there's so many other things going on outside of this. So don't let my example limit how you choose to engage with the question. Maybe you've got holiday festivities coming up or you don’t. Maybe you're stressed about work, maybe you're stressed about the Omicron variant. Maybe this is the most perfect holiday season that you've ever had. Whatever it is, I want to give you space to feel what you're feeling. So I'm passing the mic over to you. How are you feeling this holiday season? Really.
You can press pause if you need a little bit more time to reflect but for my part, I want to say thank you for your time. Thank you as always for your expertise. I’ll be in your earbuds next week. Take care!
