Dear Future Holiday Sara

One thing to do differently in 2025

Dear November/December 2025 Sara,

It is the last day of December 2024, and right now, you’re lying in bed at your mother’s mountain house.

Everyone else is skiing. You are not.

Do you remember why? I’ll remind you - it’s because you have walking pneumonia. You arrived in this state of sickness just in time for Christmas, which you pulled off (pretty much) without a glitch - because you are awesome and because Christmas is kinda your ‘thing.’ You love putting time and energy into it. Your people love this about you, too.

I hope to change this one thing for the 2025 holiday season.

On the flight here, you began wondering if perhaps you had tried to fit too much into the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Keeping a full work schedule and a full holiday schedule was A LOT. And sometimes you forget you have SIX kids now, plus two of their fiancees. They were all coming in some capacity for the holiday (yay!), and all of that needed coordinating and planning, as well as the other ‘mom’ things that must be executed for Christmas to happen.

The kids are getting older and building their own lives. You want to cherish this time while you have it so your effort is understandable and important. While your body told you to slow down, your to-do list screamed otherwise. Guess which one you listened to?

“I think I’ll do this differently next year,” you thought, and then you went on to dream about how that would happen.

However, you’ll forget all of that when the 2025 holiday season rolls around. You don’t think you’ll forget, but you will forget.

It’s likely you won’t have any recollection of these thoughts come mid-January. Before you know it, it will be October, and you will have done so much, which will propel you into a bunch of new work and life ideas and things you want to do before the new year rings in 2026. They will be good ideas. Great probably. Your head will be full of worthy ideas and plans. And then you will want to do all of these things plus plan for Christmas, plus make the most of the time with the kids, etc.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I’m writing you with the hope that you’ll read it at some point in the fall of 2025 and do things differently this (next) year.

(You should probably read this in July, actually - but I’ll take what I can get)

I thought a lot about it over the last several days, and I think it boils down to changing this one small (?) thing. (Just one thing! I mean, how hard can it be??)

You need to start thinking of the holiday season as a time to wind down - not gear up. Do you understand what I’m saying here?

Stop making plans to begin new things in November, for crying out loud! I know you’ve lived in Florida most of your life and because of this, you don’t fully understand the seasons. Maybe that’s the problem - I’m not sure.

Winter is a time for hibernation - to get quiet - to look inward. Even the trees and the animals know this. Your body knows this. Listen and learn.

The trees know this…

Don’t launch a new group or implement a new course idea or coaching program.

Don’t schedule meetings about new business.

Maybe don’t even write new posts?

You don’t have time and frankly, your beloved readers don’t have time to engage in any of it either. We are all busy (too busy, but that’s another story for a different day.) You should be going inward, they should be going inward. Perhaps you could encourage each other to do that.

This will require you to create less—a lot less.

Make a list of everything you want to create in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, then cut that in half. Or better yet, eliminate them altogether or push them to January.

This will allow you to make space internally. I promise. Your time of hibernation will not be wasted. Instead, it will allow for bigger and better ideas to come to fruition when the time is right.

Take an idea and play with it in your mind. Turn it over and look at it from every angle. See how it feels in your body.

Dream more, do less. Let your imagination run wild.

I have a feeling it will change your life.

I realize when you read this in October or November (or, fingers crossed, July), it might be hard to fathom why any of this would be important or even necessary - but I’m asking you to trust me here for both of us.

LYLAS -

December 2024 Sara