385. How to Get Exactly What You Want for Christmas

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 385, How to Get Exactly What You Want for Christmas.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

What do you want for Christmas my friend? I mean I’m not just talking about Christmas morning, although I am talking about Christmas morning, but I’m talking about in general throughout the season, throughout the holiday season, what do you want? What do you want not just for you literally in terms of gifts, what do you want the experience to be like? Have you thought about it? Did you know you can just decide right now what your Christmas was like and create it in your mind for yourself, what your experience of Christmas is like.

I’m not saying we can control others by any means but decide what your Christmas was like and picture it. And then you will work to create that if you genuinely believe that’s available to you. The mind is so powerful. Just decide right now that you had the best Christmas ever and then go create that. But here’s what I want to say.

First of all, I love to laugh and I appreciate good humor and good comedy. And one of the things that came out a couple of years ago that I love and I watch, I have watched every year sense is a Saturday Night Live sketch called Christmas Morning. If you haven’t seen it you must go watch it. It is hilarious with Kristen Wiig. I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll just say SNL Christmas Morning, we’ll link it in the show notes. You’ll have a good laugh. Go watch that after you listen to this podcast.

But I want to talk to you about how to get exactly what you want for Christmas. Now, before we really dive into that topic I want to make sure I mention that if what you want is to be able to apply the things you’ve learned here in the podcast then ask for an annual pass to Be Bold. Because we have an option that people can purchase you a year in Be Bold. You’ll get this cute little booklet called But What if I’m Right with illustrated wisdom. It’s a really powerful gift that will pay you back for years to come.

So maybe you want that or maybe you want to give it away to someone else as a gift, awesome gift. Go to jodymoore.com/gift if you want to take advantage of that. Now, I do want to say one thing to those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while and haven’t joined Be Bold. Sometimes I get people saying to me, “I want to join Be Bold, I just don’t have the time yet but once I have a little bit more time I’m totally in. I want to take that workshop and that course. And I can’t wait to learn from you.”

And I always say it like, “Wait, what are you talking about?” I just want to make it very clear that what we’re doing in Be Bold is we’re taking what you are learning here on the podcast and we’re applying it to real life. But the way that we do that is through coaching. So just like you listen to one podcast episode a week it doesn’t take that much of your time. You kind of fit it into your schedule.

You’re going to start listening to one coaching call a week. But it’s the real life application of these tools and it can be you getting coached if you want to but it doesn’t have to be, most of the time it won’t be. Most of the time you’ll be learning it by hearing other people get coached. But when you hear the application you will gain a much, much deeper understanding of how to utilize it in your own life. So it’s not so much a change in what it will look like in your life as it is a change in how it will impact you.

And if you want to spend a lot of time in there, there is a lot of options in there that we give you but think of it like Netflix. We give you lots of content and lots of options of calls and things so that you have choices and you can fit it into your life. We don’t give you a lot because we expect you to do all of it. Netflix doesn’t give us all those shows thinking that we’re going to watch all of them. They just one want us to be able to find what we need and that is how Be Bold is designed.

So make 2023 your year and come and join me there in Be Bold. Okay, but that said, I want to give you two things to consider and both of these things will make it possible for you to get exactly what you want on Christmas morning. And the first thing is something that we tell our kids which is to ask for something reasonable.

This is the problem Santa has created for us is that our kids will sometimes ask for something unreasonable and when we say, whatever reason it’s unreasonable. Maybe it’s too much money, whatever. They’ll say, “No, it’s fine, Santa will just get it for me.” So we have to figure out how to navigate that but ultimately we teach our kids, “You need to ask for something reasonable.” And I think this is good advice that we should all take ourselves.

Now, my guess is that most of you listening to this podcast aren’t asking for a mansion, or a yacht, or something like that when it comes to being unreasonable. But you might be asking for things that are still unreasonable if you are asking that everyone just be happy. My husband always jokes that that was what our moms used to say growing up, “What do you want for Christmas?” “Mom, I just want everyone to be happy, I just want everyone to get along.” It sounds lovely but it’s actually quite unreasonable. People aren’t going to be happy all the time.

And to expect that other people should behave, and feel, and act, and become a certain way just to please us is kind of unreasonable actually. So I have talked about this a lot. I don’t want to hound that point. But just keep in mind, asking for something reasonable means asking for something that is yours to choose. And how other people feel is not yours to choose.

Now, here’s another thing I see especially women do that I consider to be unreasonable is they expect their husbands, or family members, or whoever to figure out what they would like and what they would want. We expect people to read our minds like why can’t he get me a thoughtful gift? Why can’t he think about something I would like? What we really mean is why can’t he read my mind and know what I like and know how much money I think he should spend. I can’t even tell you how much drama I hear around this.

I can’t believe he spent that much. I can’t believe he only spent that much. I can’t believe he thought I would like that. It reminds me of the scene in The Father of the Bride, the original movie where her fiancé gives her a pre wedding gift, I think it was a blender, or a toaster, or something. I want to say a blender. And she’s so upset and crying and he doesn’t understand why she’s upset, because she interprets it as being an anti-feminist like let’s keep the little woman in the kitchen and give a blender type of gift.

He couldn’t read her mind. That isn’t what he meant by it. He thought she might want to blend something one time. So this is what we do, we set ourselves up for disaster by expecting something unreasonable, meaning we expect people to read our minds. We say, “Just get me whatever you want or surprise me.” Guess what? Unless you genuinely have no expectations then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment because they’re not going to read your minds, I promise you.

And I don’t care how long you’ve been married and how long you’ve been together, they’re still not good at figuring out what you like and what you want. You know who is good at that? You are. So either just know that they’re probably going to get it wrong or just give them more specifics. The more specific you can get, the better. That’s number one, want something reasonable.

Now, number two is the way that you will get exactly what you want for Christmas is if you expect people to just be themselves and then you create what you want accordingly. So the people in our lives who we spend time with, which are going to be the ones you’ll probably see on Christmas, either you spent a lot of time with them growing up or you spend a lot of time with them now. Or you probably know these people relatively well, they’re predictable. You probably already know what their behavior is going to be like especially the patterns of behavior they have that you don’t care for.

Your brain has paid attention to them, you can predict them and they will probably not disappoint. They’ll probably continue to be themselves. So if you expect that and you stop getting mad about it, thinking about how they should be different, hoping and crossing your fingers, and wishing, and thinking, and praying that maybe this year they’ll be different. And you just expect that they’ll probably still be themselves, they’ll probably repeat some of those behaviors then you can make plans accordingly. You can plan what you want for your day or for your holiday season accordingly.

You can decide if you need to have boundaries, if you need to say no, if you need to be prepared to have a difficult conversation. Expect people to be themselves and then you make a plan to deal with it accordingly in order to have the holiday or the Christmas that you want. Are you with me? Now, again, sometimes this shows up in more extreme ways with boundary setting and things. Oftentimes it’s not even that extreme.

Oftentimes we’re not dealing with people mistreating us, we’re just dealing with I just wish they were more like me. But they don’t need to be like you because you have you. Let’s say that you have somebody who isn’t very thoughtful about gift giving and you are. Work within the bounds that you have knowing that they’re not and create what you want anyway. Rather than talk about this more, I’m just going to share my all-time favorite example of this that comes from one of the women who I have learned so much from in my life.

I can’t even tell you how much wisdom I’ve gotten from this woman and you might not be expecting it, you know who it is? Marge Simpson. Marge Simpson, she is wise. She has to be to be mostly happy, and pleasant, and lovely like she is, and be married to Homer Simpson. She’s had to figure out how to apply all the things we talk about here at Better Than Happy. So I love this tender example. I’m going to try to retell the way it happens in the Simpsons.

Basically it’s Christmas morning and as far as I can recall I think the kids have already opened their gifts and they’re all playing or whatever. And then Marge says to Homer, “Hey, Homey, let’s exchange our gifts. Are you ready?” And Homer says, “Er, yeah, hold on just a minute. I’ll be right back. I just have to get something out of my car.” And he runs out to his car. Marge is sitting there with her gift all wrapped with a tag on it that says ‘To Homer’.

And, Homer, of course, hasn’t gotten Marge a gift. So he runs out to the car, he starts driving around town frantically trying to find a store that’s open and nothing’s open because it’s Christmas morning. And finally he notices the Kwik-E-Mart, which is the Simpson’s equivalent of the 7-Eleven is open. And so he runs into the Kwik-E-Mart and he’s running around the store. But the truth is, people have scoured the shelves, there’s hardly anything there, it’s just chaos because it’s Christmas morning. And he can’t find anything reasonable to buy for Marge.

And he’s so frustrated and defeated that he finally just leaves the store and he goes home with his head hung low and he’s so sad. He just sits down across from Marge, he still hasn’t told her that he doesn’t have anything for her. She just says, “Okay, let’s exchange gifts. I’ll go first, here you go, here’s your present, Homer.” And he begrudgingly opens it and inside that present is another present wrapped up with a gift tag that says, ‘To Marge, from Homer’.

And Homer’s face lights up with joy and he says, “It’s exactly what I wanted.” And she says, “I know.” And then she gets to open the gift that is exactly what she wanted for Christmas. Well done, Marge Simpson. I am going to leave it at that and let you draw your own conclusions. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week and I’ll see you next week. Take Care.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.