Day 9 - 25 days, 25 ways to a better Christmas morning

Day 9 - The holidays promise warmth and wonder, yet so many of us carry quiet tension into Christmas morning. We want connection, rest, and meaning—then collide with crowded calendars, early wake-ups, and vague plans that no one has actually agreed to. This episode offers a practical, five-minute way to close that gap: write your hopes for the season, write your expectations, compare them, and share what matters with the people around you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Day Nine: Framing The Focus
• 0:19 Hopes Versus Expectations
• 0:52 Compare Lists To Find Overlap
• 1:18 Align And Share For A Better Season
• 2:07 Closing And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey friends. So here we are, day nine for our um 25 days, 25 ways to a better Christmas morning. And on day one, I asked you to think about what are your hopes for Christmas this year. And now I want you to um maybe ponder something a little bit differently. And I want you to think about what are my expectations for Christmas this year. And kind of have them relate to your hopes. So if you thought about kind of Christmas break, if you thought about Christmas morning, or maybe you thought about a specific uh place that you're gonna go for Christmas and what your hopes were for that, cross that now with what your expectations are. And as you write down in your notebook or journal or wherever you're at, uh, as you write down what your expectations are, I want you to look at both lists and see how much overlap there is. Because if we don't have a lot of overlap, then we are maybe on a fast track to feeling disappointment or regret or sadness this Christmas season. And so what we want to do is have those hopes um be more in line with what those expectations are. And you're gonna hear me uh talk a little bit later in our series here about how we can share our expectations with the people around us to have a um a better Christmas experience. And that's gonna be true for all things. So this idea of exploring your hopes and then your expectations, and then sharing your hopes and your expectations with the people around you uh is kind of gonna be true for anything that's going on in your life. But specifically right now, we're talking about Christmas, and so my hope is that you can do those things as we are stepping into this season and would love to know how it goes if you're able to do those things. So happy expectation pondering. See you tomorrow.