Episode 29: A Joyful Reset for the Holidays

Summary:

In this heartfelt and grounding episode, I open up about what the holiday season really brings forward—the joy, yes, but also the pressure, the expectations, and the feeling that we need to “perform” happiness. As the CEO of Joy, I’ve learned that real joy isn’t about perfect decorations, Pinterest-level gifting, or managing a holiday checklist—it’s about presence, connection, and emotional honesty.

I share some of my own stories about financial stress, over-giving, people-pleasing, and the moments when I felt pulled out of alignment with myself. These experiences shaped how I now approach the holidays with authenticity and intention.

If you’re craving a holiday season that feels calmer, more meaningful, and more you—this episode will meet you right where you are.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

Joy Isn’t Performed—It’s Felt

I talk about the emotional weight that comes with trying to create a “perfect holiday.” The truth? Joy grows when we stop performing and start being present.
Audience Follow-Up → Where are you performing joy instead of experiencing it?

Generosity Has Nothing to Do With Your Budget

I unpack the myth that generosity = expensive gifts. I share ten gifts that cost absolutely nothing—because generosity is about the heart behind it.
Audience Follow-Up → What’s one meaningful, zero-cost gift you could give someone this week?

Protecting Your Energy Is a Leadership Skill

The holidays pull at your time, emotions, and energy. I introduce a framework for protecting your joy so you don’t end the season exhausted or resentful.
Audience Follow-Up → Which boundary do you need to strengthen to protect your energy this season?

Presence Beats Presents Every Time

I explore the cultural shift away from material gifting—and why presence, stability, and emotional connection are the true holiday currencies.
Audience Follow-Up → Who in your life needs more of your presence rather than a wrapped gift?

Your Personal Story Shapes Your Holiday Joy

I share personal stories of holiday struggle—from financial uncertainty to emotional heaviness—and how these moments ultimately helped me redefine joy for myself and for my family.
Audience Follow-Up → What past holiday experience shaped the way you show up today?

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode:

• 10 Gifts That Cost $0 – My list of meaningful, heartfelt gifts that require no money.
  
  
• Hula Hoop Holiday Reset Guide – A tool I created to help you stay centered, grounded, and aligned during the holiday chaos.
  
  
• My Personal Stories of Financial Pressure – How my own struggles reshaped my relationship with gifting and generosity.
  
  
• A Framework for Protecting Joy – The boundaries and practices I use each holiday season to stay present and emotionally healthy.
  
  

✨ Reflection Prompts:

• Where am I overspending emotionally, financially, or energetically this season?
  
  
• What would a holiday defined by presence—not performance—look like for me?
  
  
• Which relationships need more of my time and heart right now?
  
  
• How can I simplify my holiday expectations without losing meaning?
  
  

🧠 Who This Episode Is For:

• Leaders, parents, and caregivers feeling pressure to create the “perfect” holiday
  
  
• Anyone navigating financial stress or emotional overwhelm this season
  
  
• People craving a holiday experience built on authenticity, calm, and genuine joy
  
  
• Those who want practical, heartfelt tools to reset their mindset and energy

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation

• Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori: loripine.com

🎧 Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast

⭐️ Leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show

📲 Share this episode with someone who’s navigating pressure and wants to do it with more grace

Transcript

Hi, I'm Lori Pine, the joy, CEO, and today we are talking of course, about all things leadership, clarity and the kind of joy that actually strengthens your leadership and not distracts from it. We're gonna talk about something that is affecting almost everyone right now. How to stop performing for the holidays and actually enjoy them.

And by the end of this episode, you're gonna walk away with three things. Why generosity has nothing to do with the budget, and it actually has to do with everything that's already inside of you. Two, the 10 gifts that cost $0. And number three, a simple framework to protect your time, your energy, and your joy, and that is what we need this season without guilt and apology.[00:01:00]

So. Let's dive in. If you have ever felt like you're doing everything to make the holidays magical and beautiful, and yet somehow you end up feeling less joyful, not more joyful, this episode is for you. Today we're talking about generosity that costs nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. But it's gonna bring you everything and it's gonna keep you inside your hula hoop where joy actually lives.

And that. Is the magic of the season, my friends. So today we are gonna have a real honest conversation about the holidays because yes, this season can be beautiful and magical and wonderful, but for a lot of us it's actually overwhelming. There's a lot of pressure on us to do all of the things to make so many things happen, spin so many plates, and to make it all look so beautiful while we're doing it.

[00:02:00] And if you've been on social media lately. Whew. Holy smokes. You're gonna see these stunning homes and these garlands and these trees. It's also perfectly curated tablescapes that look straight out of town and Country Magazine or Martha Stewart living. And then you look around your own house and you're like, wait a minute.

My house doesn't look like that house. And. All of a sudden you feel this pressure, this little voice inside your head that whispers you are behind, you're not good enough. But here's the truth. Most of what we see online has been staged. They had a team of people, it was filtered. It was created by someone who spent 2, 3, 4 days trying to get that all set up so they could get the perfect picture and.

At the end of the day, it only lasted like five minutes, and that's not [00:03:00] real life. It's not the metric of your worth, and it's not really even who you are. If you lived in this perfect home, is that what you would really want? Because I think we would trade what we have full of love. And full of joy and full of voices and rambunctious kids and, and all of the people who come as opposed for some.

Picture perfect staged. Thought about what we might think it should look like. So today I wanna take that weight off of your shoulders. I wanna loosen that pressure valve for you a little bit. And help you just step back into your own hula hoop. It's the only place you can control things. We only get to control us, not everything outside of our hula hoop and get you back into what's actually yours to hold so that you can really feel joy [00:04:00] this holiday season and not all of the pressure to spend, to host, to plan, and to perform.

And somewhere in all of that, our joy. Can quietly slip out the door and all of the hosting, preparing, wrapping, shopping, buying, spending, going to parties, feeling like we need to dress up. And so in this episode, is your softer way through the rest of December rooted not in performing because we don't want to perform that's not authentic, but rather in presence and not.

Presence as in gifts, but the gift of your own presence. The one in showing up, the one where there's meaning. Not necessarily spending, okay. There's so much pressure to spend, but we are going to talk about the craving that runs [00:05:00] deeper for you, this deeper reset. This year, a commerce season, a grounded holiday, and I created something really special for you.

It's called the Hula Hoop Holiday Reset. It's a free guide for you to download, and it's designed to help you stay centered when the world is really pulling at you hard. I'll share how to grab it later in the episode, but it's quick, easy breezy, and it's yours for free. So let's talk about the pressure that we are all feeling.

There's this cultural expectation around the holidays that they should be magical, full of excitement, full of joy, full of wonder. What often gets missed is the invisible labor behind all of that magic. And most of that magic is created by us women who have to [00:06:00] do all of the things, the overspending, the overcommitting, the overstretching, the over functioning, the overscheduling, the overdressing, the over everything.

We want everyone to have this perfect holiday because there's this expectation from movies and TV and the Hallmark Channel that that's what it is, and we do it from such a place of love. But somewhere along the way we end up losing ourselves. And here's what tells me that this is bigger than just you and me.

What? What tells me that is that a recent study. Found that 60% of people say the gifting culture is quote unquote out of hand, nearly half say they're experiencing gift fatigue and get this. 33% of people in this study aren't even asking for gifts this year. So this was a study done by [00:07:00] Empower and I found this study in a USA today article.

And so I think something's going on, like there's a shift and it's not because people aren't grateful, it's not because they don't want gifts. I think people are just exhausted and they're waving. The white flag. One researcher put it perfectly that said, not giving gifts. It's be, it's becoming its own act of generosity.

It takes the pressure off the other person to give, to shop, to buy, to hustle, to wrap. And that really is noteworthy, not giving as generosity. That's what it means to stay inside your hula hoop and help take expectations off of another person. And the most beautiful statistics that I saw in this survey is that 44% of people said they'd rather give the gift of time.

Instead of material items. That's something that we are doing inside of our own [00:08:00] family, is creating events and taking people to the radio city, Christmas spectacular. Spending a day in New York City doing outings with our family members because those are the things. They will remember, not necessarily just a toy that's wrapped that will be discarded quickly.

So time, presence, and connection when you're outside your hula hoop, trying to control outcomes and reactions and expectations and how somebody feels about a certain item. Well, there's no space for joy in that. But when you come back into your hula hoop into what is actually yours and what you can control, well then there's your time, there's your presence, there's meaning and joy can actually return.

You can actually feel it and let it bubble up. So let me tell you. A story about a client of mine. It really captures this [00:09:00] perfectly. She has a 4-year-old son, adorable. And last Christmas, he is so full of wonder and she is a full-time, very busy executive, executive vice president to be exact, and she's doing all the things and she wants to make sure that he is.

Thriving in all of the wonder of Christmas. And so she has her mom and her mother-in-law and her, and, and they are taking him to all the Santa things. And she planned three visits to Santa, the most magical Santa in all of Chicago where they live. And. She organized her family to go to Polar Express, and with all that effort and all that coordination and all that magic making, he finally looked at her with his exhausted little tired eyes and he said, mommy, do we have to see Santa anymore?

And I tell you, when she told me this story, she and I just [00:10:00] laughed because it was just like this, such a moment of truth, you know? Sometimes we're just. Doing our best with our best intentions, and we're bending over backwards to please, and it's not even really what the people we're trying to please even want.

Even a precious little 4-year-old who we think would want to see Santa as much as possible. So what's the moral of this story? Joy doesn't necessarily come from more, it, it, it comes from being present. It comes from the meaning. And that's when my client realized she was way outside of her hula hoop. She.

Was trying to do all of the things and do them all to the best of her ability. And she's not alone. Of course, she's not alone. That 4-year-old, he taught his mom. What I'm hoping to teach you today, and I still chuckle about that [00:11:00] story, let's talk about money. And how money shows up throughout the holidays.

It's not just the hustle that we have around the holidays and all the time, pressure to do everything, but it's also the financial pressure. I spent a couple of hours yesterday with a friend who is just, she's just struggling. She was just having one of those days and I went over and had a cup of tea with her.

She's scared about her business. She's scared about the economy. She's scared about money, and she's scared that there won't be enough. And I told her only what I know to be true, that money cannot be the foundation of our life. It just can't be. It can't be our source of security and safety because it will fail every single time.

We need something deeper to steady us. Faith purpose grounding. The knowing [00:12:00] that we are held by something bigger than our bank accounts, a power greater than us. And when we center our life around money, especially during a season designed to train us financially, we end up anxious. Reactive and disconnected from who we really are.

It sets up space for a lot of expectations. A lot of expectations that we're gonna be loved and appreciated, and people are going to see us because of a gift we gave. But when we center around something bigger. When we center around connection, around presence, around the knowledge that you are already enough, well Joy is gonna meet you right there, and that may be exactly what the doctor orders.

You can't believe [00:13:00] the reset shift my friend has had just in 24 hours. So, you know my own truth is that. I wasn't just talking to my friend from theory yesterday. I have been broke more times in my life than I probably care to admit. Raising my boys by myself was not easy. There were years when the math just simply didn't add up, and that came with a lot of fear and a lot of guilt, and there were moments when.

I Overgive because I didn't, I did not want them to feel the lack that I felt. I wanted to compensate for how much I wasn't home, how much I had to work, the times I had to travel, and so I understand the pressure. I understand the fear. I understand the desire to make everything magical, to want to give more than [00:14:00] you were given, to want to provide everything you possibly can to see those smiles on their faces.

Even when you're exhausted and you're stretched thin, especially when you're exhausted and you're stretched thin, hoping that, that that external validation is gonna fill something inside of you. So if this is you, you are definitely not alone. You are not behind, you are not failing. You are just human and you're having a human experience and it won't last forever.

This is just a season. Mine was a season. The season repeated itself a few times, and it may repeat itself again at some point in my life, but. M, money not being the foundation of my life sure does help. And I know that regardless, we all deserve to have a holiday season where there's joy. And [00:15:00] knowing that joy isn't under the Christmas tree, but in the magic of the room, that's a game changer.

So let me tell you about 2011. The Christmas that happened. Then this too is also a really deep and personal story, and I share it with you because it matters. That was the year that my mother passed away. This week, it'll be 14 years, and her funeral was five days before Christmas. Five days before Christmas, more than 800 people filled a Catholic church in a small town in Maine to honor her.

And, and then I was a single mom. I had two little boys. I was absolutely shattered by grief. This was a, a sudden loss. She'd only been sick for five weeks and I'm back home in my childhood house, sleeping in my. Twin [00:16:00] canopy bed in my childhood bedroom in Maine, and somehow I'm still trying to make sure that Christmas is magical for my boys.

I'm still having to make sure that all the things happen that are supposed to happen for a seven-year-old and a, and you know, I haven't been the same since. She passed Christmas is not the same. You know, there's this memory of that first Christmas. Without her, there's memories of all the Christmases that she held and all the traditions that she made.

I mean, how, how could it, how could it not be different? But that Christmas taught me something pretty profound. You know, that the gifts that matter are really the ones that you can buy. You know, it's the gift of being present with the people you love and the presence and comfort and the [00:17:00] steadfastness of love.

You know, that Christmas I was with my dad, my brother, my sister, we were with my grandparents who were in their eighties and they had just lost their daughter. I was with my aunts, my uncles, and there was some peace in in all of that. So, you know. I had to make everything happen for my boys, but at that year, but I didn't have to make everything happen for anybody else, and there was a gift in that.

So when I tell you that generosity doesn't require money, when I tell you that joy isn't found in perfection and bows and garland, I'm telling you from a place of lived truth. And I can also tell you that the gifts that matter most cost nothing. I'm not speaking in theory. I'm speaking from the hardest classroom I ever sat in and what I wouldn't give, you know, for one more Christmas back with my moms.[00:18:00]

So it's really not the gifts, it really is the people. So let's talk, let's transition to the gifts that cost $0. Remember that study I mentioned earlier, 44% of people said they'd rather give the gift of time than material items. Now, your Instagram feed all the reminders from Amazon, they would like to tell you something different because we do live in a very, you know, commercial world.

But here's what giving the gift of time instead of material gifts actually looks like it's generous. It costs nothing, but it can mean everything. And I'm gonna talk about the 10 gifts that cost $0, but create real lasting joy. One, you can give the gift of your presence. Being with someone is more generous than any gift you can buy.

[00:19:00] Just this weekend I went with a friend to a wreath making class, and we had the best time. It was. Two or three hours out. We laughed. We joked we had something to drink, something to eat. We made this beautiful creation. It's hanging on my door as we speak, and what a wonderful time together. Such a gift.

Number two, listening without fixing. If you haven't listened to the TED Talk called the Advice Monster, it is a must listen to you. See, unsolicited advice is criticism, and nobody wants to be criticized. Nobody really wants your advice unless they're asking for it, so don't give it to them. It's not welcome.

People want to be seen and they want to matter. So what can you state, say instead? Well just tell me more about [00:20:00] that. I'm just curious. That might be the absolute best gift you can give instead of, well, I think you should do this. They don't need to hear that. Number three, encouragement. A simple, I believe in you.

A simple, I know you can figure this out. Can change everything with your husband, your wife, your spouse, your kids, your coworker. Game changer. Number four, affirmation. Tell people what you appreciate about them. Say the quiet, good things out loud, you know, I really appreciate that you show up even when I don't ask.

I appreciate that you see me for who I am and still love me anyway. I appreciate that. I have quirks and they don't seem to bother you. That matters, like those things matter. Yes. I appreciate how kind you are. [00:21:00] I appreciate that you start my car in the morning when it's really cold out. Number five, patience.

Slow down, take a breath, offer some grace. Wherever you get tripped up, whether it's in the car or traffic or the grocery store line, remember, everybody's going through something and right now, holidays on top of it, all this pressure to buy and give and wrap and shop. Let's give grace. Six time intentional minutes often matter more than elaborate plans.

Have you ever had that experience when you just ran into somebody by mistake and it was a 10 minute conversation and your soul just felt better that pick up the phone, call somebody, a 10 minute phone call, a walk around the block together, that can be so much better than a $15 Yankee candle. Give the gift of [00:22:00] your time.

Number seven, kind of truth telling. Honestly, wrapped in loved honesty. Wrapped in love is a gift, but not if it's not welcomed. Just some nice, gentle honesty, and it can be, and it can be how much you love them, how much you appreciate them. Number eight, boundaries. Protecting your energy is generosity for you and for them.

When you show up rested, you show up better. Learning to say no to the things that don't matter gives the things that do matter a better. Yes, it makes you able to be the best version of you when you do show up. Number nine, forgiveness. Letting go. Even just a little frees you. Forgiveness is for you, not necessarily for the other person, but for you.

And number [00:23:00] 10, gratitude. I'm constantly talking about gratitude. You know, you can just do a quick five things you're grateful for each morning. You can start with today, just five things you're grateful for, and if you can't think of anything. You can start with the fact that you know, maybe your eyes, see, maybe your legs move something that you're grateful for, and before you know it, I think you'll have an abundance of things to be grateful for.

So none of these cost you any money. All of them are inside your hula hoop. You get to control them, and every single one builds and restores joy. So if you're listening to all this and thinking, wow, I need a bit of a reset this year, I made something for you. It's called the Hula Hoop Holiday Reset. It's a simple, powerful guide to help you protect your time, protect your energy, protect your money.

And set [00:24:00] boundaries that actually stick and stay inside your hula hoop all season long. It's grounding and clarifying and it will help you experience the holidays in a way that definitely brings you joy rather than keeps you rooted in performance. It's in the link in the show notes, so go ahead and grab it and hopefully you can enjoy a holiday reset.

So here's what I want you to take away today. You do not have to perform your way through the holidays, even if other people expect you to. It's not required. You don't have to buy your way into belonging. You don't have to carry this whole season on your back. The greatest gifts you can give this year don't cost a dime.

I just listed 10 of them. And the greatest gifts you can give yourself is permission to come back into your own hula hoop, back into [00:25:00] your own authenticity, into your own way. Finding your own generosity. Joy is not found in more. It's found in meaning and it's found in presence, and it's found in your own alignment.

Joy is definitely found on the inside. We know that joy lives within us. I am so glad to be here with you. I'm so glad I get to do it with you each and every day. I will see you next week over on YouTube. I will. Talk with you next week on the podcast. You can find us on all platforms, and until then, continue to stay inside your hula hoop.

Choose yourself and choose joy. So glad to be doing it with you. Have a great week everybody. Thanks for listening to the joy CEO. I hope today's conversation left you feeling seen. Stretched and a little more grounded in your own [00:26:00] joy, if something resonated, be sure to hit subscribe. Leave a five star review and share this episode with someone walking a similar path.

And if you're ready to take this work deeper, connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram at Lori Pine. Or head over to my website, lori pine.com, to learn more about coaching retreats and how we can work together. Because joy isn't just personal, it's powerful, and when you lead with joy, you don't just rise, you bring others with you.

Until next time, keep leading with heart and don't forget to claim your joy.