Choosing What Matters In Business + Life This Holiday Season

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Episode 234 Choosing What Matters In Business + Life This Holiday Season

Let’s talk about why rest is essential – not a sign of laziness, but a powerful form of protection and wisdom, especially during the hectic holiday season. I’ll share practical steps on how to set boundaries, choose what truly matters, and let go of guilt when saying no to unnecessary obligations.

You’ll learn my simple system for prioritizing, delegating, and releasing tasks that don’t serve you. Whether you’re a female entrepreneur feeling the seasonal pressure or just looking to simplify your approach to money and life, this episode gives you permission to choose peace over productivity.

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Permission to Choose What Matters Most This Season

What if the thing you actually need most this season isn’t another plan, another strategy or system, but permission to choose what matters and to let the rest go.

That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Because rest isn’t laziness, it’s protection.

It’s regulation and it’s wisdom. This is going to be so key for you as we get deeper into the holiday season. So let’s get to it.

Welcome to Money Simplified

This is Money Simplified, the podcast where I help female entrepreneurs go from stress and struggle to unstoppable with money. Money is more than just budgeting and PNLs, and we’re going to take you through all of it.

Here we blend proven financial strategy with mindset work and energetic alignment so you can create unstoppable finances, build an unstoppable business, and truly enjoy your unstoppable life. It’s time to take my wisdom, my expertise to help you simplify money and go beyond the numbers.

I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Why You Need Aligned Choices Now

Welcome back to Money Simplified. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka.

Today we are talking about making aligned choices and letting the rest go. Because often we’ll feel pressure. We’ll feel like we just have to figure out a new strategy, a new system, a new plan.

But really, we need to give ourselves permission to choose what matters, to choose what we know, to return to ourselves and let the rest go.

Starting today and over the next couple weeks, I’m going to go through different areas and we’re going to talk about how to practically do that—to help you again choose what matters to you and let the rest of it go.

Cut through the noise and return to yourself.

The Weight of Holiday Expectations

We feel pressure down the holidays, right? There are expectations put on us about what things are gonna show up, what we have to get done.

There are external expectations, internal expectations that we put on ourselves, that nobody else really even cares about, right? Then we’ve got all the obligations: kids’ functions, family functions, business functions, personal obligations—all of those things.

It’s a busy time. There are a lot of different things that are putting obligations and expectations on ourselves.

And then if you are a perfectionist or a recovering perfectionist, we gotta work through that as well.

Becoming a Recovered Perfectionist

I really feel like I’m a recovered perfectionist. But, you know, it’s a journey, right? We are always learning and growing new things.

We do not arrive. We talked about this—I think this was on the podcast—where we talked about, like, there’s no magic moment.

The Disney movies make it seem like we’re gonna have this magical moment. Like, it’s just gonna work out, everything’s gonna be perfect.

I don’t have to worry about anything anymore because, you know, we found Prince Charming, we hit the income goal, whatever it might be.

But life continues to life after said moments.

Embrace Imperfection and Let Guilt Go

So perfection is impossible. The sooner we can embrace that, the sooner you feel better, right?

Not to put that pressure on yourself.

Okay, so survival mode, people pleasing mode—both of them. People pleasing is a form of survival mode, but the tendency is to say yes to everything.

Right? Do you feel that?

There are so many things like, oh, we need somebody to donate for this cause that we’re putting together. Oh, we need someone to make cookies for this.

Oh, we need to do that. Oh, we need to do this. And it’s just yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay.

But when you center yourself, when you choose without the guilt, we choose from a centered, safe, feeling, empowered place.

You get to choose without the guilt. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Boundaries and Permission to Rest

So let’s start here. Rest begins with boundaries.

You are allowed to not do traditions that you hate. You’re allowed to say no. You’re allowed to tell people no.

It’s crazy—and the world continues to spin.

You’re allowed to choose peace over productivity. Imagine how much more enjoyable things will be if you just took some time to rest instead of being like a go, go, go, go, go all the dang time.

I know, as somebody who has a busier life, there’s still a lot of intentionality for me.

A single mom to four kids, we homeschool. I run a business. I’m co-leading a forest school—our forest school co-op.

We have different things that, like, I’m committed to, and I choose very intentionally what’s important.

I’m choosing these things because of the value that they have for me and that they’re important to me, not out of the obligation.

Getting to the Root of Guilt

We’re gonna speak a minute to the guilt. Because we feel guilty saying no.

But what is the root of the guilt? If you were to say no, why would we feel guilty? What emotion is coming up?

Maybe fear. Frustration.

Fears at the root of a lot of things like shame, guilt, fear. Probably our three core emotions.

But by choosing to go, we’re still feeling those—shame, guilt, fear—the negative emotions that we don’t want to have.

So you choose to do it, and you feel it, and you don’t want. Because you don’t want to feel guilty about saying no, right?

If you said no, you feel guilt, but you said yes and now you’re frustrated. They’re both negative emotions.

You’ve already got the negative emotion. You already can handle it, right?

You’re already in it.

So choose the thing and let the fear go.

I know, easier said than done. There’s a lot of techniques that we use to help center yourself, to help feel calm, all of those things.

But when you realize we’re choosing something because we don’t want to feel bad, but we already feel bad—like, it’s almost permission, like, hey, I’m free, was feeling bad anyways, so who cares, right?

I choose for you.

The Importance of Modeling Rest

And your kids, your family—they don’t need to see you do all the things.

Choosing rest, saying no—think about the example, the leadership that you’re showing your family, your clients, all of those things.

Because it’s not like you’re going to completely ignore them. I know if you’re watching this, you’re a person of integrity.

You’re a person, a heart-centered person. Like, this is important to you.

We’re not looking at abandoning things that are important, because that’s not how you operate.

You’re not going to do that. But you get to rest.

And choosing the rest—that’s, like, again, think about the example that you’re setting.

What do you want your kids to remember?

What do you want your clients to remember about you?

To a leader in your business, your family, the self-respect that you have for yourself.

A Simple Action Step for the Holiday Season

Your action step that I wanted to leave you with here on this one—and it’s kind of an action step, it’s kind of like a practice to put in place this month when things feel crazy, which we already kind of talked about last week with the get it out of your head, stop trying to remember all the things.

But it’s a little bit of a different take on the three things list that you probably have heard before.

So once you’ve brain dumped, got all of that mess that’s swimming around in your head that you’re trying to remember, all the things that you need to do, you’re going to pick one thing to work on.

So that’s the one thing you’ll do, one thing that you either can delegate, even if it’s having kids, spouse, somebody else take care of for you, or if delegating is not an option, what’s the one thing that’s going to wait?

Like this isn’t urgent. This can be put off, even if it’s next week, next month, whatever it might be—it doesn’t need to be done right now.

The third thing is one thing that doesn’t really matter to you. You’re going to let it go.

Whether it’s an obligation that you said yes to and we need to find a way to back out, whatever an obligation that’s been presented that you haven’t said yes to, find one thing to let go.

Give Yourself Permission to Pause

So when you’re overwhelmed and you’re feeling the stress and the pressure from the season, remember to give yourself permission to pause.

You’re not behind. You’re building from a place of strength, not pressure.

And I’m so proud of you for showing up.

Stay Connected and What’s Coming Next

And make sure that you are on my email list. You get early access to a couple holiday offers.

I’m pre-sales selling a Money Magnet challenge and a brand new course that I’m going to release called Bookkeeping Simplified. Pre-sale discounted.

There’s a couple other holiday offers that I’m going to share exclusively with my email list, so I will put that link in the show notes.

If you’re not on the list, https://aimeecerka.com/email. That’s it for now. We’ll see you next time.

Connect With Aimee Cerka and Keep Simplifying Money

Thank you so much for listening to Money Simplified.

My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram. You can find me @AimeeCerka to catch all the behind the scenes of my stories, send me a message to share your biggest takeaway, or just to say hi.

I love hearing from podcast listeners. When you’re ready to take action on your mindset, your money, or the systems behind it all, I’m here for you.

Whether you’re snagging a free resource, exploring a mini course, diving into the fundamentals with Money Mastery Academy, getting in depth support inside the unstoppable experience, or scheduling a complimentary bookkeeping consult to finally get hands-on help with your books—your next step is waiting for you.

https://aimeecerka.com/podcast-links has all the information and of course that link is hanging out in the show notes for you.

We’ll see you next time.

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