Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast that gives you ideas about how to be

happier. This week, even though it's not officially a very special episode, which

we do every tenth episode, we've decided to do something a little different and

talk about holiday hacks for the entire episode.

I'm Gretchen Reuben, a writer whose studies happiness, good habits, the

four tendencies and human nature. I'm a New York City and with me is my

sit-your-elicit craft and Elizabeth, I'm excited because this is a year when

you'll be in Kansas City for the holiday. You're there every other year and this

isn't on year for you. That's me, Elizabeth. Kraft, a TV writer and producer, living in L.A.

and Gretchen. I'm so excited for a K.C. Christmas. I can't wait. I can't wait to

go to Winsteads especially. Yeah, we will go. So, Elizabeth, let's jump into our

happier holiday hacks. We decided we were just going to do a hack marathon. Yes.

As the holiday is approached, and the first one, I think, is very helpful, which is to declare

an official start to the holiday season. This has part one and part two. Part one is, don't

start beating yourself up about the fact that you haven't done your holiday shopping or that you

haven't gotten your house organized or whatever until a certain part. We talked many

episodes ago about scheduling time to worry, setting aside time to worry. This is like,

I'm not going to worry about this until the day after Thanksgiving or December 10th or whatever

it is for you so that you don't needlessly worry before you're ready to start actually doing

something about it. Yeah, because you could start worrying about Christmas before Halloween.

I mean, stores are start pushing Christmas so early now that it would be very easy to start

freaking out well before it's necessary. Exactly. And part two of this is also declare a start

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