Thank you for joining us for episode 392 of Live Happy Now.

As the holiday season begins, it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy of buying gifts.

But this week's guest wants us to consider a different way.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I am joined by decluttering expert Tracy McCubbin,

who is asking us to take a step back and become more intentional with our holiday shopping.

In this episode, she explains how we can approach the holidays differently to create more joy,

focus on giving of ourselves rather than giving gifts,

and how we can shift the focus from shopping to sharing the

spirit of the season. Let's take a listen. Tracy, welcome back to live happy now.

Thanks, Paula. I'm so happy to be happy. I'm living so happy to be back. I am happy to have you back.

This is something you and I talked about the first time that we had a conversation because it became so apparent that we could use your expertise in this area.

We're moving into the holiday season now. We've got Black Friday two days after this podcast goes up. And it's a time when everybody, their mind turns to shopping. It's like even the casual shoppers seem to turn into power shoppers.

So I wanted to talk to you about some of the ways we can safeguard ourselves, our budgets,

and the people who are receiving gifts from us and make this less cluttery and more practical and fulfilling.

I love this conversation.

I'm so excited to be talking about this.

So let's just start with what we should start every day with, but let's start with this around holiday shopping season.

Let's talk about our intention, right?

Are we, what's our intention for buying

gifts? Are we buying things because we feel guilty? Are we buying things because that's what we've

always done? What's our intention? I like to as a business owner at the end of the year,

some vendors that I work with, some clients that were,

...