Finding balance: How to enjoy the holidays without losing sight of your career goals

The Paradox of Holidays

The holidays can feel like a paradox for anyone dreaming of a more meaningful career. It’s a time to pause and reconnect, yet the pressure to ‘make the most’ of this downtime often leaves us feeling more overwhelmed than inspired.

The holidays often feel like a time to recharge and switch off, but they can also bring up self-doubt. Questions like:

• Am I on the right path?
• Should I be doing more?
• How can I make the most of this extra time?

But I’d argue the first question to ask yourself is this: 

What do I truly need from this time right now?

And be completely honest with yourself. If on reflection, complete rest is what you need, then allow yourself that ‘fully-off’ time. This time of year can be magical, and for so many people, also incredibly challenging. Treating yourself with compassion and love is essential and so, if switching off is what you need, plan some space in your calendar for complete downtime. 

Whether that’s enjoying a good book, hanging out with friends or watching your favourite Christmas movie - guilt free! Scheduling it in can help stick to it - setting an intention or reminder for why you want/need that off-time.

The last thing this article is about, is making you feel like you have to do anything during this time. 

But… If switching off is actually just your excuse to bury your head in the sand and you are perhaps avoiding thinking about your career because it feels scary, a lot of people can find this actually makes them feel worse, rather than better, because the feelings of guilt start to creep in…

So if you want to use the holidays to start to think about your career next steps, holidays can be a perfect time of intentional downtime. 

Intentional Downtime

Intentional downtime is all about enjoying a break whilst creating space for ideas and insights to emerge. Rather than adding pressure to ‘do do do’, what about encouraging ‘reflect & notice’ to be the theme?

Someone said to me once ‘Slow down to speed up’ and it really stuck with me. Because in order to know which direction to take action or where to focus our efforts, it’s important to take that pause, to zoom-out your perspective, so that you can know with more clarity which direction to take next. When was the last time you allowed yourself to fully pause and notice?

A simple exercise that you could follow could be to set aside 30 minutes a day, put on a timer and engage in intentional reflection and contemplation. The idea and goal being to bring awareness to your current career conundrums, not necessarily to plan or take intense action.

• What themes/patterns emerge when you think about your career?
• Where does your mind tend to wander in relation to your future?
• What emotions come up when you imagine leaving your current role?

Create Your Holiday Manifesto

With the theme of ‘reflect and pause’, stopping entirely can feel impossible for some of us… especially if a career transition is taking up a lot of space in your mind. If that’s you, what about creating yourself an intentional ‘holiday manifesto’ for how you want to approach the break? Instead of a strict timeframe or rigid goals, what about a loose framework for how you want to spend your holiday. An intentional plan to guide you through this time to not only give yourself the space but to nurture future career aspirations. 

• What value do you hold that you want to embody during this holiday season? Doing what matters most to you and honouring that. 

• What is one non-negotiable boundary you want to uphold? Fulfilling breaks often need some boundaries because without them, it’s easy to get swept up into otherpeople’s holiday. 

• What act of self-love are you going to commit to? Understanding how you can meet your deeper needs to remind yourself you deserve it!

• When will you set aside intentional time to think about your career exploration? Creating space for this and trusting that you have that time can help to fully switch off in other moments.

• What would it look like to give yourself permission to pause, reflect and plant seeds this holiday season? 

Don’t forget this isn’t some strict schedule that you have to follow but rather a manifesto for how you want to navigate this time away from work with intention! 

Slowly Sewing Seeds - Small Action

If you are someone who wants to enjoy the holiday season but also wants to take advantage of this extra time to move things forward, then I invite you to consider sewing some career seeds. Winter in nature is a time for underground growth, and the holiday season could be a time for you to start those initial spurts of growth too. 

Some low-pressure seed-sewing could be:

• Skim the Escape the City job board - not to necessarily apply, but to spark ideas
• Reach out to someone working in a field you admire and ask about their journey
• Journal about the skills you’ve enjoyed using in past roles and how they might translate to a more impact-driven job

Setting the Tone for 2025 Without Overloading Yourself

Rather than the inevitable pressure that comes with New Year’s Resolutions, I invite you to think about the tone you would rather want. Instead of the list of do’s and don’ts, bursts of motivation (and inevitable loss of said motivation by mid-Jan if you’re anything like me) start to clarify how you want to feel in 2025 instead…and let that become your guide for decision making.

In relation to your career:

• How would you love to feel stepping into the New Year? 
• What word or phrase are you choosing to live by in 2025?

So to wrap up…

By allowing yourself intentional downtime to properly rest and recharge, reflecting on what is important and starting to plant small seeds, you can enter the new year feeling aligned to the direction you want to take your career, so you can hit the ground running whenever you are ready. 

P.S. If you’re looking for some support with where to start, I have some New Year support sessions called ‘Reflect to Reset’, reserved for Escape the City community.