I love Thanksgiving. I love that there are no decorations to hang… well, not many… and it’s all about connection and food.
I usually cook for between 12 and 17 people each year, but this year due to my mother-in-law falling and breaking a hip, I am the one traveling.
This year it’s less about the food and all about the people.
Since I am usually in a cooking frenzy, I tend to overlook the thanks in Thanksgiving.
I don’t like to feel obligated to give thanks or feel thanks when it’s not organic. I am thankful in the moment.
But I know that you can’t feel fear and gratitude at the same time.
Gratitude rewires your mind to see abundance rather than scarcity.
This is huge.
So I am all in.
Let’s go waist deep in gratitude.
I realized that the challenge for me is conjuring up the things and situations I am thankful for. So I thought I would put together some prompts. Because once prompted, I certainly have multitudes I am thankful for.
Prompts:
Gratitude for food. I just saw statistics for my region. The percent of folks experiencing food instability this year was higher than I expected. I am thankful for the food I eat. I may even try making an indigenous food recipe for Thanksgiving. I feel lucky that I get to make that choice.
Gratitude for relationships. I am thankful for my husband and kids and extended family. And friends that feel like family.
I am thankful we all made it through COVID year two. And I am thankful for people who aren’t in my life any more who have helped me become the person I am.
Gratitude for pets and other animals. Who loves you no matter who you are, what you do, or how many servings of pumpkin pie you eat? I am thankful for all living creatures. Nuff said.
Gratitude for elastic (pants on Thanksgiving), sunshine, air, computers, refrigeration, reconnecting with old friends, a focused purpose, medicine, science, a great movie on Netflix, time in nature, walking, struggles, good memories, birds, music, the ER doctors and nurses, and clean socks.
And last but not least, gratitude for a full range of emotions. Happy is good, but it’s just scratching the surface. I am grateful for the whole bucket of emotions. Joy and humor and connectedness, but also sadness and anger and fear. Without fear I would not be daring. Without anger I would not be spurred to act on some things that are important to me. And the depth of my sadness measures how deeply I have felt about people I have lost.
I want the whole range of emotions that comes with a messy wonderful human life.
I think I need to drop the mic there and pick up the fork. After all, it’s still about the food too. 🙂
No podcast today. I am winging my way to Scottsdale, Arizona this week, to enjoy learning to use horses to facilitate my coaching work. More about that soon. But today is all about being.
The other day, Deepak Chopra told me that all there is in the world is being, feeling, thinking and doing. (Me and thousands of other people in a Tedx Talk… TEDxSanMigueldeAllende.)
As I talk about all the time, thinking, feeling and doing are the guideposts we use to transform our lives.
Your thoughts create your feelings which create your actions.
It’s how you create the life you want.
It’s how you dissolve negative emotion.
It’s how to get from island a to island b.
It’s the secret to the human condition.
But being…
I haven’t talked too much about being.
I like just being… simply noticing my breath.
Being is what we do more of out in nature.
We are still.
We aren’t trying to accomplish anything or get over anything.
We are not trying to be more or save the world.
Maybe I don’t talk about it because it doesn’t take a lot of instruction.
Being isn’t something I learned and then had a mind-blowing epiphany.
But being is akin to peace. It is a state in integrity with your natural rhythms.
And I apologize for not spending more time talking about being.
Being is the pause between breaths.
And the breaths.
Being is meditation.
Being is noticing smells and beauty and calm.
I do some of my best being at dawn. Dawn is the pause before the day, when the world hasn’t woken up yet.
I am rested and aware, but not jumping into action quite yet.
I plan on giving ‘being’ more attention in my life.
A more cherished place.
I smile just thinking about spending more time simply being.
And the epiphanies come, just at a different pace.
Are you using money as a balm to sooth your suffering? Are you buying yourself treats to feel better?
Are you using money like a band-aid?
Or are you using money as self-care?
Taking care of your money is taking care of your priorities and values.
Listen in to hear my list of money actions that feel like delicious self-care… including mandatory splurging!