Tis the Season to Feed Our Souls

It’s time to offer my two cents about the season that is soon to be upon us... Thanksgiving and the holidays. For me, Thanksgiving is the “door opener” to the season of connecting—with our families, our employees and clients, and if we’re lucky, with ourselves. That last part is the tricky one, connecting with ourselves. A number of my clients and friends look upon this season with downright fear; there’s so much to do and so little time. Who has time to connect with themselves?

This is not a treatise about time management, but about being present and clear on our intention in the moment, noticing everything that’s happening. Right now.  And instead of letting go of whatever seems to get in the way, consider scientist Peter Senge’s view of “letting come”.  I like the acceptance of that.  

I believe underneath all our Thanksgiving “busyness” is a desire to connect with people—to thank them, to let them know we are grateful for them, or to remind them how important they are to us. That's usually our intention. When we lose sight of that in the rush, it’s like shooting Novocain into our heart, numbing us to what really matters and infusing our irritation and resentment into the very moments we are creating.  

The solution? Find ways to feed our souls, to connect with ourselves. When we do, contentment and joy begin to emerge.  It can be a dilemma of how to enjoy ourselves while still doing what needs to be done.

One of the most nourishing ways I have found to feed my soul is to create personal rituals because they connect me with myself and others in heart-felt ways. When I was writing this, I asked my twenty-eight-year-old son, Brandon, to remind me of some of our own family rituals and he came up with five examples within five minutes. That alone gave my mother’s heart a shot of joy and delight, because with each memory of a ritual my intention had been to connect with him and I did. Doing that fed my soul. With rituals, what we give, we get. Consider the ideas below to get you started.

 Food rituals

• Appreciations at dinner. As we eat dinner, each person at our dinner table tells every other person at least one thing they appreciated about them that day. Each contribution always brings a smile of connection.
• What I’m grateful for. Again at dinner, sometimes we forgo appreciations and each person talks about one thing they are grateful for that day. I notice the busyness slows down.
• Etiquette dinner. During the holidays, my husband and I used to take our two young sons out to dinner at a fancy restaurant to teach them what to do with three forks, or three spoons, or how to check out the first taste of a bottle of wine. At first, we thought they would think this was cheesy, but to our surprise and delight, they both have told us they looked forward to this annual event. It’s about that “letting come” happen.

Family rituals

• Lipstick kiss. When I dropped my son off at daycare, I used to kiss the top of my younger son’s hand and leave my lipstick’s mark on him so he would know I was thinking about him that day and remember how much I loved him. As a mom working out side the home, it fed my soul and his.
• Hidden cards. When either my husband or I leave for a business trip, we hide a loving card in the suitcase so whoever is leaving doesn’t see it until they unpack in the hotel that evening. As business partners, it’s a way of connecting besides debriefing our business issues that night.
• The Wednesday Pen. When our oldest son was 13, his grandfather, my Dad, wrote him a one-page letter about life every Wednesday, every year until he turned 18. It turned out to be a weekly connection that was priceless for his grandson.

Rituals like these open our hearts, reconnecting us to ourselves. We don’t have to invest lots of time, just clarity on our intention and being present.

Feeding our soul is like feeding our body.  Sometimes there are feasts, when we can savor the moments, and sometimes life is calling for fast food, when we are short on time but long for nourishment.  Here's what I mean:

Feasts:  Hike a trail that takes you away from noise and into nature

Fast Food: Take a 15-minute walk, breathing in fresh air

Feasts: Meditate

Fast Food: Say a prayer

Feasts: Stop and watch a sunset

Fast Food: Say a prayer 

Feasts: Call and connect with a friend

Fast Food:  Send a card to a friend

Feasts: Make a fire and read from a favorite book

Fast Food: Read the daily idea from a book that inspires you and features quick, daily ideas like Simple Abundance 

Feasts: Create a playlist of your favorite music

Fast Food: Listen to Pandora

Feasts: Buy a holiday coffee for yourself and a client and treat yourself to a treasured conversation of gratitude and appreciation for your work together

Fast Food: Buy a holiday coffee and stop to admire the barista's creativity with the cream topping

Do Something for Others

Feasts: 

   -Buy 3 turkeys and cans of food and take them to the food bank

   -Make a batch of soup, bag it, freeze it, and drop it off

   -Feed a horse or dog for a friend on a trip

   -Visit a senior, taking a poinsettia, a book and your heart to chat

Fast Food:

   -Put cans of food in the food bank box at your grocery store

   -Pay for the coffee or toll of the person behind you in line

   -Drop off a blanket or pillow at a homeless warming center

   -Drop off a plant at the senior center

The main course that feeds our souls is the power of pause.  Pause to notice how you’re feeling, or even if you are feeling.  It's not letting go.  It's letting come, making it all possible.  Author Anne Morrow Lindbergh captures this beautifully when she says, “We need solitude in order to find again the true essence of ourselves. The problem is not entirely in finding the room of one’s own, the time alone, difficult and necessary as this is. The problem is more how to still the soul in the midst of its activities. In fact, the problem is how to feed the soul.”

 May you all be nourished this Thanksgiving.