Thanksgiving is tomorrow, can you believe we are smack dab in the middle of the holiday season? It seems like it was just Summer. If you are like most people, you are getting ready for the big feast. Heading to the grocery store, preparing your grocery list, cleaning your home, and getting ready for your guests to arrive (if you are hosting the festivities). You want to make sure everything is perfect and you haven’t forgotten anything. Since you are visiting this blog, I am willing to bet that you may also be fretting about your diet, worrying that you might be tempted to stray from your “approved” list of foods. Been there, done that!
While it is a good thing to want to be focused on health and wellness of course, it is important to realize how easy it is to veer off track during the holidays. What do I mean? How many holiday seasons do you spend in a tizzy thinking of all the details that you have to get done? How many nights do you lay awake, getting all worked up and stressed out because you feel like you are under so much stress to make things perfect? You’ve got to get the perfect gift for each person, to make sure not to forget anyone, to make it to all the parties, to write and send the Christmas cards, to entertain, to wrap, to cook, to bake, to shop, and on and on.
The physicality of it all is so silly when you stop and evaluate how we put so much focus on the irrelevant details, when the holidays are truly meant to be about spending time and giving thanks for those we love.
So rather than stressing over the details of the party this season, or worrying yourself crazy about sticking to your diet, why not take that focus and energy and apply it to what really matters – relationships. Take time to hug those that you love. Look them in the eye and tell them how you feel about them, straight from your heart. Many of us don’t do this as much as we should. People are what matter, not the details of the celebration.
So this Thanksgiving, as you get together to celebrate, rather than placing all the emphasis on the food that sits in front of you on the table, why not take some time to go around the dining room and have each guest express what they are grateful for in his/her life. What is fabulous right now, right this minute? Who are you thankful to have in your life?
We are so blessed in so many ways, yet it is easy to look right past those good things, and fret about the bad or what we feel is not up to our (or other people’s) standard of perfection. There is no such thing as perfection, so why get bent out of shape striving to achieve something that is impossible to achieve in the first place. Take time to connect with people this season. Stop moving a thousand miles and hour and sit down to spend quality time with those you love. In the grand scheme of things, when you look back on your life and the holiday seasons of years past, that is what truly counts.
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Have a fantastic Thanksgiving!
Great post. Thanks for the reminder. Have a great holiday!
“There is no such thing as perfection, so why get bent out of shape striving to achieve something that is impossible to achieve in the first place.”
Good point and great reminder for all perfectionists to just calm down and let go… Enjoy the imperfections for they make our life perfect the way it is.
It takes a night to make it dawn
And it takes a day to make you yawn brother
And it takes some old to make you young
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other
And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
And it takes some fears to make you trust
It takes some tears to make it rust
It takes the rust to HAVE it polished
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe-4e0cE7q0
Mark and Blake, thanks! Hope yours were fantastic as well!
Margo, SO true. In fact, this is actually a law – the Law of Polarity. Everything has an opposite and cannot exist otherwise: hot and cold, up and down, good and bad. Therefore, positive or negative cannot exist alone. You need one in order to have the contrast to recognize the other, for without each, you could not define the other. This is exactly why it is important to appreciate our “feedback,” or what some might refer to as failure, because without it, you cannot define your successes.
PS I love this song.
He would be awesome to see in concert.