With the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, how much time do you spend intellectualizing gratitude? After all, the holiday is about being grateful for what we have, individually and together.
There certainly are lots of distractions and disasters which preoccupy our thoughts, making us feel guilty about thinking of enjoying ourselves. So, will you need to give yourself permission to be grateful on Thanksgiving? Or will you be fully present and in the moment of the day, without evaluating your performance?
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Yes, it gets overlooked in the retail frenzy which begins in October. Yet, for our tribe across both hemispheres, the holiday represents family time without the concern about exchanging gifts. After all, the greatest gift we give each other is, in fact, each other, no matter how imperfect we are.
Simply put, we are grateful for one another. We can see and feel, can sense, our gratitude for one another without judgment, comparison, evaluation. Our gratitude, perhaps like many of you, is now tempered by the crucible of pandemic isolation and loss of loved ones.
We have an unspoken agreement that there is no place for intellectualizing gratitude in our recipe for Thanksgiving. We do not need to justify our gratitude as if we give ourselves, personally, a performance review.
When you stop and think about it, gratitude is being fully present in each moment, even if those moments are messy and chaotic. And for those of you, myself included, who tend to overthink just about everything, Thanksgiving is a time to rely less on our intellectual and analytical acumen and more on our human “being-ness.”
I wish you and yours an enjoyable Thanksgiving. Cut yourselves some slack. Turn off the need to compare and compete. Be the best possible versions of yourselves, together. Be fully present and in each moment together. That is where the magic happens.
Catalyzing you to be ahead of what is new, next, and continuously changing. | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Complex Problem Solving | Speaker, Consultant, Mentor |
Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset ™ speaking, consulting, and mentoring programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more innovatively as they create and implement innovative and robust business outcomes together. Regardless of whether you are a traditional thinker or a more creative one, use her 3 Core Questions, 4 Change Agreements, and 5 Professional Whys so everyone gets to where they really need to go, together. Babette is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of SHRM, PMI, the National Speakers Association (NSA). Delivered virtually or in-person. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in digital format on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.
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