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Friday, December 9, 2011
One of my favorite abundance tools, ever!The American Thanksgiving is upon us! Tomorrow, in fact! Thanksgiving means that the holidays
are coming, and even though it’s “officially” a season of giving and family time, sometimes it can be hard
to hold onto and cultivate a sense of abundance.
Since I love y’all, in this newsletter,
I’m going to share one of my favorite abundance tools, and three strategies to achieve it…just in time for
Thanksgiving!
Many of you in the US will be sitting down with family and friends, and some of you
have decided that doing so is not in your best interests, so you’ll be doing your own thing! Whatever
you’re doing, it’s going to be amazing, since I’ve got some fantasmo goodies in here that will exponentially
increase your enjoyment of this holiday. :)
One
of my very favorite tools for helping us see the abundance in our lives is…gratitudes! And Thanksgiving
is a wonderful opportunity tailor-made for us to acknowledge and give thanks for what is going right in our world.
Here are three of my favorite ways to practice gratitude on/near Thanksgiving:
1. O MG, look at all the FOOD!
I mean, really…most
tables are groaning under the weight of turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potato concoctions,
wine, bread, stuffing, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, pie pie pie…It’s impossible to look at this bounty without thinking:
“How grateful am I to eat this wonderful food…that someone else probably cooked.” :)
My mom, a follower of Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, likes to thank the fruits, vegetables, and animals
for giving their lives to enrich our own.
Let’s face it. We have a LOT of plenty here in the
US. Let’s appreciate it!
So…be grateful for the food, for the farmers who harvested
it, for the turkeys that gave their lives, for the people who transported the food to the stores, the gas to the gas stations,
the people who cooked it…the list goes on.
What are you grateful for when it comes to food?
(Note: lots of people have food issues. Including me! So let 'em go, just for a day, and
let this be a way to see the abundance around you!)
And to those of you enjoying a solitary thanksgiving:
bake yourself a chicken or tofurkey or whatever food brings you comfort and joy. And take a moment to be grateful
to yourself for taking the time to care for yourself in this way. Yes, tradition is to be around others for Thanksgiving,
but giving thanks and practicing gratitudes on your own is tremendously powerful.
2. OMG, I’m with my family and incredible friends!
Now, with apologies
to my beloved family, family time ain’t always easy. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that!
Still, I am grateful for their love, grateful for their support, grateful for their insights into me, grateful to be visiting
with my mom in her beautiful home in Upstate NY, grateful to my friend for coming up from NYC to share Thanksgiving with
us, grateful to friends here in Woodstock for sharing their table with us…
The best thing about
staying in this grateful place is that it helps me breathe deeply and get over my knee-jerk irritation when someone says
something that pushes my buttons. (And hey, it’s family, so we all know that’s going to happen!)
So…be grateful for being with your family. They tend to know us best…and we know them best too.
Be grateful that they know your dietary restrictions and work around them. Be grateful that you speak to them and
have a connection with them. Be grateful for this chance to be grateful together.
How are you
grateful for your family?
And to those of you who have concluded that a family
Thanksgiving is not for you for whatever reason…be grateful to yourself for choosing exactly what is right
for you, for protecting yourself and for practicing radical self-care. I applaud you!
3.
Proclaim your gratitude and get others to share theirs!
Gratitude is a practice, and
one way to get started on a continual practice of gratitude is to state it to the world. One of the best Thanksgivings
I’ve ever had was several years age. I had recently started my gratitudes practice, and I asked my family if they’d
be willing to share gratitudes about the prior year. They were, and it was magical on so many levels! It increased
my sense of connection and intimacy with them (because once you know what makes someone grateful and happy, you know them
on an entirely different level), it increased everyone’s sense of abundance and gratitude, it helped me get
clearer on what I’m grateful for, and it helped me truly see that a gratitude practices is transformative.
Bonus: most people like being around other people who focus on the positive, and by encouraging people to share
gratitudes, that can be you! :)
If this calls to you, here’s a strategy that
can work: simply ask whoever’s organizing your Thanksgiving if it would be okay to go around the table at some point
in the mealtime and for everyone share something they’re grateful for. Odds are they’ll be open and grateful
for a chance to show…gratitude. After all, it is Thanksgiving!
Let me know how it goes!
And consider…how does hearing other people’s gratitude make you feel?
And if you’re
enjoying a quiet, solitary Thanksgiving, I encourage you to list your gratitudes…and send them to me so I can bear
witness for you. Because, FYI, hearing other people’s gratitudes increases my own sense of abundance, so send
‘em over!
Now, this is just the tippity top of the iceberg for ways to practice abundance during
the holidays…make sure you keep an eye out so you can register for “Ways to Feel Abundant During the Holidays.”
And I haven’t forgotten I said in my last communique that I’d write an article about abundance
relates to Occupy Wall Street, but…I’m having some writers block and some theoretical issues to parse.
Coming soon, I promise!
In the meantime, have a lovely and delightful and ABUNDANT Thanksgiving!
xoxo
Eryka
5:38 pm est
Monday, September 26, 2011
Rich: a 4-letter word?Rich is a four letter word. Yup, you read me right!Some people might be thinking, how on earth
is rich a four letter word? It’s a beautiful word! Filled with meaning, with possibilities. With,
well, riches. It certainly holds a wealth of meaning. There’s another word: wealth. Similar to rich,
but has (to me) very different connotations. If you’re at all in the self-helpy/personal development world, you’re
already familiar with the idea that your mindset directly impacts how or if you can move forward. If you have a limiting
mindset, you’re going to be limited. If you have an open mindset, you’re much more likely to move forward. (Notice
that I said "more likely." I’m not of the school of thought that says it’s ONLY about thoughts
or mindset. You still have to act, move, have agency…you know, live.) Obviously we can spend months,
years, and lifetimes working on our mindsets; it’s an ongoing process. I uncover yet another limiting belief on almost
a weekly basis. It’s exhausting, but freeing. (Really!) To me, rich can have an undertone of excess,
of something that’s slightly off—like orange juice or apple cider just on the wrong side of its expiration date.
A beautiful piece of silver that’s a little tarnished. Wealth, in comparison, is kind of staid. Comfortable.
Nonthreatening. Not particularly interesting. Rich, though, has a tinge of the forbidden. Kind of
titillating. At least, that's what I think. Still, rich has come to mean something
in our modern vocabulary that can mean…too much. For example, I’m guessing that many of you have
pushed a dessert away, saying, “Oh, I can’t eat that, it’s too rich." Right? Or
maybe you've thought to yourself, “Wow. They are so rich. They are way too rich. They are FILTHY rich.”
And felt a tinge (or surge) of disgust. Maybe even as you felt a bit of envy...that you didn't want to admit you
really felt. So clearly I still have issues with the word. Even though I've done a lot of great and
productive work on myself about money, I still think that people who are rich must’ve done something inappropriate
to get that much money. I still think that people who are rich must be corrupt, buying influence and peddling ickiness.
I still think that people who are rich don’t deserve it. The problem is, if I think that way, I’ll
never be rich. Because I don’t a) want to do anything inappropriate to get rich b) I don’t want to be corrupt
c) and damn it, I will deserve it, because I’ve been working my butt off! So if I think If that’s what
I think being rich is, why on earth would I want to be that? If that’s what I think being rich means, it’ll
never happen. See what I mean? Click here to read the rest of this post and for next steps!
1:43 pm est
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