I want you to read what my client wrote.
“I realized something today that may have been obvious to some but was completely lost on me for years.
Today I finally put it together that I won’t be able to see my family on Easter.
And even though I can cook good food without them there, that isn’t going to make me happy.
Food hasn’t been making me happy all of these years during holidays, it’s the people I spend them with.”
Today, Kathy and I get pretty emotional about what makes us feel connected even when we are apart from people we love.
If you are ready to start finding more connection and comfort in life without food as the backdrop…
Today is a must-listen.
Click here to listen to “Easter Dinner Ain’t Happening…Now What?”
SHOW NOTES:
There are two big holidays coming up, Easter and Mother’s Day. These will be the first big holidays that we’ve had since we started physical distancing.
Every year when it gets close to Thanksgiving and Christmas, Corinne watches her members go into a panic about the food and the shopping. They forget about what’s really important when it comes to the holidays.
When it comes to Easter, we get so busy planning the big meal and making Easter baskets and planning the Easter egg hunts, that we forget what is truly important.
One of Corinne’s members posted that she recently realized that she won’t be able to spend Easter with all of her family. She can still cook a big meal, but it isn’t going to make her happy. Food hasn’t been making her happy all of these years during the holidays. It has always been about the people she’s spending her time with.
This is such an important observation. People get so worked up over the food, that they think that’s all that is important.
It’s easy to sit around at Easter and think about all the things that you don’t get to do. If none of the Easter festivities are happening this year, how can you still appreciate the day? What really is important about Easter?
When you take away the meals and all the other things that society deems important about holidays, it gives you the opportunity to really look at the holiday and realize what is so important about it.
It doesn’t have to be about the food and the activities. Are you making dinner about the food or the people? You can be connected with your family with or without food.
Our lives are so different right now, what do we want to learn from it? This will eventually be over. You can walk away learning that not having Easter dinner is just an inconvenience, not a tragedy.
What are you noticing about your life now that you don’t have the distractions of running out and shopping whenever you want or going out with friends?
If you could only have one thing this Easter, would it be ham or to know that your family is okay?
A lot of the things that we want, we can’t have right now. What can you have right now? You can have connection at any time without it being physical.
Corinne misses her grandmother a lot. She thinks about her and thinks of funny stories about her. Easter was one of her favorite holidays. Her second favorite was Mother’s Day. She loved going to the cemetery for Mother’s Day because she liked putting flowers on her mother’s grave and sister’s grave. It was her way of feeling connected to them.
We’re all craving connection right now because we have not been connecting for a long time. Corinne feels more connected now with the people that she loves. She has reached out on the phone and by text more than she ever does. She spends a lot of time thinking about those important to her in a loving way. She has made it a priority to feel connected.
How have you been spending your holidays? How many holidays have you stressed yourself out trying to make it perfect? Was it worth it?
A lot of us are going to come out of this knowing what is actually important to us.
For years, it was “okay, be at the house at noon for ham.” There wasn’t much thought behind it. Now, we’re having to come up with creative ways to stay connected to our loved ones. We’re putting in extra effort.
Just because you can’t physically be next to your loved ones, doesn’t mean you can’t take the time to think good thoughts about those you love.
For those with loved ones that are out there having to work through this, instead of thinking about how scared you are for them, think about how proud you are of them and how amazing they are.
You can’t boil your holiday down to everything you don’t get to do and everything that is wrong. Figure out a way to get through the day missing some things, but finding things to appreciate. You have to make yourself think of all the things that are right in the world right now.
You can show the people around you how to love right now. Don’t show them how to panic. Show them how to think differently about the things going on right now.
If your brain is always focused on everything that is going wrong, give it a chance to think about what is right by writing down three positive things each day. Make your brain look for what is going right, so that it will start looking for those things throughout the day.
You do not have to feel guilty for thinking good things right now!
When you see the holidays coming, think about what is really important. If you could make anything happen (that could actually happen), what would you do? You can’t change Coronavirus. You can’t change the guidelines we’re honoring right now. You CAN change the way you think and feel through it.
Food doesn’t make you happy. The connection with the people is what is important. Start putting your brain to work on ways that you can feel connected to the ones you love even if you’re not at a table together eating a ham.
