Thanksgiving – The Other White Meat

It's October 31^st around 9:00 p.m. and the candy fueled decaying corpse of Halloween wasn’t even cold when the commercials for Christmas started.  The bright lights, festivities and the message was that the best time to get with your family is that magic day in December. There was no message about that holiday that falls on the fourth Thursday in November - the holiday that is traditionally reserved for reflection to give thanks for all we have and the blessings bestowed on us.  Thanksgiving is now officially a speed bump on the way to the more financially bloated Christmas holiday. 

I have always loved Thanksgiving even if it does give me a dose of angst as I know that my days of getting everything done before December 25^th are starting to tick away.  It used to be the one day that you knew you had to slow down because the stores were all closed.  If you worked in retail, it gave you a day to rest before the onslaught of Black Friday  - a day when legions of shoppers try to take their local malls, Targets and Wal-Marts like soldiers storming Normandy in WWII.  Black Friday is not for the faint of heart – it takes steely nerves, a strategy and a take no prisoner’s attitude – on that day, you keep your head down and know that fear is good, fear will keep you alive.  It’s precisely why taking Thanksgiving to take stock of your life is so important – you never know when reaching for that drastically reduced big screen TV might be your last.  But seriously, it’s supposed to be a time to be with family – enjoying football and avoiding a political discussion with the uncle who thinks the last good president was Ronald Reagan.  You take the time to go around the table and talk about what you’re really grateful for, not leaving half way through dinner to get to Target hours before it opens at 5:00 p.m. Thanksgiving night to get the $1 DVD door busters.

I guess the bigger question in my mind is – “Have we lost the fine art of being thankful?”  It’s a steadily snarkier world out there where people like Simon Cowell are praised for their brutal honesty and running people down on Twitter and Facebook seems to be America’s favorite past time.  You create a family video on YouTube with the baby’s first steps only to have someone leave a comment that the baby sucks.  Really?  What is happening out there?  Is the need to be the most negative the one who wins?     

Reality shows are steadily showing us the heightened effects of the demise of the human condition that include meltdowns, accusations, selfishness and a total lack of cooperation because you need to stab the other person in the back to get ahead.  But the constant barrage of negativity can take its toll after a while and skew your perception of what you should be grateful for.  If you are not rich, famous and have camera crew documenting your every move in our society, then you have nothing.  If you are not keeping up with the Kardashians then you have little to talk with other people about who would rather discuss the empty twisted adventures of pseudo-celebrities rather then taking the time to be introspective about their own lives.  

There are tons of distractions to keep us from taking stock and realize that what we have is pretty good.  There are smart phones that keep us on track so that we can get the latest tweets and instant messages from Facebook. We can use Outlook to schedule ourselves into oblivion and not have a quiet moment to think because if you are not plugged in, then you are missing out. Those quiet moments are essential for us to connect with who we are, but silencing the mind and really discovering ourselves can be flat out scary.  How many people do you know who are constantly running from appointment to appointment (almost always late I might add) or rehearsal to rehearsal, regaling you with how many projects they are working on. They are always dashing off to the next thing - never really forming tight bonds because keeping things on the surface is much easier than a heavier emotional investment.  It’s easier to cancel at the last minute when you are not deeply bonded to something because you assure yourself that something else will always come along to distract you.   You post the schedule of your exhausting day on Facebook only to be one-upped by someone who is equally over scheduled, because the one who drops dead first while working on that important project wins.You spend so much time trying to assure yourself that things are going great because you’re going at the speed of hyper-space that you don’t have the time to see much of anything until you are so emotionally or physically exhausted, you are forced to stop and hopefully ask yourself why you are so busy.  Why can’t we be thankful for what we have rather than always looking for something more?

An article by Melinda Beck of the Wall Street Journal, reported that in a landmark study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2003, Dr. Robert Emmons and Dr. Michael McCullough showed that counting blessings can actually make people feel better.  A group of 100 undergrads were split into three groups.  Each group had to report on different things for 10 consecutive weeks: one group had to report five blessings each week, one group had to report five negative things each week and the last group just had to report five things that happened.   Needless to say, the group that counted their blessings were happier, exercised more and felt better about their lives than the other two groups.   As simple as it sounds, gratitude is actually a demanding, complex emotion that requires "self-reflection, the ability to admit that one is dependent upon the help of others, and the humility to realize one's own limitations," Dr. Emmons explained.  You’re simply not going to be able to do that if you are constantly rushing from one place to another without the time to reflect on what you really need.

One of my favorite all time movies is It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.  It’s a great movie about the power of being grateful.  In the 1947 movie, George Bailey tries all his life to get out of Bedford Falls because he’s sure they he’ll be completely happy if he can just “shake off the dust of this town” and start anew somewhere else.   The entire movie addresses the yearning of this man to do big things in the world but every time it looks like he might get out, he’s thwarted by his father’s death, his brother’s marriage and his duty to the town he loves and hates.   He marries the love of his life  and has four kids in the home she’s always wanted to live in.   Things are going along pretty well until one Christmas Eve when his uncle misplaces $8,000 (which in today’s market would be closer to $100,000) and everything seems lost.  He’s given everything to this town and now he might go to jail for something he didn’t even do.  When he’s told by his nemesis Mr. Potter that he might be worth more dead than alive - George clutches his life insurance policy and tries to kill himself only to be saved by his guardian angel Clarence.  When he wonders what the world would be like if he was never born, Clarence grants his wish.  He ends up in an alternate reality and sees Bedford Falls empty of happiness and compassion.   All the people he ever cared about and helped fall into despair because he was not around to touch their lives.  He begs Clarence to send him back to his real world, even if it means he’ll go to jail because having the people he loves in his life is worth the risk.  In the end, his family and friends rally to his defense and he realizes that he didn’t need to leave his home, because the world he has created there is amazing and special.  It’s a movie that still resonates with people today – probably more so because it’s easy to feel overlooked and forgotten in our technological age.   

In the same Wall Street Journal article, Ms. Beck discusses “The George Bailey Effect” which asks the readers to subtract a positive person or event from their lives and think about how things would be different.  If you take that flight of imagination, it’s easy to see how your life would be different if you didn’t have that significant event or person, good or bad to help define who you are. For instance, I met my husband Max when I was 25, coming off a bad relationship with an actor and the last thing I wanted was to date another actor.   He was coming off a break-up with an actress so the both of us started off as friends who met doing a play called All Men are Whores (yes, that was the actual name of the play).  We’ve know each other for over 30 years and have been married for 27.  I will tell you that I would be a neurotic self centered person without Max in my life.  I would not have my two amazing girls.  I probably would have been married and divorced a few times to men who would not have treated me very well.   I’d probably either be very skinny or overweight from stress if I was in the entertainment business full time and having crying jags everyday. To put it simply, my life would have no balance - I would be a hot mess.  So when I look across the table and see his face, I’m thankful that he’s part of my life and thankful for the times that we’ve had together.  We have a long history and our life together has definitely seen the “for better or for worse”  sides. We’ve met those times with tenacity, love, laughter and plenty of “That’s What She Said” jokes. 

Eight year ago, my life was very different. I had just been laid off, one of our two cars had died and our sick kitty had also passed.  I could have given into the negative, but I started to volunteer for Hands on Atlanta.  I also helped sort thank-you letters to the soldiers serving overseas which helped put things in perspective because those serving in the dangerous parts of the world needed prayers and support way more than I did.  I was happy to do what I could to help them out.   During the low points in my six months of being unemployed, I made myself take walks at a local park and appreciate the beautiful trees and the sounds of the running brook. I was grateful that I was healthy and had a family that loved me even if I didn’t have a job.

This Thanksgiving, rather sitting around griping and commiserating about the election and threatening secession from the Union (really people – it didn’t really work out so well 160 years ago) or gloating because your guy won, why not talk about all the great things we have in this country – like the right to talk about seceding, the ways can help people affected by Hurricanes recover, the games you used to love to play as kids and how wonderful dinner was. I guarantee if you focus on the positive instead of the negative, everyone will leave the table feeling better and closer. 

Thanksgiving should be about more than just a huge meal to get you from Halloween to Christmas.  It should mean something.  It should mean a heartfelt thank you to those that you appreciate and do kind things for you.  Saying thanks for something specific can mean so much.  The other day, I went to Publix to pick up a few groceries and the cashier asked me if I wanted to donate a few boxes of food for their Food for Sharing program to help needy families in the area.  I said, “Sure, why not?” as she rang up an extra $4.50 to my bill, because that easily could have been my family a few years ago. She thanked me profusely since I was the first person who had taken her up on the offer.  Her supervisor walked up and started to help bag my order and was told that I had just donated to the program.  “That’s great – now we’re ahead of the other team – thank you so much and the family who will get the food thanks you too.”  They were both so happy over what would amount what I would spend on a grande salted caramel coffee from Starbucks – but this was a much better use of my money.  I left with a big smile on my face.  I had made those women’s day and they had made mine because they were sincerely thankful.

You could save yourself so much time and frustration if you just took the time to sit and ask yourself what you are grateful for and what you really need.  The lightening speed of your life can take a pause while you contemplate that.  What are you thankful for?  My guess is that it’s not the fifth project that you’ve just taken on in addition to your regular job.  I’m not going to take the holier than thou attitude because frankly I’m guilty of doing that to myself – I'm an insurance agent, I sell Mary Kay, I've finished a novel that I'm submitting to an agent, and if people ask me to help them do things for non-profits, I have a hard time saying no.  But I have gotten better – I try not to give so much away so that I’m too exhausted to be present for the people that I love and who really need me.   When I take the time to see all the great things I have in my life, I won’t be looking outside of that nucleus to feel complete.

So this year, start a new tradition - sit back and ask yourself what you have to be thankful for and let those near and dear to you know how much you love them.  The last few years have included some really tough times and the loss of my mother and sister-in-law but I got through it. I learned who really loved me, who my friends were and would stick by me no matter what. When you get right down to it, I have everything I need to be happy. Feeling grateful should always be the meat of Thanksgiving – it’s what’s for dinner.

Happy Place

Maybe you, like me, might have had one of those days, weeks or months when getting your sorry ass out of bed was a huge effort.   You turn on the TV and there's Matt Lauer unloading more depressing news on the economy and how we might be headed for another double dip recession.   The employment figures are dismal which means now might not be the best time to reinvent yourself and switch careers by starting that improv program for at-risk kids you've always dreamed of doing  (Insert your own dream here).   You get into your car and put on NPR which has an interview with an economist who tells you that the world markets are not rebounding as they should and things may never be the same economically in your lifetime.   Your heart starts to beat faster, so fast that you can see the steady thumping through your shirt.   Your breathing becomes shallow, you're sweating profusely and starting to get light headed.   You realize that you might be headed straight into a full blown anxiety attack and might pass out at the wheel on your way to work.   

You pull over into the nearest parking lot, try to catch your breath and try to calm down.   You turn the radio to a pop station just to listen to something different.  Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" blares out of the speakers and suddenly you picture those Glee kids singing their hearts out oblivious to Sue Sylvester lurking in the background.   Your heart starts to slow down and you take a shaky swig from your bottled water.  After a minute or two, you can finally catch your breath.   Rather weakly and barely on key, you join Steve Perry at the refrain: "Don't stop believing - hold on to that feeling - streetlights, people - oooooooohhhhhh!"  A sort of calm takes hold of your body as you continue to try to out sing Journey's front man.   Then it occurs to you - that you need to stop listening to depressing news shows and start listening to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars instead.   Because while National Public Radio definitely has the lock on probing interviews - you discover that what you really need is a good dose of the Lazy Song during the morning rush hour.    Singing badly at the top of your lungs in your car is just one juicy slice of awesome to get you through your day.  

Finding your happy place can be a challenge in this day and age.  We seem to be so programed for negativity and gloom and doom that being joyful can seem like a guilty pleasure - especially when the internet is primed to really bring you down.  For every laughing baby on YouTube, there's at least 10 rants from the Real Housewives or a new outbreak of violence or disease in a developing country.  I was talking to a group of women when the resident Debbie Downer proceeded to read a series of depressing statistics that she was getting from her Twitter feed.  When I suggested that she might be happier if she was following Conan O'Brien or Jimmy Fallon and watching a sitcom to break the tension - she looked at me seriously and said "Never!"   Why kill that sense of constant righteous indignation with something fun and mindless? 

Here's the problem constant negativity - habitual thoughts and behaviors create specific neural pathways in the wiring in our brains, similar to the way water flowing downhill creates a groove in the earth. When we think or behave a certain way over and over, the neural pathway is strengthened and the groove becomes deeper. Unhappy people tend to have more negative neural pathways -- their minds are literally stuck in a rut.   But here's the good news: new research shows that when you repeatedly think, feel, and act in a different way, the brain actually rewires itself. This means you can change your happiness set point.   Leading brain researcher Richard Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported recently that, "Based on what we know about the plasticity of the brain, we can think of happiness as a skill no different from learning to play a musical instrument...it is possible to train our minds to be happy." 

For me, finding those little moments of happiness in my day can do more for me than a double dose of St. John's Wort ever could.  For instance, on Saturdays, I go to Zumba and then spend the rest of the day in my yoga pants because frankly it's the weekend - I'm just too lazy to wear real pants.   Going to Target with my kids and getting a decaf low fat Salted Caramel latte with a little whipped cream is a sure ticket to my happy place - it just makes me smile.  Taking the kids to the park and jumping around like an idiot is very therapeutic.  Sitting on the carpet and watching movies with the Amber and Daniel is another way I like to spend some fun time on the weekends.  Cuddling with my husband or exchanging really inappropriate "That's what she said" jokes is a simple way to laugh together.  

Many people expect too much from the pursuit of happiness and make themselves miserable along the way.  They think that by finding that perfect spouse will end their days of loneliness, or getting that big promotion will guarantee financial independence, or finally going to Hawaii on the perfect vacation will give them the Nirvana that they've been searching for.  In the end, they end up disappointed because, no person, place or thing will ever give them that sense of satisfaction if they don't know how to find it for themselves.   

In the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey spends his life regretting never leaving Bedford Falls and feeling like a failure when his business is about go under on Christmas Eve of all days.   He's sacrificed so much to help others and in the end he is emotionally and financially exhausted (as someone whose spent my entire adult life working with charities, I can relate).  He is so tied into finding his destiny once he can leave his hometown that he cannot see all the blessings that have been bestowed on him.  It takes an angel named Clarence to show him what the world would be like if he was not around.   He realizes that it's his wife, family and even that drafty old house that makes him happy not that elusive dream of building bridges overseas.   

You have to find those moments of happiness each day - because if you don't find them for yourself - frankly no one else will.  It's so easy to play a crappy mood forward or to pass on a lousy day at work to those who are near and dear.   One way to beat that is to make some else's day by complimenting a co-worker or the women next to you in the supermarket checkout on her hair or shoes (this is a safe choice even if you're a guy and worried that she might think you're flirting with her - complimenting hair and shoes is not something most straight men do).   When you see how happy a compliment from a random stranger makes someone,  you end up feeling great too.    Those small acts of kindness make your world a better place and can really be a tipping point in someone else's day.   

This parable form the book 5 Habits of Truly Happy People by Marci Shimoff and Carol Kline really brings the importance of happiness into focus: One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside people's heads. He said, "My son, the battle is between the two 'wolves' that live inside us all. One is unhappiness. It is fear, worry, anger, jealousy, sorrow, self-pity, resentment, and inferiority. The other is happiness. It is joy, love, hope, serenity, kindness, generosity, truth, and compassion.  "The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"  The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."  

So do yourself a favor and find at least 30 minutes a day to laugh and spend time with someone you care about - even if it's a pet.  Tell the people that you love simply that you love them.    Watch an episode of The Office after a bad day at work - it will help put things in perspective (because let's face it - we've all worked for a Michael Scott at one time or another).   Happiness can take time to create - but it's totally worth it.  Just close your eyes, take a deep breath and don't stop believing.