The Lazy Genius Podcast - #237 - A Quick Word Before Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

It’s easy to feel like this particular week is pretty condensed. It’s hard, for me at least, to let Thanksgiving just be Thanksgiving. So I want to take a few minutes to center us this week before everything ramps up, whatever that looks like for you and your family. Helpful Companion Links Claim your November preorder bonus for The Lazy Genius Kitchen here Practical past Thanksgiving episodes: #133 - 10 Helpful Thanksgiving Strategies, #130 - The Lazy Genius Guide to Hosting Anything, #131 - The Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey Mindset and gratitude episodes: #38 - The Lazy Genius Practices Thankfulness, #182 - Loving People You Disagree With Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks by Diana Butler Bass Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hi there. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 237. A quick word before Thanksgiving. Now listen, if you need practical Thanksgiving help, hosting, recipes, that kind of thing. I've got you covered there. There is a Thanksgiving themed pre-order bonus for folks who order my upcoming book, The Lacey Genius Kitchen, with downloads on how to host Thanksgiving as well as the most.

Lazy Genius turkey recipe around if you still need a recipe for a turkey. Links for those are in the show notes. There are also Lazy Genius podcast episodes about gratitude, fall rhythms, opening and closing ceremonies, and lots of other things that could be beneficial to you this week. But even listing those things out reminds me how much there is to potentially think about this time of year. This week is a holiday week for a lot of you. It's the middle of the fall season. You're maybe trying to get an early start on Christmas things so you can enjoy that time as well when it comes. It's really easy to feel like this particular week of the year is pretty condensed, right? I mean, it's hard for me at least. It's hard for me to let Thanksgiving, just be Thanksgiving

during Thanksgiving week. So I want to take a few minutes to center us this week before everything kind of ramps up, whatever that looks like for you and your family. I went back to one of my favorite books that is perfect to revisit this time of year. It's a book. It's a book. written by Diana Butler Bass called Grateful, the subversive practice of giving thanks. I love a good subversion and gratitude was always something that needed it. I never found conversations around gratitude, practices around gratitude or even just the posture around gratitude. I never felt like they met me where I was. I'm all for being grateful. And I have been known to use it in parenting, you know, like a kid is complaining. And I asked them to try and think of three

things they're grateful for to sort of counteract it. It's not a bad idea. But then I'm actually doing to them what I often feel, which is forced. Gratitude seems hollow when it's forced. I could never get my head around what it really means to be thankful to mark the moments when I am and how they change me. It just always felt like another chore, you know, like another thing I was supposed to do, like drinking a lot of water or going on date night or something. I couldn't seem to make it work in my life. And then I read this book. I read Grateful and everything changed. It really did subvert the idea I had in my head and it taught me a new way to see gratitude. So in this very, very specific titular season of Thanksgiving, I want to share some

words and thoughts mostly from this book that will hopefully give you a grounding perspective that has really helped me. One of the many things that used to frustrate me is that I didn't always feel grateful in the moments that I thought I should. Has that ever happened to any of you? Or I didn't feel grateful when everyone else did. Or maybe the way I felt about a particular moment

or event or person, it landed differently for me than it landed for someone else. And when my own experience of something was different than someone else's, who was also maybe experiencing gratitude, but maybe more outwardly or in a way that I felt was more normalized, I felt like my gratitude wasn't quite right, that it didn't really count, that I wasn't seeing the full picture. That posture always kept me on guard. I would kind of like temper my reaction until I had a better understanding of everyone else's reaction. And then I would know more fully

how I was supposed to act, like what I was supposed to say, how I was supposed to feel. Then I read this foundational thought from Diana's book. It's like in the very first chapter. There is no one experience of gratitude. Rather, it is a complex and episodic thing and one that is deeply personal. For all its uniqueness and complexity, there is a common core to feeling grateful. We recognize a circumstance, event, or situation, even if it is a trial, as a gift. We have received some unexpected benefit. We respond with words and actions, and we become our best selves in the process. Gifts are not only pleasurable, but the right gift at the right time can change us. When such gifts arrive, we know it. Something deep within rises

to the surface. That mixture of love and appreciation we call thanks. something deep within rises to the surface. Just the other day, I was in my bathroom after dinner, like changing clothes or something. And I heard this like burst of laughter. Hearing a kid deep belly laugh might be one of the greatest sounds on the planet, even if that kid is not your kid. So it was Annie laughing, my five-year-old. She was cackling. And I went to the bedroom and I saw her playing and wrestling with cause, my husband, her dad.

and even though he makes her laugh like that a lot, even though they play together pretty much every night after dinner, even though this was not a very particularly unique moment, something deep within rose to the surface in me. I had this moment of profound gratitude, of realizing the tremendous gift of cause being the father of my children. I don't have a relationship with my biological father. And I know that loss played a part in my gratitude, you know, this swell, this mixture of seeing their joy together of knowing what a consistently fantastic dad causes, of knowing that unless tragedy comes upon our family, Annie will have a dad who deeply loves her and invests in her for a lifetime. I was overcome with gratitude. And it was a moment that changed me a

little. It moved me further away from the fear that I have often lived with of having kids who experience a childhood like I had, of being afraid of a parent or not sure if they were loved. Every time I experience that gift of gratitude, that moment in time that just lands, you know, I move deeper into healing. And I can't manufacture that. I cannot mechanize that. I can't necessarily repeat it on my own, which is part of what makes it beyond me, what makes it kind of magical. Because it is. G.K. Chesterson says that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. I love that. We'll be right back. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV,

that handles everything from drop-off to off-road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at ototrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art.

I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. There's an interesting paradox with gratitude. Moments just happen, right? Something deep within rises to the surface. We feel small in the best way. we feel interconnected, we feel alive. But are we just at the mercy of those accidental moments?

It is really important to remember that that is not the only way to experience and even look for gratitude. Diana Butler Bass in this book, she talks about something we're all relatively familiar with already, and that is mindfulness, paying attention, staying aware. when we are mindful of our lives, our eyes can see those places that inspire wonder and gratitude, maybe a little bit more easily. But there is one specific difference she talks about in her book that again has been so transformative for me and my own relationship with gratitude. And that is headwinds and tailwinds. If you're running, it's the wind in your face, headwind, versus the wind at your back, a tailwind.

Researchers have found that we tend to notice the headwinds in our lives more quickly. We see the challenges and the hardships. We mark those. We feel resentment when we don't get what we worked for, despite all of those challenges, you know. And sometimes, this happens to me a lot, we have confirmation bias that things are so hard because we're looking for them to be hard. Tailwinds, on the other hand, are those advantages and

privileges and blessings that we grow so accustomed to that we don't really notice them anymore. They contribute to our well-being and our place in this world in huge ways, but because they are at our back supporting us almost invisibly, we don't really notice them. And therefore, we have a harder time being grateful for them or seeing them as a more integral part of the story. Bass says in grateful, tailwinds should not be invisible. Instead, they should call forth, I received this. I am so grateful. It's so simple, right?

But a regular awareness of our tailwinds helps us cultivate gratitude on a regular deep level. It's different than just saying, like, be grateful for what you have. That distinction between headwinds and tailwinds, it's just been huge for me because there's a nuance there in what I have and being grateful for it. And to put like a more conclusive point in this, she also writes, gratitude is not about stuff. Gratitude is the emotional response to the surprise of our very existence, to sensing our inner light and realizing the astonishing sacred, social, and scientific events that brought each one of us into being. That to me gives a new, more compelling perspective on this.

things like gratitude journals, at least in the way that I previously saw them. So that is essentially the quick word before Thanksgiving. A reminder or even maybe a new reframe on gratitude as you move into this week and this season. Again, the book is Grateful by Diana Butler Bass. And to close this episode, I'd actually love to read you a prayer that she wrote in November, 2016 to be read around the Thanksgiving table. Even though you're not around one right now, because listening to a podcast while you're having Thanksgiving dinner would be weird. I want to share this beautiful prayer with you as we close. And I will say this, even though this

prayer is written to God by a person who believes in God, I think that many of these words, and especially the spirit from which they were written, are relevant to anyone who listens. God, there are days we do not feel grateful. When we are anxious or angry, when we are alone, when we do not understand what is happening in the world or with our neighbors, we struggle to feel grateful. But this Thanksgiving, we choose gratitude. We choose to accept life as a gift from you.

from the unfolding work of all creation. We choose to be grateful for the earth, from which our food comes, for the water that gives life, and for the air we breathe. We make the choice to see our ancestors, those who came before us, and their stories as a continuing gift of wisdom for us today.

We choose to see our families and friends with new eyes, appreciating them for who they are, and be thankful for our homes, whether humble or grand. We will be grateful for our neighbors, no matter how they voted, or how much we feel hurt by them. We choose to see the whole planet

as our shared commons, the public stage of the future of humankind in creation. God, this thanks we do not give thanks, we choose it, and we will make thanks with strong hands and courageous hearts. When we see your sacred generosity, we become aware that we live in an infinite circle of gratitude, that we are all guests at a hospitable table around which gifts are passed and received. we will not let anything opposed to love take over this table. Instead, we choose to see grace, free and unmerited love,

and the giftedness of life everywhere, as the tender web of all creation. In this choosing and in the making, we will pass gratitude onto the world. Thus with you and with all those gathers, gathered here, we pledge to make thanks, and we ask you to strengthen us in this resolve, here, now, and into the future, around this table, around the table of our nation, around the table of the earth.

Do you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.