​It’s American Thanksgiving time again, when people in the U.S. are urged from all directions to be grateful. And the gratitude craze isn’t all-American: especially in spiritual circles, it covers the globe.

I’m not (entirely) against gratitude, but I have written before about the potentially more solid and powerful aspect of appreciation, as compared to gratitude (which may have stickier components, like that of needing to put out I’m-so-grateful to deserve good things coming your way).

In this writing, I’d like to explore the POWER of appreciation in your process of creating your life.

As you look around you and observe your life from eagle view, or take in this one moment, appreciation is always available.

It’s an option. It’s a choice.

It’s worth reaching for, because what you appreciate really does nourish your total well-being. It feels good to appreciate. You feel good about what you behold when you appreciate it. You set yourself up for feeling more goodness, and hope expands, and your sense that your life is worth showing up for expands.

So then your sense of can-do expands. Your ability to take the next step with ease expands. With appreciation in the fore, you may find yourself more energized and clear in creating your life.

Everything expands as you give it your appreciation. It gets better and feels nicer and turns its best face your way. So …

• Appreciate your home
• Appreciate what transports you
• Appreciate this body you’re in, that is both home and transport
• Appreciate what and how much you can do
• Appreciate your work
• Appreciate your people
• Appreciate random people you cross paths with
• Appreciate what you have access to because of where you live
• Appreciate the animals you get to encounter or interact with
• Appreciate Mother Earth, and her trees & stones & water
• Appreciate the weather

​That’s a good one to stop on (the list could go on and on, obviously). It’s a good one because we’re BOTHERED by the weather these days. It can disturb us.

But note that anything else on the list can go off-kilter! Things (people, places) go wrong or get wacky all the time. It’s all in progress and impermanent, either breaking down or growing & improving.

So something not wanted or not to your liking can be found in most anything most anytime.

These somethings can, could, and do easily make you feel bad, if you let them. They stir up dissatisfaction (and maybe a sense that you're not okay, and then maybe a fear you’ll never be okay). …

Think in terms of where you put your FOCUS.

In any life, any scene, any moment, there’s wanted and unwanted. (That’s Abraham-Hicks language again.) There’s always stuff to appreciate with every fiber of your being, and stuff to bellyache about.

Which will you focus on?

It’s up to you what you animate and fuel and expand with speech and thought and strong emotion.

When you offer & feel appreciation (especially with every fiber of your being), you energize your own being and your very sense of well-being. You also declare and establish that this stuff you’re appreciating is what most matters to you, what’s predominant for you.

And that predisposes you to notice more of it, to make much of it, to lean into all that you appreciate that’s right here, already in place in this imperfect moment & reality.

Thus, you expand and you create more of what’s wanted. By choosing appreciation, you consciously create your life, the life you want.

Call it self-fulfilling prophecy, call it Law of Attraction, call it basic common sense: there it is any way you slice it.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Gratitude has been all the rage for some time, but some of us can't stomach it.

I was blown away the first time I heard Abraham-Hicks talk about why appreciation is more powerful (and more satisfying, more supportive of joy and well-being) than gratitude.

Gratitude almost always hits me wrong. This, mind you, is in the context of living life as a project in presence, cultivating ongoing awe in the beauty that gets through the cracks no matter what, meeting every face as the face of god, looking for all that supports me at every turn and finding it. I'm not the grinch.

Still, mentions of gratitude can set off that internal cringe.

I hear too many people treat gratitude like a should that somehow, when reached for (especially when they feel terrible), will bring them up a few notches on some spiritual grading scale (that I'm pretty sure nobody, no deity, no entity of earth, heaven, or hell is tabulating).

People are typically being hard on themselves when they rush to gratitude. They're not being still for what actually needs to be met that they're misinterpreting as a failure to be sufficiently grateful.

It amounts to shaming themselves to push themselves into something supposedly more elevated. Thus, they take the focus off themselves when perhaps a different and more clear focus on self would provide the needed release or breakthrough or ability to see the glass half-full.

Anyone who knows anything about my work knows I'm not a validating therapist willing to sit around listening for hours to people retell the story of how life or others have kept them down. But it's not about shoving down or shaming the stories! The beautiful breakthroughs happen in catching how you're framing things with no judgment (WITH ZERO JUDGMENT) so you can consider, dismantle, and reframe your own thinking and see something new, full of possibility. There's pain-body work to be done, too, to meet and soothe what feels bad without believing it shouldn't feel bad. This stuff is powerful, transformational.

Gratitude in itself isn't evil, but it doesn't pair nicely with should. That's a great thing to watch for in your own thinking and speech: "I should be grateful."

Really? When you're saying you should be grateful, consider it may be a royal distraction (never mind spiritual bypass). You might gain more from coming closer to whatever you're thinking and feeling that's throwing you off.

My favorite current teacher, Abraham-Hicks, explains that appreciation is stronger than gratitude this way: There's often a flavor of unworthiness in gratitude. As in,

• I need to be grateful because I don't really deserve what I've got.
• I need to be grateful for what I've got and I'm greedy for wanting more.
• I need to be grateful because what I've got might be taken away if I'm not grateful for it.

When you're in appreciation, you simply solidly feel good about what is. You're taking in what you love about this reality, this person, this meal, this state of affairs, these finances—whatever it is. You're feeling in to your own inner sense of appreciation, and it's authentic! Conversely, gratitude can feel more like an external concept to reach for, or even to force.

So consider trading in gratitude for appreciation this Thanksgiving. Or say both, "I'm grateful for ..." and "I appreciate ..." Try both, in tandem or at different moments! See if, to you, there's a nuance or a world's worth of difference.

Consider dropping the requisite gratitude list and instead keeping an ongoing tally of all you appreciate in your life, your partner, your family members, the place where you live, the job you've got, the skills and resources that support you, the body that serves you.

Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for connecting to my world. I so appreciate your presence here.

love & blessings, Jaya

Here's a later post with more on the power of appreciation (2023): Appreciation: An under-appreciated tool for creating your life.

For more on ease during the holidays, see also Recipes for Easiest Holidays Ever.

 
Recipes for Sanity & Self-Honoring during the Holidays

It's not just your crazy mother or clueless cousin doing what predictably makes you quietly go insane. It's you. It's that you predictably go quietly insane.

This collection of simple and radical recipes should get you to more nuances of grounded, present, open, easy, humor-aware. (For a humorous angle on what normally feels like no joke, see the Recipe for Not Being Driven Insane by the Ones Who Drive You Insane. There's a radical experiment possible with the Recipe for Letting Go of Control—take it to heart.) All of this should support you to give thanks at Thanksgiving (and beyond) from a genuinely appreciative stance.

Use the headings to navigate all the material below. Go to what serves you and what you want to serve. Recipes are preceded by some notes on presence. (I'm on a personal and professional mission to keep going deeper and getting more subtle with what it means to be present.)

These are the recipes covered below (scroll down to "RECIPES BEGIN HERE" and sub-headings below that of specific ones that call to you):

• Recipe for Letting Go of Control (the disaster-zone metaphor that puts it all in perspective)
• Recipe for Presence
• Recipe for Being at Ease
• Recipe for Connecting to Others You May Not Typically or EasilyConnect With
• Recipe for Not Being Driven Insane by the Ones Who Drive You Insane
• Recipe for Connecting to Source, Self, and Others

Notes on Presence
Going back to known people and places with predictable challenges and triggers doesn't require replaying the same call-and-response scenarios.

How is it even possible to do it differently? In a word, presence.
Presence is the how. It's the thing that allows you to have half a prayer of choosing (hey, even super-solid agency in choosing) how you want to respond, as opposed to reacting from your well-rehearsed personality strategy. It even helps you find your footing again when you catch yourself in reactive mode, either internally or externally. (Sharp tone? Rolling/glaring eyes hijacked by your inner teen?)

I actually believe it's not that hard to cultivate presence and step in differently. And in fact, your quotient of ease will keep increasing as you do, then it gets easier and easier.

When you're in the past reviewing or measuring the present against all you've ever dealt with; or when you're in the future (even, how will I get to the end of this day)—you've left the present. You've therefore abandoned yourself (because your actual self is here, now) and you're not engaged with your smarts, wit, potential clarity, power of choice, compassion for self and others (I could go on). You're also unable to take responsibility for self-care, never mind total self-honoring that nurtures and invites your best self.

Presence doesn't require exertion. It's more about relaxing and allowing than straining. It does require a willingness to keep practicing, keep coming back, keep tuning in. It also requires allowing what is: thus, when you're present, you'll be present not only to the love and nice smells and unicorns and rainbows, but to the twisting in your gut, the painful ideologies of other human beings, your own tense body and judgmental mind, and so on. Presence means tuning in to and allowing whatever is—not setting it up so that you control what is (probably what you're up to when you can't relax).

Uh, what's the point of getting present (in the midst of what could be love-fun-warm-fuzzies) to what hurts, feels bad, creates sorrow, anger, and tense resentment?

I've got 3 great answers to that.
Great answer #1: You're in reality and aligned with what's actually happening when you get present to all of it. This means you're more sane, and more equipped to think clearly. (Delusion is so messy.)

Great answer #2: Since presence means tuning in to ALL that is, you get to choose your focus. That's actually a lot of power—just be willing to be sloppy and graceless for a minute; elegance will gradually increase. Your choice in focus will allow you to respond more often than you react, which includes responding kindly to your own reactivity when it grabs the reins. Presence means you're here in time and space, alert to what's actually happening, accepting it and responding to it authentically (including moving toward what you want more of and away from what you want less of).

Great answer #3: Presence also allows you to make choices, draw boundaries, and note when you need a break, a reset button, or any form of self-care. Presence allows for swift course-correction.

Swift course-correction is one of my favorite things to play with. Never beat yourself up for noticing you're not present. Then there's no pain in finding yourself off-track (you WILL sometimes find yourself off-track): with no judgment, you get to simply and quickly course-correct as awareness comes in. A neutral metaphor from Abraham-Hicks is the rumble strip on the freeway: as soon as you feel the tires go bumpety-bump-bump-bump, just veer back into your lane. No need to self-chastize or agonize over being on the rumble strip again. (One of my favorite simple phrases to go to: There's no problem.)


RECIPES BEGIN HERE

Recipe for Letting Go of Control (the disaster-zone metaphor that puts it all in perspective)

1. Go into the scene mentally giving everyone permission to do what they do.
2. Pretend each character is a force of nature (they all are).
3. Pretend you're in a disaster zone, so your mobility is compromised, your usual comforts are gone, it's a total mess with no end in sight, and you've got two jobs:
   1. Watch for how you might get your needs met, and keep finding what supports you; keep noticing that you're okay, really.
   2. Watch for how you can help or alleviate the suffering of those around you. You're not bigger than all that's happening in the disaster zone. You're not God, if you will. But you can offer some ease, humor, physical help with tasks, compassion, kindness.

This will set you up nicely for having no expectations of comfort. By and large, people don't rail at tsunamis and earthquakes. They surrender to what's happening, get help, offer support to one another. So surrender. Learn what's possible in the midst of all the crazy factors that are just way beyond your control.

Note that a longer version of the disaster-zone metaphor for perspective & ease can be found here.

Recipe for Presence
Use these three steps to COME BACK to presence. (They can be gone through over and over and over. If you think it's not working, this could simply mean that you're not willing to go through them one more time, now.)

1. Ground yourself: Tune in to your feet on the ground; feel your body in the furniture. Feel the connection. Now you're more in your body.
2. Connect to your senses: Pleasant or unpleasant, there are things to see, hear, feel, smell, taste (and aren't you charmed if you have access to all five of those?). So go through them, one more time. Now your bodily senses are activated and informing you about what's actually happening (not about stories from past or bleak predictions of future—no need to predict even the next hour).
3. Connect to the breath: Watching your breath go in and out, you come to the core of you. In other words, you get centered or you recenter. You slow the breath down and actively, consciously feel its soothing effects. As you do this, the breath naturally slows and elongates. Now your entire nervous system thanks you.

Recipe for Being at Ease
Know, going in, some basic things about ease. (Think of ease as closely related to personal power. Picture a large cat: ease; power.) Periodically remind yourself of these. Note that the recipe for presence pairs well with the one for ease.

1. You don't have to smile and—counter to what you were told growing up—there's no special virtue in smiling. Notice when smiling makes you feel worse, not better; fake, not engaging.
2. Take solace in plain face, and connect to people from a more authentic place by not arranging your features (thus tensing) to convey something to them. (Needless things we try to convey to others through facial efforts: I'm nice, I'm safe, you're fine, you can trust me, I'm really listening, etc. All of those things can be conveyed or gotten to organically, in good time, with no straining whatsoever. With no effort on your part, they take over the face and express in countless ways when they're actually needed and authentically operative.)
3. Eat slowly. Chew a lot. Enjoy the food you eat by really tasting and experiencing it, by noticing when more feels bad, not good. Just put your fork down for a moment and breathe into your belly—the food will still be there when you pick it up. On top of whatever you're navigating, why add the physical discomfort brought about by unconscious eating? (Here's a blog post with 6 Conscious-Eating Tips.)
4. Apply #3 to anything else that could throw you off—alcohol, sugar, sarcasm.

Recipe for Connecting to Others You May Not Typically or Easily Connect With
This one likely boils down to, Be quiet if you have little or nothing to say and be real when you speak.

1. More than anything, use eyes and alert senses to connect—notice how you use face arrangements, tension, words and word formulas, and drop instead into silence and sensing.
2. Listen more to connect. Listen for something new. Listen for something you're curious about. Listen inside for what sparks you to really want to speak.
3. Tell the truth in conversation or be quiet, but don't pretend. Pretending is too costly of your inner resources.
4. Follow your interests—go for what you actually want to ask and talk about. It's such a relief to let go of formulas and expectations in conversation. (You can literally say, "I don't want to answer that question. I want to talk about this instead." Well, I've done it, anyway.)

Recipe for Not Being Driven Insane by the Ones Who Drive You Insane
This makes a game of the whole thing. What if you were having fun with your aversions and judgments instead of by turns indulging them and feeling bad about them?

1. Go into the scene mentally giving everyone permission to do what they do.
2. Do not be shocked or outraged by the nonsurprising same-old-same-old. Do not bristle against what you knew you signed up for by agreeing to enter the scene.
3. When someone predictably plays their role perfectly, or even generates the best self-caricature you've ever seen, admire that! Be in awe of how they nail it every time—even still surprise you when you think you've seen all their tricks! Mentally give them an award if they outdo themselves. (Hell, you could even sit around making an actual award if you want something to do with your hands besides wring them or shove more food and drink in your face.)
4. For the royally challenging one, keep a piece of paper in your pocket with the predictable and (potentially) maddening things they do already written down. During private moments, check them off. (If no prep time in advance, you can note them as they happen.) If you want to create a point system and perhaps rewards (rewards for you!) at various point levels—go for it.

Recipe for Connecting to Source, Self, and Others

1. Follow the above recipes. You're already connected, so these are no more than tactics to reassert your own awareness of that connection.
2. Stay alert to the magic: signs and symbols, gorgeous timing, fun with words and numbers, echoes, repetition--all manner of synchronicity. My magic program (taped on 11-11 at 11) can support you in that, during holidays and beyond.
3. Forgive yourself for anything. Forgive others for everything.​

Love and blessings, Jaya

P.S. A recipe for the gratitude-intolerant also exists on this blog. You might also be interested in the disaster-zone metaphor for perspective and ease.

This article appears in July of 2012 in the (amazing) Ithaca food co-op's newspaper, GreenLeaf. Because I wrote it for the co-op, the focus is on making dietary changes or dealing with dietary restrictions. Every one of the 20 points (even the one about snacks!) applies to anyone making or wishing to make any life change.

​
Whether you've received some diagnosis (say, hypoglycemia, diabetes, or celiac disease) that requires a change in your eating habits, or you simply decide to experiment with food choices to see if a change of diet might give you a different experience (as I did — successfully! — with trying an anti-inflammatory diet to reduce pain levels), you may find the prospect of radical dietary change a daunting one. You may feel ill-equipped to face it.

The concepts that follow can be applied to any realm of life, to any place where life invites you to step into change that scares you ... even as you see the greater well-being and better life such change may offer.

1. It's empowering to hold a consciousness of choice. Even if it's life-and-death (as with diabetes, for instance), changing your diet is still a choice. Dying is an option. So if you choose to live, choose it with gusto and conviction. Choose the diet that will give you a vibrant life.
   
   
2. Having chosen, get 100 percent behind your choice. I never stand in front of a case of pastries wondering if I should have one because the decision's already been made; there's nothing to debate. (If you've made the choice to be monogamous, isn't it insanity to walk around checking out others? You'll only feel a constant dissatisfaction and bring a flimsy presence to your relationship.)
   
   
3. Remember what you're up to. Have clear intentions around health and well-being. Write them down. Post them. Read them often. Remind yourself every day what you're doing and why. Be in a grand experiment!
   
   
4. If dietary changes mean misery and deprivation to you, you'll feel miserable and deprived. Focus instead on how lucky you are to have this information, to have the option to control your own diet. Try on a spirit of exploration and curiosity, a conviction that if this change is what most serves you, you'll figure it out and life will support you in the process.
   
   
5. Don't expect yourself to have a great attitude all the time, but do catch yourself when you're in misery and deprivation and shift to something else. There's hardly anything in life we just turn on and it stays on. Your conviction will likely waver. Just keep coming back to your intention as quickly as you catch your mind straying.
   
   
6. Remember that others on the planet have it worse than you. Consider those who would gladly trade their food (or lack thereof) for your dietary restrictions. I don't mean you should access the vicious inner parent and hiss reminders about children in Ethiopia. But if you can always think of someone who's worse off than you are, this can bring you back to appreciating what you've got (which is empowering).
   
   
7. Stay open. Keep learning, keep experimenting, keep talking to people to get their ideas and suggestions. If something tastes off or incomplete, then you're probably not done — spicing can be corrected; ingredients can be added. For me, giving up dairy has meant creamy avocados, flavorful fresh herbs, the clean crunch of sauerkraut.
   
   
8. Get comfortable with your discomfort. You can't get through a human life without it, and if your m.o. is to prevent all discomforts, this only leads to more! So when life brings up unavoidable discomfort, why not sit squarely in it and get okay with where you are? You're there anyway. Comfort and pleasure will surely cycle back around, and discomfort has gifts to offer while it's here. (You may grow some muscles you didn't have before, and muscles of any kind are totally appealing.)
   
   
9. Consider giving up snacks, especially if finding snack foods seems problematic. Snacks are one of the ways we comfort ourselves as quickly as discomforts come up. They can also keep us from hydrating properly — why not reach for a glass of water when your body needs something between meals?
   
   
10. If dietary restrictions make you feel like all pleasure has been drained from your life, this is a sure sign it's time to redefine. Has food always been your primary source of pleasure? What's gotten lost that you need to get back to? What have you never yet sampled? Pleasure comes from many arenas: it may be time to explore.
    
    
11. Stay aware of cause-and-effect. If I'm thinking I'd like to put cheese on something just this once, I ask myself, Do I want to be a constellation of pain centers tomorrow? I love my job, and it's important to me to be fully present to my clients; I do this more effortlessly when my body feels good.
    
    
12. When you feel discouraged, don't do anything that actually harms you, and do anything you see to do, however small, that helps you. With food, this may simply mean eating to feed yourself within your dietary restrictions whether it's a great delight or not. Sometimes food is just fuel — can your inner gourmet live with that? And courage is a renewable resource, so go to bed with the idea you'll find your creativity and tenacity in the morning and get more information and support.
    
    
13. Don't talk to anyone who treats you like a victim of dietary restrictions. If you let him, Eeyore will gladly join you for breakfast and you can both sag glumly over your gluten-free, sugarless, hold-the-cream cream of buckwheat. Find true allies instead. Find people who inspire you because they've made successful changes, people who have great recipes, people who say “You can do it” and “How can I help?” instead of “Poor you — I could never do that.”
    
    
14. Have mini-goals that you can actually meet and set up a reward system that doesn't sabotage your process and truly feels rewarding. (In my twenties I used to reward myself for not eating sugar with a major chocolate binge that happened to coincide with the full moon and disorienting hormonal shifts. Yep, total looney tunes.)
    
    
15. There's a lot of wisdom in the 12 Steps' one-day-at-a-time mindset. Giving something up forever, especially if you love it and can hardly imagine life without it, is very hard to do. Giving it up for today is completely doable. Bring it to NOW. One day, one meal, one moment at a time.
    
    
16. Think of when you've navigated major change: When you took some higher education or training program? Got into a serious relationship? Had children? Started a new job, your own business, some creative endeavor that blasted your prior efforts out of the water? Was it stressful? Yes. And was it worth it? Yes, yes, and yes again. Make a list of all you've already changed or given up. Honor your own strength. Believe in your capacity for change.
    
    
17. Don't tell yourself lies. “I can't do this.” “This is terrible.” “I don't have time for this.” “I could do this if only … [something were happening, or something else weren't].” Recognize such thoughts as lies, and recognize their power to undermine your efforts. Acknowledge you don't know how, acknowledge it feels hard right now, but do not tell yourself, as if it's a fact, that you can't do what most any human on the planet can do.
    
    
18. Remember you never have to know how. The how always reveals itself in the process. Just be clear about what you mean to do, and let the how take care of itself.
    
    
19. Believe that the Universe is conspiring in your favor. List every benefit you can find to making these changes. This challenge is here to grow you, not to thwart you; it's here to move you toward greater thriving. List the benefits again in six months, because you'll be amazed by how the list has grown. Life is not against you. Life is for you, and this change will bring in something you needed in order to step more fully into the next highest version of yourself.
    
    
20. Start now. Don't wait till some event has come and gone or you've had one more chance to have your favorite sundae in that cute little shop in Provincetown. Why prolong decision or action? Do you really need more evidence or more preparation? Once you have clear intentions, the only thing that can stop you is your own movement in another direction. Proceed toward your intention, today.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here's another post on 6 tips for conscious eating.
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Here's a post with a cool process for leveraging changes made before to fuel the next change you'd like to implement into your life. I used food mindsets I changed to provide an illustration.