​Every year, spiritual directors, life coaches and other modern gurus pause to offer advice on how to get through the holidays.  Our advice usually includes a series of Don’ts.
 
Don’t over spend.
Don’t over eat.
Don’t drink too much.
Don’t stay out too late.
 
Some of us have softened that advice a bit by transforming them into “Do” statements.
 
Do set a budget and stick to it.
Do pay attention to what you eat and choose well.
Do socialize but drink responsibly.
Do get enough sleep.
 
In general, this advice can be categorized as a plea for excessive moderation during the holidays.  “In all things, be moderate!” ‘Let you watch words be “Neither too much, nor too little.”’  “Just enough is more than enough.”  “One cookie is better than two.”  “One moderately priced present is better than two or even one extravagantly priced gift.  It’s the thought that counts.”  “Who needs a full week when a few days will be enough.”  “Moderation is the key that unlocks the joy of the holidays.”  Or so we are told.
 
I have one word for this advice, but my Momma told me not to use words like that.  So, I will have to let you use your imagination.  “&*^%$@*&!”  We can and do become stressed during the holidays and moderation simply adds another reason for it.   We stress out over our moderation.  The temptations of the holidays cause enough stress.  But the guilt of failing to live up to the absolute moderation of the gurus creates a whole new class of stress, increased shame for not having more “control” over ourselves.  This spiritual anguish can destroy more joy than the calories from that second cookie.
 
For this holiday season, I invite you to add one simple statement to this advice.  Make moderation your watch word, but do not take moderation to excess.

​I offer you a wonderful word, “Lagniappe” - a little something extra!  The French-speaking people in and around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean use this word to describe what it means to honor their customers and friends.  They add a little something extra.  This came out of the practice of a “baker’s Dozen” where a medieval clerk would add another cookie to a dozen just to make sure that they were not flogged for short-changing the customer.  But the people of the Gulf and Caribbean took it as a way of celebrating their customers. 
 
Such celebration is, by definition, an excess.  It comes from a Latin word that means to honor something important.  It means stepping beyond our day-to-day lives and enjoying something that stirs the deeper currents in life.  Deeper joy, deeper reverence, deeper love, deeper hope, deeper trust, etc.  Christians celebrate the eucharist.  Jews celebrate the Passover.  Muslims celebrate Ramadan.  We celebrate birthdays, weddings, baptisms.  The word holiday is a contraction for “Holy day” which implies that it speaks to something deeper than the everyday.  It calls for an honoring that is beyond the ordinary, a celebration.  An excess of celebration than would usually take place if it was just a Tuesday rather than Christmas.
 
I invite you to moderate your moderation so that you can truly celebrate these deeper currents. 
 
Enjoy that extra cookie, just not a dozen.  Take a walk in the park over your lunch hour rather than eating at your desk.  Just be sure you get back before the lunch hour is over.  Spend an evening out with friends even if it costs you a few hours of sleep.  Just make sure you do not fill your week with late nights.  Don’t break the bank but go for that little extravagance for your spouse.  Celebrate your love and honor their love for you with the delight it will bring to you both.  Take a few days with the kids playing in the snow.  That memory will be worth it.
 
Lagniappe!  Celebrate!  Honor the holy days!  Let a little excess ignite the warming glow of joy during these special days!

Beyond Moderation in What we Eat
 
Lagniappe
 

Whenever we heard these words as children, they were seldom the result of our making a good choice.  They usually followed a very bad choice that had negative results for ourselves or others.  They generally came before some sort of punishment that was intended to increase the discomfort of the negative consequences themselves.  Being held accountable and responsible for our actions was never a good thing when we were children.
 
But we were lucky if we had parents who helped us accept responsibility for our choices even though we probably did not always appreciate their efforts.  Bring held responsible for our choices is not a negative experience for the “grown up.”  It can have one of several positive outcomes for the “woke” person. 
 
We can celebrate well-made choices.  It feels good to know that you made the right choice in a difficult situation.  It confirms our positive self-image and encourages us to look back and see what went right.  It offers a good dose of energy as we move into our next opportunity to choose.
 
We can also celebrate the opportunity to learn from less than good choices.  Having a negative consequence can also offer a bounty to our lives.  Once we acknowledge the disappointment, the fall-out from a bad choice offers us the gift of insight.  We can look back and see if we based our choice on bad information, misreading the situation, relying on unreliable circumstances, or simply screwing up.  Perhaps we just did the right thing at the wrong time.  A bad choice allows us to learn from the best teacher of all, life itself.  But this only works if we are grown-up and not trapped in self-justification and ego-satisfaction.  But the grown up can celebrate a bad choice as an opportunity to move forward with greater insight and understanding.
 
We also learn to live and appreciate that others struggle with in their choices and sometimes make poor decisions.  By having failed we can become less judgmental about other’s bad choices.  Again, this does not work for the man-child or woman-child.  They are unable to acknowledge their responsibility and thus see themselves as always making the right decision.  They have no empathy for others who come up short in life.  But for those who are grown up, our own struggles make us sensitive to the struggles of others and able to encourage others to learn from their mistakes and bad choices.  Adults celebrate the gift of empathy that comes with bad choices.
 
Finally, the grown up who makes bad choices can find themselves in good company and on common ground with others who struggle to be responsible.  We can find companions who can help us grow through the difficulty and embrace life as something more than “winning.”  We will find that we are surrounded by a great host with whom we can find love and trust, joy and hope even when we fall short of our own expectations
Therefore, I encourage you to celebrate the responsibility that allows us to claim our choices and grow through even those that may bring pain or heartache.  If such celebration is difficult or impossible for you, recognize that you may have some growing to do.   Seek out a spiritual companion who can help you “wake up to yourself.” 
 
Have a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!
 
Bob

The Gift of Mistakes
 
Walking with a Child through Failure
 
The Gift of Failure
​

​Life is about learning to make hard choices when we only have partial information and are unable to see into the future.  We may fear repeating past mistakes because of choices that did not turn out so well.  We may have grown up believing that we had poor judgment and could not be trusted with important decisions.  We may have an innate desire to stay low and keep our head down to avoid those who would criticize us.  We may want something so badly that we are afraid to mess it up with a bad choice.  Or we may not want to be bothered with hard stuff.  We would rather find the path of least resistance and get through our days with as little trouble as possible.  Unfortunately, those hard choices keep showing up anyway!
 
Our soul is an important player in our decision-making.  The soul includes both emotions and the will to act.  These emotions influence us before, during, and after a decision in made.  The will is all-important in whether we engage in decision-making and whether we will actually follow through once a decision is made.  Because the soul has such a pivotal role in making hard choices, we need to be able to care for it during and following the decision-making process.
 
It is generally believed that the soul is most effective in stillness.  The ancients taught the need for stepping back and disconnecting from the angst and uncertainty in life through meditation.  They understood that the emotions that flowed out of the soul could interfere with the mind and prevent it from effectively using reason, especially when the stakes were high.  While I believe this to be true, it is only part of story.  In difficult times, the stillness can serve as a deep reservoir of energy that we can use to get the mind through the decision-making process.  It also provides the initial energy we need to take those first steps after the decision has been made. 
 
Hard choices can trigger powerful emotions and challenge us to deal with them. We must learn to transform our anger into resolve, bitterness into courage, and revenge into purposefulness.  Raw emotions simply appear.  We have no control over their appearing or their intensity.  They are like a pain in the body.  They flare up and burn with a power that rises from the hidden depths of our humanity.  They serve as signals that something is not right.  They put us on alert that we need to pay attention to something that is out of kilter in our life.  We can, however, control how we respond to these flares of emotion. 
 
Painful emotions give us the energy we need to address the needs confronting us in the difficult decision.  These emotions can  “rev up” the mind to a deeper purpose than simple survival.  They can give us the courage we need to look beyond our well-worn paths.  They can bolster our resolve to face the challenges ahead.  This same resolve will serve us well when the decision is made, and we face a difficult time of implementation.  But we must first learn to still the waters within and allow the energy to accumulate without wasting it on flailing around in useless blaming, hand-wringing, and lashing out.
 
Our task in self-care for the soul is learning to maintain a stillness within even in the midst of the storm.  Our task is to learn to discipline our will to withstand the soul storms.

​How can we fill that reservoir in the stillness of the soul?
 
First, we must not take the challenge personally.  We cannot make more of the decision than it deserves.   It is not an ultimate battle.  Nor will it be our last battle.  Step back when you feel the reservoir being emptied by anger, blaming, and flailing.  Take one day at a time, nothing more, nothing less.  Be patient with the process.
 
Second, allow the energy to accumulate in the still pool of the self.  Do not waste it.  If you feel you have a bubbling cauldron of emotion threatening to erupt, spend some time in calm reflection.  Cool down the emotion by taking a break or engaging in a meditative practice that works for you.  Your soul is a vast reservoir of willpower that we can control and use to fulfill the goals that grow out of our decision-making.
 
Third, allow the energy to empower, not overwhelm, you.  A steam engine runs on small releases of energy contained in a chamber and then transferred to the wheels.  Allow the energy to escape in a managed and meaningful way.  Measure out your energy and make sure you have enough to get you over the hill.
 
As I suggested above, a primary way to do accomplish all of this is to maintain an inner stillness.  Meditation can allow you to bring calm to the cauldron without dissipating the energy.  Step-back.  Breathe.  Stay present to your yourself.  When the calm has been restored, rise and move forward with the process and implementation.
 
Use the energy generated by your emotions but keep your hand on the throttle.

Managing our Energy
 
Centering Prayer
 
Meditation
​

​For me, writing and making a decision have one thing in common.  While the doing may be hard work, having done so feels pretty good.  Having made a hard decision should feel good.  Making the decision may be hard work.  But once it’s made, I often feel that a huge weight has lifted off my life and the excitement of something begins to dawn.  I am a ponderer.  I spend a great deal of time pondering the problem before acting on it.  For me, a rushed decision never feels right.  Therefore, it is very important for me to exercise good self-care that allows the process of pondering to play itself out so that I end up being a decision that I can celebrate.
 
While I would like to believe that I make each new decision based on the best evidence available, this is not always the case.  Unfortunately, my decision-making is often influenced by well-worn paths through my ideas and beliefs.  I, like most folks, am a creature of mental habits who often think in clichés and platitudes.  Our memories and beliefs have an undue influence over our choices.  Our feelings have an unstated bias toward one option or another.  When we limit our choices, our mind will struggle to feel good about our decisions.
 
Here are three situations that challenge our joy in making a hard decision.
 
The Automatic Choice
The automatic choice prevents us from growing through hard decisions and into new ways of living.  It obscures the mystery and confirms our prejudices and existing beliefs.  The automatic choice leads us believe that everything is as it should be.  It offers temporary solace and allows us to move ahead, unhindered by reality.  When we enter a time of discernment and are relatively untroubled by our choices, we may be running on automatic.  We are likely relying on an unthinking cliché, an unassessed belief, or mere tradition rather than the present needs and opportunities.  We risk not only making a poor decision but setting ourselves up for a much greater “fall from grace” when our short-sighted choice fails to bring us joy we expect.  The tiny whisper that we could have done better will be drowned out in self-congratulation and prideful ego for a while.
 
The Unconsidered Option
But even when we engage in a meaningful decision-making process, we may still taint our future joy by missing meaningful options.  There are times when we are so focused on what we want for the path ahead, that we cannot see the best options that are right in front of us.  Being “firm-minded” (my mother’s word for stubborn) can obscure less familiar choices.  It is not that we have disregarded them so much as we never saw them.   If we “know” that our choices must include certain unquestioned qualifiers, then we will likely walk right by some perfectly reasonable “hidden-in-plain-sight” options.  They are never considered because they were never seen.
 
The Doubted Choice
Then there is the doubted choice.  This is often the result of talking ourselves out of a choice because we doubt either that we can do it or that it will really get the job done.  Most difficult choices come with doubts about our ability to do what needs to be done.  But, by internalizing this doubt too early, we may dismiss it before we have given it a fair hearing.  The doubt may have nothing to do with the choice itself.  It could rise from a sense of inner conflict, uncertainty about ourselves, a hidden dislike for the choice, or some other unannounced bias against it.  By listening to doubt and second-guessing ourselves too early in the process we may lose the joy that is ours when we make a difficult decision.
 
With good self-care we can come closer to an acceptable level of joy or, at least, acceptance of our decision.

​Marlene and I have been camping this week at Garner State Park.  (Which explains why this Self-Care Note is late getting posted.)  One of the many reasons we enjoy this park are the trails and opportunities they offer for exploring the Hill Country.  This week was to be no exception until a poor decision changed our plans. 
 
On our first day here, I thought we would get warmed up with a little late afternoon walk along the river.    Since it was intended to be a walk, I wore walking shoes and left my hiking boots at camp.  I remember thinking that I ought to wear my boots but then I talked myself out of the trouble of changing shoes just for a little walk.  This was not my best decision of the week.  The walk turned into a bit more after we got past the dam and were on a rocky and muddy trail.  My slick walking shoes were not a good match for slick river mud on the sloping trail.  I ended up in the mud with a very sore SI (sacroiliac joint).  All future hiking was reduced to short walks when the hip allowed.
 
What does this have to do with self-care of the mind in times of difficult choices?  It describes how we can avoid the poor choices described above.  Do not be afraid of taking the rockiest (or muddiest) path.  But be prepared for the journey.
 
The paths of least resistance will not bring you much joy.  Why did I keep going past the paved trail and into the rocks and mud?  Because that is where the photos were.  I was told by a photographer (just before I fell) that there were some great shots up ahead.  Having shot there a couple years ago, I knew the possibility existed and this other photographer’s words confirmed it.  I stepped off the pavement and onto the trail with a new resolve, forgetting completely about being in walking shoes.  I knew that good shots generally require the rockiest and muddiest paths.  My failure was in my lack of respect for the trail.
 
If we are going to make the hard decisions, we need to respect the trail and prepare ourselves for it.
 
 First, do not let habit, laziness, or self-doubt steal your joy in choosing an easy path.  Ask yourself if this is a trail of least resistance or one that will bring the joy you are seeking?  If you truly want a meaningful decision be sure you pick from among the best options regardless of how rocky or muddy the path may be.
 
Second, pause and ask yourself if you are prepared to make that choice.  If not, you can either cross off the option or stop and take the time to get prepared.  Be sure that you can maintain traction when the path becomes hard.  Give yourself the greatest opportunity for success and you will find joy and fulfillment at the end of the trail.
 
Third, walk carefully and mindfully.  Be aware of the progress you are making.  Make adjustments along the way.  Do not let ego or pride cause you to go where you are not prepared to go.  Good decisions are not simply one-time events.  They are a constant process of moving forward deliberately making adjustments along the way.  They may require a small backtrack or two from time to time.  It is not only about the results but the journey that will bring you the joy of a good decision.
 
Choose the rocky path.  Get prepared for your journey.  Stay mindful of the journey.  In the end, when the opportunity is claimed, your mind with rejoice in the choice(s) you have made.  Regrets will have been minimized and the task “having-been-completed” will bring joy and satisfaction.
 
Good choosing!  Just watch that next step!
 
Bob

About the Paths of Least Resistance
 
The Road Not Taken
 
The Path With Heart
​