When All Else Fails, Find Gratitude

Maybe this has happened to you:

You sit down for a meal prepared with tons of love for you by someone else. You look at it the meal and the wheels start turning. ‘I wonder if these greens are organic, I doubt it, they are probably full of pesticides. What kind of oil was this cooked with? I think I saw him using Crisco… where did this chicken come from? Is there MSG in that spice? I swear I can smell MSG.’

Suddenly this lovely, time invested meal becomes in your mind, a toxic wasteland. All the love and appreciaction for the meal gets squeezed out as the focus turns to whats not right.

It happened to me a lot and sometimes I would drop comments like – ‘what did you put in here? Did you know the first ingredient in that is sugar? You know, a healthier way to cook these is by….’ With every bite I secretly wished that I just made dinner.

What a waste of a meal! And maybe worse, a way to crush an act of love.

The truth is, we can find something wrong with almost everything we eat. In our time it can be incredibly challenging to feel really good about what we are eating. We hear mixed messages from different sources and these can take control of how we eat and enjoy our food.

With all these messages it can be really hard to feel good about whatever choice we are making. It canfeel like we can’t eat anything that feels totally healthy and right. Trying to perfect our meals, food, and eating can be an exhausting way of life that doesn’t always pay off in our favour.

But what we can do to turn our wild minds around is to give thanks. In the moment of eating something,rather than letting the articles about pesticides, meat industries and carbon footprints flood your mind– take a deep breath... pause.

Thank everyone and everything that has come together to put food in front of you. Nourish it with gratitude and love. Pour it all over your meal. Let yourself and your mind ease into tasting and savouring. And genuinely thank the person who made it for you.

xoSus