299-SYNCPodcast_Gratitude

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[00:00:57] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. At the time of this recording, it is Thanksgiving week. I can’t believe we’re already here. It’s the end of November, end of 2024. We’re rounding out the year already. And I know my family and I just decorated for the holidays this weekend. We put up our big tree.

[00:01:16] Jenny Swisher: We got all of our outside decorations up. We are ready to rock and roll for the holiday season. I was just joking with my sync community in a live stream that I did today about the fact that while we were putting our tree up yesterday My four year old was taking all the marker lids off of the markers and drawing all over herself.

[00:01:33] Jenny Swisher: So Getting ready for the holidays in my house often looks like Brushing your teeth while eating Oreos at the same time, especially with small children. So I know for me, I am really feeling the stress of the holiday season already. And it goes without saying, I say it often here on the podcast, women wear all the hats, right?

[00:01:51] Jenny Swisher: We are in charge of literally almost everything when it comes to the holidays. We take care of making sure the turkey is ordered and the food is made and the house is clean and the kids have their outfits ready and a laundry is caught up and all the things are ready. But who’s taking care of us? So I just wanted to take this time on the solo round today to talk about how we can really prioritize ourselves during this busy season and how we can stay really rooted and centered in gratitude.

[00:02:20] Jenny Swisher: So for me, It, it looks a lot different than it used to look, right? I used to say things in my twenties and early thirties about never missing a workout and making sure to get my workout in before I went on to Thanksgiving dinner and, and all the things, right. And now I see things just so much differently in my forties, just this weekend, I wanted to decorate with the family for the holidays.

[00:02:40] Jenny Swisher: And I knew that putting up our 10 foot tree and getting our decorations out and also pushing through a workout was just going to be too much. So I skipped what the calendar said. I did. I took the rest day. I put up the tree with my family. I went for a short walk with my eight year old and I called it a day.

[00:02:57] Jenny Swisher: My question for you is, where are you pushing in your life where you might actually need to put on the brakes? Kelsey Linsman is our Sync Fitness Trainer and our PeriRx Fitness Trainer and we were just chatting with her the other night on a PeriRx call when she said the same thing. She said, we have to be able to slow down as much as we’re able to accelerate.

[00:03:16] Jenny Swisher: She talked about how a NASCAR is really only able to go as fast as it is able to slow down. This is a powerful analogy, especially as we enter this holiday season. Are we really taking the time as moms and wives and daughters and the women who wear all the hats? Are we really taking the time to slow down and be present?

[00:03:36] Jenny Swisher: Now, I told you that while we were putting our tree up, my four year old was taking the lids off of an entire package of 64 markers. And In that exact moment, I wanted to lose it. I am very, very type A. I like to be in control. I was very much in the zone on decorating the Christmas tree. I really wanted to just be really upset with her or scold her or, you know, shout how frustrated I was that I had to pick up all the markers.

[00:04:01] Jenny Swisher: And I had a moment where I realized, well, maybe I need to approach this a little bit differently. Like, maybe this is a season, right? This is a season. I know we went through this with my oldest. This is a season when you feel like you literally can’t take your eyes off of them. But also, it will be gone in a moment.

[00:04:17] Jenny Swisher: And that’s the difference in viewing this world as stressful versus viewing it as glass full. So I want to talk to you about something that I heard recently on a podcast and I want to share it here as well, which is this idea that a lot of us keep a gratitude journal or we like to say that we are grateful as people, but are we really feeling the gratitude?

[00:04:38] Jenny Swisher: Are we living in the gratitude on a daily basis? For years, I kept an actual gratitude journal on my bedside table and every morning I would wake up and I would write the same kinds of things in that journal every single day. I would write, I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for my house. I’m grateful for my car.

[00:04:55] Jenny Swisher: I’m grateful for my job, right? Like all these things that a lot of us would probably write down if we were asked to write down what we’re grateful for. But I remember interviewing someone on the podcast and he said something really powerful that was pivotal for me in 2022. He said, have you ever thought about really asking yourself about the feelings that you’ve had that you’re grateful for?

[00:05:16] Jenny Swisher: At the end of this life, really, it’s all about our relationships. and the feeling that we’re after. Brenda Burchard talks about how all of us crave the feeling of aliveness. Do we feel alive in our day to day? So what I do now is I do an evening gratitude journal, and instead of writing down the generic, more surface level things that I certainly am grateful for, I instead reflect on a moment from the day that I really felt alive, or a moment that I really want to relive, that I’m so grateful happened.

[00:05:47] Jenny Swisher: Just last night, I had a call that I needed to be on a zoom call and my husband was actually going to handle bedtime for the girls so that I could hop on the call. And right before the call, we were having like a little family movie night, just kind of wind down before bed and watching a Christmas movie on TV with our twinkling sparkling lights finally up after a weekend of decorating.

[00:06:07] Jenny Swisher: And both of my girls had me by each arm. They were both laying on me on either side, just clutching me, snuggling me. And when I needed to get up to go do the call, they didn’t want to let go. They were like, no, mommy, no, stay here, stay here. That moment, I wish I could have extended. I wish I could have relived it again.

[00:06:24] Jenny Swisher: In fact, I’ll try my hardest tonight before bedtime. But that night, last night, when I was writing down in my gratitude journal, what I was grateful for, I closed my eyes and I tried to relive that moment. That 30 second moment that is now gone. I wanted to remember how it felt to have them pulling on me, how it felt for them to be wanting to be near me and snuggling me, how little my youngest is, how she just crawls right up onto my lap.

[00:06:50] Jenny Swisher: I wanted to absorb all of that and to relive it again. And that is living in gratitude. So when I wrote that down in my journal last night, it almost brought tears to my eyes because I thought, I’ll never be able to have that moment again. But we can relive it through a gratitude journal. We can relive it through living in gratitude.

[00:07:08] Jenny Swisher: And this is a challenge I have for you. So as we enter Thanksgiving and Christmas and the holiday season, whatever season you’re celebrating, I want you to take the time to just Put some papers by your bedside table or a little notebook and each night just write down one thing that happened today That meant a lot to you, right?

[00:07:26] Jenny Swisher: Did your husband give you a hug right when you needed it? Did your kids want to snuggle you extra before bedtime? Did you get to curl up under a blanket for the first time in a long time and read a book? What are those moments that you really really feel throughout your days? And how can we make them the center of our focus?

[00:07:43] Jenny Swisher: When we do that, the marker lids on the floor, They don’t matter as much anymore, right? You don’t get as irritated because you’re living in gratitude. So I hope this is helpful for you today. I certainly am grateful for all of you. I do want to just give a special shout out to the fact that we are nearing 300 episodes on the podcast.

[00:08:00] Jenny Swisher: So hopefully you haven’t gotten sick of me yet. We’ve got lots of awesome content coming your way at the end of this year and heading into 2025. So I hope you’ll stay tuned. I hope you’ll share this out with your friends. I hope it’s okay that I diverted away a little bit from talking about the body and hormones and instead focused on gratitude because I truly do believe that when we can do this, we can automatically down regulate our nervous system.

[00:08:22] Jenny Swisher: We can live with a sense of presence and we can ultimately be the best for those we love. All right, my friends, happy Thanksgiving, happy holidays, and we’ll talk soon.