118 ~ How To Be Grateful On Thanksgiving

The holidays can really speed up your life. Catherine and Brenda invite listeners to treat Thanksgiving as a time for gratitude. They explore gratitude as a perception practice. They bring in the Chinese parable of maybe, maybe not and the mantra if I am not winning, I am learning to show how progress grows through honest reflection.

They examine the fine line between positivity and bypass. They focus on how intent shapes perception and how the right lens supports either momentum or shortfall. They share how releasing perfection creates room for risk. Speaking up before knowing the result or trying improv both strengthen a desire led life. They also share a gratitude exercise, "name what you have today that a past version of you wanted". The courage to begin something new counts toward building capacity.

Catherine and Brenda honor their listeners and talk about love and grief as signs of meaning. They invite everyone to slow down, choose a focus, and acknowledge progress. Bring this to your Thanksgiving table. Ask real questions. Take small risks. Let gratitude sink in.

Here are the Episode Highlights:
 • The Chinese parable of "Maybe, Maybe Not"
 • Perception as a lever for experience
 • Avoiding positivity as bypass
 • Choosing lenses for mood 
 • Win or learn as a living mantra
 • Releasing perfection to take risks
 • Love, grief, and meaning

Wishing our listeners a wonderful Thanksgiving and an extended warm hug. Thank you for listening and for all of your messages and insights about what you enjoyed from our episodes. We are grateful for you!

Chapters

• 2:45 Thanksgiving As A Seasonal Pause
• 5:10 Ritual, Gratitude, And Intent
• 8:20 The Maybe Maybe Not Parable
• 12:30 Perception, Positivity, And Bypass
• 16:20 Growth Lens Vs Mood Lens
• 19:25 Gratitude As Daily Practice
• 23:00 What Past You Would Crave Today
• 27:10 Pressure, Perfection, And Self-Talk

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_00: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12

On the Desire is Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked: being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, listeners, family, friends. How's everybody doing? I hope you are just feeling so excited and ready for this holiday season. But maybe you're not. And that just has to be okay. Brenda and I have been talking about, and don't worry, she's here. Maybe wondering where she's at, she's here. Brenda and I have been thinking about the holidays. Thinking about Thanksgiving in particular, and how Thanksgiving is just such an amazing time. It begins sort of the catalyst of pause. When we think about ritual, when we think about winter, and I can't really speak for an area of the world that doesn't have seasons because I haven't necessarily necessarily lived seasonless. With seasons, there is sort of this rubbing up and rubbing down. I don't even know if we rub down. I think we could we just sort of are going, going, going until we can't go anymore. And then everything just stops. Maybe fall. I don't think in New York really had that much of a fall. We were sort of late summer, getting a little cooler, and then boom, winter. You wake up, it's 30 degrees outside. Hello. It's freezing. But Thanksgiving starts to sort of maybe that maybe it's us slowly putting on the brakes. We're slowly putting on the brakes as a society and saying, hey, America, because I'm sure like Australia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving in the same way that we do. So not this isn't gonna be good for the whole world, but anywhere where you're just pausing, you're like fall, winter, we're potentially going somewhat into hibernation. We're about to be with family. Maybe it's Christmas, maybe it's a different holiday. And it becomes about the holiday. Some of us may have gotten better and we're like about the ritual as well. But it can be easy to forget about the reason behind the holiday. Forget about the reason that we're having Thanksgiving. And don't come for me. I know there's colonialism, and I know we took the holiday from someone, and I know that it was very bad. I'm just talking about the way that we celebrate. We have a day where we as a society have said, hey, we're gonna ignore all the horrendous things that we did. We're just gonna celebrate. And we're gonna call it giving thanks. Thanksgiving. And that's what we're gonna do. Everybody, on board, full stop.

SPEAKER_00: 4:10

Welcome everyone. So great to be here with you. Thanksgiving week 2025. I love Thanksgiving. It's probably my favorite holiday, and it does open the holiday portal. The holiday portal, right? Remember when holiday decorations used to go up around Thanksgiving? It was like a whole big thing, the lighting of the Christmas tree in New York. Now the lights are up so early. It's kind of crazy. Or maybe people just love the holiday so much they want to start at Halloween. Go from right from Halloween to Christmas. But there is something in the middle, people. It's called Thanksgiving. And it's a beautiful time to pause, slow down, even though the pace of society really doesn't support that so much, but it is a choice. And so no matter what country you're in or where you are, however you feel about Thanksgiving, I believe it's always a good time to slow down and talk about gratitude. It's always a good time to focus on what we have and be grateful for it, which I really am.

SPEAKER_01: 5:16

There's a story that really highlights the importance of perception. And not everybody celebrates holidays in a happy way, right? Not or not everybody has happy memories associated with holidays. Like there's all different versions for all of us. And I have a thought, a belief that everything's kind of 50-50, right? Like 50% of it is great, 50% sucks. And it kind of depends on what lens we're looking at. And I love this story because I think this story really helps highlight that.

SPEAKER_00: 5:52

Absolutely. Everything really is perception. My yoga teacher was talking about that this morning, focusing on the good. Because we always have an uh an option. We could focus on the bad, you could focus on the good, but can your brain focus on the good? And that can be challenging sometime. And this holiday does give us the opportunity to do that at least for one day. So this story that Catherine is talking about is really a story about perception and non-attachment and the idea that you can't always judge events as strictly good or strictly bad. It's a Chinese parable. So the story goes like this. And I'm going to read the whole thing. It's very short. A farmer has a horse that runs away, and his neighbors say, Oh my goodness, what bad luck. And the farmer replies, Maybe. And then later the horse returns, bringing with it several wild horses. The neighbors say, Oh wow, what good luck. You have all these horses. The farmer replies, maybe. And then the farmer's son tries to ride one of the wild horses. He falls and he breaks his leg. And the neighbors say, Oh, what bad luck. And the farmer replies, maybe. And then later, the army comes to the village to draft all the young men for the war. But because the son's leg is broken, he's not taken to go away to war. And the neighbors say, Oh, what good luck. And the farmer replies, maybe. And I just love that story because it really shows how events are neutral. They're not good or bad. We don't have to label things good or bad. They're just neutral. And we don't know what's going to happen next.

SPEAKER_01: 7:40

Yeah, I I I I love the story. And it's not about foes focusing. The story's less about it's called maybe, right? That maybe, maybe not.

SPEAKER_00: 7:52

It's called maybe, maybe not. It's a Chinese parable.

SPEAKER_01: 7:54

I love that. Maybe, maybe not. Because it's true. Something might be a blessing. Maybe, maybe not. We just and the good thing about it is that either way that we look at it, we're right. So if we think that it's a blessing, we're right. If we think it's not a blessing, we're right. We get to choose. I think it's great when we're choosing the more positive angle, when we're focusing on our mood, when we're focusing on our state, our state of being, like our overall zhuzh, like the way I feel potentially motivated or inspired, the way that I'm walking through the world and sort of enjoying air. But in a different context, let's talk about, let's say, personal growth. If I only looked at the positive and everything is amazing, then I would have never done any personal growth work because everything's great. Like there's nothing to fix, there's nothing to change, everything's absolutely amazing. And then that falls a little bit into the whole bypassy piece that we talk about, right? Oh, we're just bypassing the emotions, or we we're bypassing the negative that's happening. And there are other ways of looking at the, let's call it a fraction, if it's 50-50. If I'm focusing on my mood, maybe I am 60% wanting to see the bright side, maybe 40%, okay, it wasn't the best. But if I'm focusing on growth, then I'm really just looking at what went wrong and how can I do this better? Like how can I take this from good to great? I'm not looking at all the ways in which it was great because I'm looking to grow from the experience, not just pat myself on the back from an experience. Intent is so important. And I think bringing it back to what we're talking about in the context of Thanksgiving, reminding ourselves that, oh, this is a great time to pause, to feel into what we're grateful for, and share it with loved ones.

SPEAKER_00: 10:07

That's really beautiful. And it's a great reminder what you were talking about of focusing on growth and learning. And we talk about that a lot, reorienting from success and failure, good and bad, just like that story did, to what are you learning? What path are you on? What choices are you making right now to support your desires and what you want in this life? And it's very easy to say, well, I don't have that thing yet, or I'm not where I want to be, or I still can't lift that amount of weights at the gym, I still can't do that yoga pose. There's always going to be something that you didn't quite do good enough. And it's great to have goals and it's great to have desires. We obviously support that highly over here. But you don't want to beat yourself up because you're not where you want to be. The real juice of life is what choices are you making today? So you can get to where you're going, just one foot in front of the other. And sometimes it's baby steps, sometimes it's big leaps, whatever it is. And it really is important to stop and pause and say, what am I grateful for? What do I have? Where have I grown? What am I grateful for? Whether it's about yourself or people that you love. And I just love that about Thanksgiving. I also love for Thanksgiving that there's no presence involved. It's just, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of food. So there can be certainly distractions that keep you from the point of the holiday, which is gratitude. But can you slow down and really feel that? And the thing about gratitude that I really love is that everything in your life right now you have is something that you once wanted. Everything around you is something you once wanted. Now, maybe you don't like that, and that's a totally different story because we're always in creation of our life. And you want to know what you believe, look around.

SPEAKER_01: 12:16

I think when we have things around us that we don't like, we hate thinking to ourselves, I created that. I the way I like to do this exercise is sort of what do I have right now that a past version of me would have killed for? Like, what's in my life today that a part of me would have killed for? And I would say one of the things that I have today that an old version of me would have killed for is my level of emotional sobriety. For sure. Like 19-year-old Catherine with a gazillion thoughts going 100 miles an hour. I'd wake up like at 7 a.m. with just so much pressure. I remember I used to have this like saying around 16. If I'm really honest, I think I was saying this even in my early 30s, like there's no room for error. Can you imagine? I just lived with so much self-inflicted pressure because I thought if I let go of the pressure, if I keep, if I take away the pain, I just won't get anything done. And you know what? It's not fully a lie. There are like my ability to create and achieve has slowed down as my comforts have increased. It just is. It's really hard to keep your foot on the gas when you start to get comfortable. It's a lot easier to put your foot on the gas to just go, go, go when you're in high discomfort. It's so much easier to just handle what needs to be handled when nothing's handled, right? That's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about that. And I also wanted to touch on something you said a little while ago, which um like beating ourselves up. I think that the bypassy thing happens a little bit because of that. We don't want to beat ourselves up, or we have this idea of beating ourselves up is bad, or saying that to myself is bad. Instead of allowing ourselves to beat ourselves up and course correcting, we're just like, nope, I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna be grateful. And one phrase that I've been trying on for size is if I'm not winning, I'm learning. I am definitely like I definitely have a bigger inner soldier, punishment sick. I I tend to move faster in that way. So if I try to remind myself, if I'm not winning, I'm learning. And instead of beating myself, instead of being upset that I beat myself up, it's like, oh, okay, I see that I'm beating myself up here. Is there a way for me to be value neutral or in honor of this episode? Is there a way for me to be like, maybe, maybe not?

SPEAKER_00: 15:15

I love that. I want to say that again. It's so good that you're not, if you're not winning, you're learning. It's so valuable. It's such a great lesson. Thank you for that. Yeah, my version of pressure would used to be perfection. So the old me is just so happy that I have pretty much let go of perfection and that I can have a messy kitchen, have dishes in the sink. I've used this as an example before, and just not really have it all together. Just just be messy in life and being willing to take a risk. And the way that showed up for me was I didn't take risks. I didn't necessarily take chances because the risk of taking a chance and quote, it not going the way I want, failing, right? The risk was so high because I couldn't handle the not being perfect part. So I would beat myself up. And it's not that beating yourself up is bad. It just feels like shit and it's a waste of time. It's just, it just keeps you from the present moment. It keeps you from just saying what you just said before. Okay, I didn't win, but I learned instead of beating yourself up, what did you learn and can we move on? And I really learned not to listen to those voices. And I'm so grateful for that because I can take more chances in life. I went to an improv class last week, and that is really vulnerable. You know, you're taking chances, you're up in front of a group doing a scene and a skit. I've never done improv before, and it's really vulnerable. And one thing I noticed was I didn't beat myself up at all for not being funnier or saying something more clever or not acting great, whatever it was. I sat with that and I was like, wow, 10 years ago, that would have been really hard to do. I don't even know if I would have done that class. Well, evidence is that I never did it before. But I'm willing to stand up in front of a room now and just do a scene that I don't even know where it's going. Because I've let go of a lot of the perfection or expecting myself to be perfect. And so I'm willing to take more risks, which is really what it takes to live a life of desire. You have to be willing to take a chance. So that's that's what I'm grateful for right now. Past version of me actually didn't even know that that was possible.

SPEAKER_01: 17:54

I love that for you. It sounds really, really great. It is. Yeah, it is great. It's like you're talking about taking risk and living a life led by desire, right? It does require the ability to take a risk. And often the risk is as little as I don't know if I'm gonna get what I want. I don't know if I'm gonna succeed at going after this that I want. What if I'm hurt? Like emotionally hurt. I I know that for some people can feel like you're gonna die. And like no, you can win or learn. You could say, okay, I'm learning. And the great thing about learning that we haven't really talked about on this podcast, I unthink alone in in its own little is capacity. So we're winning, which is great. Like there are things that we can win at. Right now, we're winning, we're over a hundred episodes. Great, right? Like, great job, great us. Woo-hoo. But everything that we learned along the way to but it's building the capacity muscle. Like, we're able to do so many things within this podcast now, X amount of years into it, that we couldn't do in the beginning. I remember we used to record and Brenda and I would be like, oh, I'm done. We I could easily just touch it and just be so tired. It's just not the same anymore. It doesn't require the same amount of physical energy to show up. I don't know how else to describe it. It's as if I don't need the same amount of energy reserves. If we talked about, I know we've also done recordings on um being well-resourced, it doesn't require the same amount of physical or emotional resources for me to record today as it did a year ago or as it did two years ago. But if I were to say, oh, this was a great podcast and it's great because I didn't need that much energy, I wouldn't even know that I needed the energy two years ago. Like I wouldn't have any idea of what that even meant because it required this level of experience to even know, oh, that changes. That whole thing, that recovery time, the downtime, the rubbing up, the getting resource before recording. And this is just like a simple example of sometimes we're learning and winning at this learning, and we weren't even going for that win. It's sort of like in the background. But reflection or being in presence is what has us be present to it. How you said, you were sitting with yourself saying, Wow, I did this improv. I would not have done this 10 years ago. And even if I did 10 years ago, I would not have been able to not be in my head about being funnier, having it be perfect, etc. I have had an experience with improv improv as a teen. It was part of a dance class that I had, and I remember thinking, oh no, this is going to require improv. I thought we could just dance. Like, this is not what I was signing up for. But I did it, but I did it because I wanted to stay in the dance class. Right? Like sometimes we we're willing to do uncomfortable things because of something else. And all of this to say, we're at the time of year where if we choose, we can be in gratitude. And the opportunities to be grateful may be super present or they may be in the shadows. And hopefully what we spoke about here today reminds us that if we're not winning, we're learning. That there's a version of us that would have loved what we have today, would have loved it many, many yesterdays ago, and we get to choose what part of the story we're focusing on, whether it's the positive, the negative, or the value neutral, and we get to do that with intention. It doesn't have to be in happenstance, Brenda.

SPEAKER_00: 22:34

I love that. I want to also just throw in, since we're talking about gratitude, how grateful I am for this podcast and our listeners. If you're listening, please know that Catherine and I appreciate you so much. We just love and appreciate you so much. We receive all kinds of messages from our listeners, telling us you listened to an episode, how it landed for you, and you share, you like, you rate. We appreciate that so much because it really supports our work. And we're just so tickled that you listen. And when we hear how it moves you, or something that you got from it, or you felt validated in some way, like, oh my God, I'm not crazy. Catherine and Brenda are talking about this thing. It really delights us. We're really grateful for that. And I just wanted to share that little piece of gratitude with you. And, you know, we're talking about taking a risk. Gratitude is a risk. It's very easy to just plow through with your family or friends on Thanksgiving with the stuffing and the gravy and the cranberry sauce, whether you make it from scratch or you are a can family, that's a whole big scandal going on. But to really slow it down and talk about gratitude or just let someone know you love them is a risk. And it's a beautiful one.

SPEAKER_01: 24:08

I love that you brought that in. And yes, I agree with you. I love our listeners. I love yesterday in my group, one of the women was saying, I love your podcast, but I love the group more because we get to have more personal stories. I'm like, yeah, you mean I'm not sharing confidential information over the airways? Like, yes, no, it's a completely different experience, right? Brenda and I do our best to bring teachings and bring it forth without like making it another episode of Real Housewives over the radio, right? Like just keeping it as PG as I guess we can, even though I always click that little illicit, um, what is it? Illicit language. I always click that box. Explicit. Explicit. That's it. Explicit. Explicit language. We're so explicit. I feel like we swear a lot. And I don't want to worry that somebody's gonna think it's PG and it's not, and the things we talk about are definitely adult, you know. When I think about the different things and pieces and parts of gratitude, and you say about like just letting somebody say, like telling someone you love them. There's so much gratitude in that, and there is so much vulnerability. And I'm gonna break this part down because I think it's important. I think loving someone, I hear this often. Well, what happens if I get heartbroken? Or I was vulnerable and I just opened my heart and it shattered. I'm like, the gratitude is that you got to love. Like, yes, you don't get to capture the other individual in the cage, and it's not con it's not in a controlled environment where it looks and feels and walks and talks exactly how you want it. But you were able to experience an expression of love and then an expression of grief. The grief lets you know that there was so much love there. And the truth of the matter is that there are plenty of people walking this earth right now who have never felt a deep enough love where they would even feel grief.

SPEAKER_00: 26:22

Yeah, that's beautiful. It is risky to open your heart. That quote, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. It's trite, but true. Those those trite things are actually so true. It's wonderful to love. And nobody's getting out of this life without getting some hurt. We're gonna get hurt. You know, if you're unless you just want to be in your living room and never leave, maybe you won't get hurt. But if you're probably not listening to this podcast, if that's you, but if you're out there living your life, following your desires, taking chances, taking risks, trying to grow, loving people, being in relationships, you're gonna get hurt. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

I think we get hurt when we've given something meaning. Right? It's what we give it meaning, what what we make it mean. If we give it meaning, then yes, if something goes badly or sideways, right, it's going to be hurtful if we feel love or possessive love. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but yes. Heartbreak in that arena. But the other side of the coin, again, is oh wow, I gave this meaning. Like this meant something to me, aka my life has meant something to me. I haven't lived my life with the the gift, the what is it, the the sh the the gear in neutral. I'm really in drive and being intentional about it, and things mean something to me. I'd love for everyone, myself included, to sit with. Where am I winning? Where am I loving? Where am I when where am I winning? Where am I loving? Or where am I learning in grieving, reminding ourselves that we get to decide what side of the coin, what side of the story we want to focus on during this Thanksgiving. Like we get to decide what we're thankful for. And that in itself is such a gift. Wishing you all such an amazing holiday. Please share, rate, review. It's the best way to support us. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00: 29:04

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 29:08

Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.