expectations on Purim

It’s Purim day and there’s so much good food everywhere. Is it possible to control yourself — and your kids?

My friend and colleague Elisheva Dorfman helped me put together these free resources for you to help you have a more mindful and intuitive eating experience this Purim.

Eating Mindfully on Purim by me: https://renareiser.com/eating-mindfully-on-purim/

Carrots on Purim by Elisheva ‘Jawary’ Dorfman: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/carrots-on-purim/

The Sticky Topic of Halloween Candy by Ellyn Satter Institute: http://ellynsatterinstitute.org/fmf/fmf30english.php

This Halloween Let Them Eat Candy by Katie Grubiak, RD: https://www.verywell.com/this-halloween-let-them-eat-candy-1138339

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I had planned to send out this email on Thursday night, and when that didn’t work out I planned for Friday morning. Then for last night. And now it’s just about 1pm on Purim afternoon and I’m finally getting to it.

Purim tends to be like that. It’s a busy day. A busy time.

We’re nervous that our plans won’t work out the way we want them to.

We wonder if we’ll be able to make the most of the davening of the day.

The mess that’s everywhere — and the aftermath of it: not sleeping enough, cleaning up all on our own, and eating all that nosh “just because it’s there”.

It’s not exactly how we wish the day would go.

We’d like to be comfortably tired at the end of the day — not falling-off-our-feet-exhausted.

To be able to process what happened over the course of the day.

Enjoy cleaning up.

To feel really calm while everything else is flying around us.

To enjoy the food that people sent and really be able to appreciate the effort and creativity that went into the preparation.

Your exercise for today, should you choose to accept it, is to ask yourself two questions:

1) What needs to happen to bridge the gap between “the day I am probably going to have anyway”, and “the day I want Purim to look like”?

2) What is one small step you can take to put it into place?

Remember: your job in this world is to take one small step forward — not to figure everything out. That’s up to Hashem.

Here are some ideas my clients came up with when we did the exercise together last week:

  • Plan ahead for a nourishing lunch
  • Set a reminder on my phone to do deep breathing and reflect on the day
  • Really decide which nosh I want
  • Pay attention to my self-talk and remind myself that Purim is once a year, and enjoy it
  • Center myself with a visualization

Want more accountability? Comment below and let me know how this exercise went for you.

Wishing you a happy, freilichen Purim sameach!

xo,
Rena

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