We’re here, folks! Thanksgiving week is upon us. As I’ve talked with people about their holiday plans, I’ve heard a wide range of responses. Some are feeling completely stressed, while others are pretty relaxed. Are you at one extreme or somewhere in between?

The differences in how people are feeling revolve around things like . . .

• Are they hosting or being a guest?

• Are you bringing part of the meal to the host’s home?

• Will you be cooking, catering, or dining out instead?

• How many people will be at the event?

• Are you feeling organized enough or completely disorganized?

• Are you concerned about family dynamics or drama?

• How much traveling is involved?

• Is your Thanksgiving tradition the same, or will it be different this year?

• Are too many non-holiday things happening in your life right now?

• Are you missing loved ones who are unable to be with you?

• What? Thanksgiving is this week?

Which questions resonate with you? How are they influencing your approach and attitude about the holidays?

EASE: Embrace, Arrange, Savor, Express

I created a short acronym, EASE, to help you enjoy Thanksgiving more. This simple phrase works for everyone but is especially useful if you feel stressed or overwhelmed by this holiday or upcoming ones.

Breathe in EASE as you focus on engaging each idea.

• Embrace imperfection and unpredictability.

• Arrange simple, meaningful gatherings.

• Savor the flavors, conversations, and moments.

• Express gratitude for those things, big and small.

1. Embrace imperfection and unpredictability.

Embrace melds two ideas: Let go of perfection and acknowledge that life, let alone holiday gatherings, can be unpredictable. Focus on ‘good enough’ to soften perfectionistic tendencies. In addition, I remind myself of the many kooky things that happened at past Thanksgivings. We’re talking turkey catching on fire, EMS rescuing a guest who passed out, and almost pouring all of the gravy (that took days to make) down the kitchen drain.

While unpredictability might result in initial panic followed by quick action, the memories can evolve into fun and memorable Thanksgiving lore.

2. Arrange simple, meaningful gatherings.

Arrange encourages you to entertain in a meaningful and doable way. So, if cooking isn’t your thing, think about ways to make this aspect easier. Maybe it means letting someone else host, and you bring wine or dessert. Perhaps it means hosting but buying pre-made foods. Or maybe you’re going all out with hosting but simplifying the number of dishes you make.

More than what dishes you serve, the time spent together makes the holidays meaningful.

“Focus on ‘good enough’ to soften perfectionistic tendencies.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

3. Savor the flavors, conversations, and moments.

To savor means thoroughly enjoying and appreciating something, especially by lingering on its lovely qualities. There are so many opportunities to savor on Thanksgiving. I love the scents and tastes of this holiday. I can’t wait to bite into a section of a juicy pomegranate with its garnet-colored tart and sweet seeds, smell the hot apple cider simmering on the stove, or hug and talk with my loved ones.

A mindful presence will bring ease as it helps you engage more deeply with foods, people, and moments of connection and love.

4. Express gratitude for those things, big and small.

Being intentional about what you’re grateful for profoundly benefits your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. For example, gratitude is a natural stress reducer, fosters resilience, strengthens relationships, encourages kindness, improves sleep, boosts self-esteem, reduces negativity, and cultivates mindfulness.

While gratitude is often associated with and promoted more during the holiday season, expressing gratitude is a practice and awareness that can be integrated into every day.

Acknowledging even one thing you are grateful for will bring you more ease.

Human-Centered Thanksgiving

Approaching the holidays with EASE will help you focus on what’s most important and let go of what isn’t. You’ll feel less stressed, more joyful, and calmer. What can you do to infuse more ease into your holidays? I’d love to hear your thoughts and invite you to join the conversation.

Do you want help decluttering, organizing, brainstorming, or planning? Have you experienced the benefits of having an accountability partner? I’m here for you. Virtual organizing is an extraordinary path forward – A local feel with a global reach.

Please schedule a Discovery Call, email me at linda@ohsorganized.com, or call 914-271-5673. Organization and ease are possible, especially with support.

What pace are you traveling as you transition seasons and greet the summer? Are you slowing down and taking time off for vacation? Or are you quickly filling your days to the point of exhaustion and overwhelm? Your pace directly correlates to how well you manage your time and enjoy life.

Whether or not you’re on vacation, you can integrate regular pauses during your week. Without breaks or stops, you become less efficient and productive. With moments to restore and refresh, the quality of your decisions improves. Pacing matters, especially if you want to let go of the extraneous and become more organized. Give yourself the best chance for success. Activate the power of lingering.

How can lingering increase happiness and make you a better time manager? While it may sound counterintuitive, lingering presents an opportunity for a mindful break while focusing on something enjoyable and restorative. Lingering lets you pause, appreciate, and slow down moments. You can then return to your day with a renewed focus on what you’re doing next.

Monthly Meditation and Writing Retreat

Most months, I participate in an inspiring virtual retreat led by my wonderful friend and Clarity Coach, Yota Schneider. She creates a safe, supportive space for women to gather, meditate, write, and share.

Several months ago, the retreat’s theme was “linger.” After our meditation, I wrote this passage during our free-write. It illustrates several ways lingering has had a positive effect on my life.

Thoughts About Lingering

Wet paws, conversations, and gelato. Those probably aren’t the first things that come to mind when you think of linger. However, as I calmed myself in the darkness, the faint sounds of train horns blowing juxtaposed with coyotes howling and the clock ticking. Wet paws, conversations, and gelato lingered in my mind.

Lingering is about time – the stretching, expanding, and slowing down of moments. While lingering can be thought of positively and negatively, happy stories and memories surfaced for me tonight.

Wet Paws

First, the wet paws. Our beautiful black lab, Norton, now long gone, loved going on forest walks with us. We often walked (the five of us – Steve, me, the girls, and Norton) down our block to the path in the woods that led to the Croton River. We’d go to this one spot where we climbed on the big flat rocks – each taking a seat.  We’d sit barefoot with feet dangling in the water as we watched the river flow and heard its thunderous sound. Sun rays coming through the canopy of trees warmed us.

Norton, like us, picked his rock and submerged his front paws in the river. We lingered – each enjoying this beautiful time with no agenda and nowhere to go as if time stood still. And then, for unknown reasons, Norton would get up and decide it was time to leave. So we did. The lingering was over.

Conversations

Second – conversations.  I’ve been missing my mom and two aunts (my mom’s younger sisters) a lot lately. We talked often. Our conversations meandered. Time felt like taffy – stretching and unending. We talked about love, family, and matters of the heart. We laughed, cried, and enjoyed our time together as we lingered leisurely and easily in free-flowing conversations.

The conversations with these three amazing women have ended—at least the out-loud ones have, as they are all gone.

“Lingering has restorative powers when you focus energy on positive moments.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

Gelato

Lastly, gelato. I recently had a gelato ice cream cone experience that I didn’t want to end. I tried to linger as long as possible while eating it. But you know how gelato goes—it melts, so my lingering time was limited.

But as I ate this delicious mocha gelato in a cone drenched in freshly dipped warm dark chocolate, I stretched out the enjoyment for as long as possible.

Linger. To linger. Lingering. The precious moments time offers. The beautiful moments I allow myself to savor.

Wet paws, conversations, and gelato.

Lingering has restorative powers when you focus energy on positive moments. Do you linger? If so, have you noticed helpful effects on your well-being or time management? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

If you want help letting go, organizing, or managing your time better so you can enjoy life more, email me at linda@ohsorganized.com, call 914-271-5673, or schedule a Discovery Call.  Change is possible, especially with support.

Are there things in your life that just aren’t working? Maybe you have organizing systems, but they are cumbersome or impossible to maintain. Perhaps your spaces include what you use but aren’t set up in accessible ways. Or maybe your calendars are so packed with appointments and commitments that you don’t have time to rest and recharge. These are significant. Figuring them out and letting go can feel challenging.

Not all challenges are tricky. You might experience less complex issues that aren’t working. For example, you often:

• Misplace your eyeglasses or keys

• Can’t find a working pen when you need one

• Search for the flashlight you had just the other day

• Run out of milk

• Move the same pile of papers from your desk to the floor.

Because these seem like insignificant challenges, you ignore them. You experience a slight annoyance here and feel bothered by something there. It’s enough to notice but not enough to do anything about it.

Enough Already

Doing something to remedy the situation can take months, years, or decades. You tolerate the inconvenience until one day, you say, “Enough is enough!” When that day comes, you are ready to let go of what’s not working to make way for what does.

Here’s the funny thing. When you get to the it’s-enough-already-point, that’s when the magic happens. You are ready to:

• Let go of being irritated

• Be mindful of what’s going on

• Have room in your brain to problem-solve

• Change the status quo

The Lamp

Some of you may know I’m short, under five feet tall. We had a lamp in our bedroom that sat on the dresser for years. It was a colorful glass lamp with a purple shade. I liked it except for one thing. Because of the tall dresser, the placement of the switch high up on the lamp, and my height, it was difficult for me to turn the light on and off.

Each time I pushed the switch, I would stretch by standing on my tippy toes to reach it. Was it awkward and slightly annoying? Yes! Did I do this for a lot of years? Yes! Why? Because I ignored the irritation and my agency to change what wasn’t working.

As we were preparing our house for guests, my husband and I worked on various projects. Something about working on those projects activated my thoughts. I had an “Enough is enough” moment. An idea popped into my head. Why not replace the lamp with one that isn’t as tall? Or, more specifically, change it to one I could easily reach. What a simple solution!

Within a few days, I bought a new lamp, a black base with a white shade. While I like how it looks, I love that I can reach it…easily! No more tippy toes are required. And each time I turn the switch, I can’t help but smile. Honestly, a few times, I’ve squealed with delight.

“Are you ready to let go of what’s not working to make way for what does?”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

Why Let Go?

It’s easy to keep doing what you’ve always done, even if it’s annoying. But when you’re willing to let go of what’s not working, you make room for what is. And when that happens, joy and happiness will follow.

I don’t have to stretch anymore to reach the lamp. Instead, I will learn to ‘stretch’ in other ways. What else is possible? What else can I improve?

How about you? Are you ready to thrive? What becomes possible when you let go of what’s not working? I’d love to hear your thoughts and invite you to join the conversation.

Do you want help letting go of those things, habits, or situations that no longer serve you? If so, reach out anytime. Please email me, Linda, at linda@ohsorganized.com, call 914-271-5673, or schedule a Discovery Call. Letting go is possible, especially with support.

Is it only me, or has your plate also become fuller since the start of the fall season? After returning from our last trip of the summer, reality hit.

There were workshops to create and make progress on. Interactions with new, returning, and potential organizing clients ramped up, and volunteer activities went into full gear. Add to these the holidays, upcoming conference travel, and my new Mindful Organizing workshop launching this week. These make my to-do list more intense than usual. This burst of activity pulses through my mind and body.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having a full plate, I am reminded of a mindfulness meditation practice I worked with a while ago. Using the Insight Timer app, I listened to Justin Francisco’s meditation, Drop Your To-Do List and Just Be. It was a message I needed to hear. After meditating, I added a note to my to-do list about using this idea for a future blog post. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

It was also helpful to understand the difference between Justin’s Just Be List and my To-Don’t List, which I’ve written about before.

Justin makes the case about the benefits of taking time to just be and do nothing. This seems more viable when we’re on vacation or have less going on. I get that. I am internally driven to accomplish and be productive, but I sometimes struggle to reconcile how much I need those deep pauses. However, I have experienced the value of stopping, even briefly, and recognize the tremendous benefits of taking do-nothing breaks.

What are you in the thick of?

• Are you overwhelmed with the clutter in your home?

• Are you frustrated with your organizing systems?

• Is your schedule overflowing?

• Are you trying to create a better balance between work and personal time?

• Are you working on new projects, which make it difficult to focus on anything else?

• Is your to-do list so extensive that you can’t decide what to do next?

“There are tremendous benefits to taking do-nothing breaks.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

Just Be List

When you have a lot going on, it may feel like the obvious first step is to take action and work more. While those will be essential to move forward, consider this alternative. When your mind is racing and you’re stressed, it’s more challenging to focus. This is an excellent time to pause and do nothing. You’ll return refreshed after your do-nothing break. You can mindfully. . . 

• Stare out of the window.

• Step outside to feel the sun and cool fall breeze on your skin.

• Sit and close your eyes for a few moments.

• Lay down with a cozy blanket and take a short nap.

• Plop onto the couch and stare at the ceiling.

• Notice the inhale and exhale movements of your breath.

• Listen to the sounds around you.

• Watch the flames flicker as you smell the scent of your favorite candle.

While doing nothing, do only that. No scrolling, list-making, or thinking about what you’ll do next. If doing nothing feels too challenging, set a timer. Give yourself 10, 15, or 20 minutes to disengage. When the buzzer dings, return to your to-list and select one small thing to focus on.

Notice how that felt. In which ways was your pause beneficial? After your break, did you feel refreshed? Were you more motivated? Could you more easily select and engage in that next small action step? How will you experiment again with just being?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.