Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of our gratitude throughout the day. That’s why we added it as a healthy habit to track in The Agile Life Plan 4-week kick-start free course. Try it out for yourself 🙂
Do you bless your food?
I didn’t until I was in my 30s and have nearly every day since then.
It may look different from the way that my friends would pray before a meal, but it’s my way of giving thanks to the food in front of me.
Growing up, my parents made an effort to ensure that we ate meals together at the table. As our lives got more busy, we still maintained the tradition of eating dinner together. We all would sit down to the table and wait until everyone was present before digging into the food. It was a courtesy that we provided one another that no matter who made the meal, someone else would set the table and ensure that we all could sit to a relaxing meal. There would oftentimes be soft music playing and candles lit. Dinner-time still is a sacred time at my family home.
However, I did not grow up in a religious family. We had no tradition to say a prayer before each meal, we just made sure to share the mealtime together to talk about our days. Any time I visited another family where the meal started with our heads bowed and someone speaking a prayer, I felt awkward because I just didn’t know what to do. I was familiar with us all sitting down together for a meal, I just didn’t have the experience of prayer beforehand.
I also couldn’t relate to the words that were said in the prayer. To be perfectly honest, it meant for a very uncomfortable beginning to a meal. Instead of beginning my meal in a parasympathetic state, I would feel all tense and on edge.
Then, in my 30s, I went to a seminar by Jerry Roisentul, a motivational speaker specializing in Mindset and Leadership. There were so many great nuggets that I took away from that day, and if you ever get the chance to coordinate with Jerry, please do!
The most pertinent takeaway from my seminar with Jerry was a mantra that he suggested that we all memorize and use when it was helpful. The mantra went something like this:
I am so happy and grateful for perfect health, unstoppable confidence, and a constant abundance of time, money, and freedom in my life.
I attract the right people, resources, and opportunities that will enable me to _______ (whatever your dream is).
I wrote this mantra on sticky notes and pasted it around my house until it became second nature to say it.
One day, this mantra made its way to our dinner table. My partner and I said it to one another, finishing out our sayings with our personal goals. It gave us both the chills hearing each other’s goals and having our food right there in front of us as a source of nourishing our bodies to ensure the success of our goals.
We now say this mantra to ourselves before each meal, taking a moment to at the end to give thanks to the people, animals, and resources that brought the food to our table. We are able to give thanks every day to people that we’ve met that we appreciate for their part in our lives. We give silent thanks to parts of our bodies that feel injured, asking our cells to receive good nourishment from the food we give them (see our other article for more on that).
Now, when I’m at a household where a prayer is told at the start of a meal, I have my own mantra to say to myself. I feel at peace and energized at the same time, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bless my food before eating it.
