{"id":2969,"date":"2013-03-07T08:37:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T13:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=2969"},"modified":"2013-03-07T08:41:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T13:41:56","slug":"indulge-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/?p=2969","title":{"rendered":"Indulge yourself."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chocolate\"<\/a>Whenever I walk into the therapy office where I practice, I walk directly to the candy dish where I strategically pluck out a piece of Dove chocolate from the mound of Hershey’s kisses. I do this for two reasons: (1) I have a slight affinity to chocolate (it can make any day a good day) and (2) I get the chance to enjoy a piece of chocolate AND the chance to read an encouraging message.<\/p>\n

Usually these messages make me feel warm and fuzzy inside and bring a smile to my face. However, much to my dismay, I found myself letting out an exasperated sigh this past Tuesday evening after reading the much anticipated chocolate wrapper message.<\/p>\n

You may ask why. Let me tell you. The message said\u00a0“Indulge every whim.”<\/strong> My first thoughts were…<\/p>\n

Whoa, boy. What? Indulge my every whim? How could I ever indulge my every whim and manage to get everything checked off the infamous to do list? This wrapper is suggesting utter carelessness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Talk about being critical! The poor chocolate wrapper didn’t even have the chance to defend itself. Instead, it found itself crumpled up and thrown into a wastebasket.<\/p>\n

I am unsure of what led me to do it but I took some serious time to reflect on the message while driving home from the office that night.<\/p>\n

After some thought, I arrived at a conclusion: while indulging in\u00a0every<\/em> whim may be excessive, it is certainly not a bad thing to indulge in whims. Rather, it is one of the most healthy things that we can do for ourselves.<\/p>\n

Indulging in whims allows us the opportunity to let go and enjoy pretty much anything…a guilty pleasure, time with the family, trying something new, relaxing…<\/p>\n

This particular evening reminded me of how easy it is to slip into a humdrum routine…a routine that suffocates the whim.<\/p>\n

I am truly thankful that I read that chocolate wrapper message. It was a reminder for myself…one that I deemed important enough to share with you.<\/p>\n

Maybe you will decide to indulge a chocolate whim today…sounds like a good idea to me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever I walk into the therapy office where I practice, I walk directly to the candy dish where I strategically pluck out a piece of Dove chocolate from the mound of Hershey’s kisses. I do this for two reasons: (1) I have a slight affinity to chocolate (it can make any day a good day) and (2) I get the Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Chocolate.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2969"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2998,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2969\/revisions\/2998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2969"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collectiveinquiry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}