Greetings again! It feels like a monthly blog-post aligns well with a "holiday theme" for these last few months of the year. We'll try to accomplish that without being too cheesy! First of all, with it being Thanksgiving week, we want to recognize yet again just how thankful we are for you - our patients - and the support and loyalty you have given us the past 2.5 years. We certainly do not overlook your role in the success of our business (or the fact that we have a business at all!), and we appreciate the positive words you have shared with your friends, loved ones, and physicians.
We hope that this holiday will be a wonderful time for you and your families. As I (Rachael) anticipate heading to my hometown of Indianapolis, IN, I'm excited about the tradition our family has started, participating in the local "Drumstick Dash" to raise money for hungry families. It's something my sister and I started doing three years ago, and have since recruited our husbands, dad, and her children to join us. Thinking about this got my mind spinning on traditions, and how they are formed.
We function like detectives everyday with our patients, and often times look for habits or patterns that contribute to their pain or dysfunction. I thought about the connection between a habit and a tradition... the definition of a habit: a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. And when I got thinking about it, you could say that a tradition is sort of a glorified habit, a fancy habit. They can be anything from: going out to a certain restaurant every Sunday, to sitting around the turkey table playing cards, to braving the shopping world on Black Friday.
As we love to promote wellness and active lifestyles, I wanted to challenge you to reconsider your family "habits" this holiday. By all means, eat until your heart's content, enjoy the company and storytelling, but also take a moment and think about the type of traditions you want to feel proud of, what it is that's meaningful to you. Get outside and play ball (the weather's going to be great this year!), serve local people in need together, go for a walk or hike... remember all traditions started somewhere!
(WebMD has some good new habit-forming ideas for this holiday in this article on "10 Tips for a Thinner Thanksgiving.")
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!
