Culture Archives - Bringing Inspiration Home

Are you up to your eyeballs in decisions to make these days? School, schedule, work, extra-curriculars, ministry, travel, family affairs, housing, health…the list goes on doesn’t it?

Chances are, many of you are navigating decisions that have to be made not just in terms of multiple categories, but for multiple people in your lives. All of this can lead to decision fatigue, because, let’s face it, we only have so much capacity for decision making each day.

Recently I started to write a blog post about decision fatigue as a wrap-up for my summer series, when I realized that over the years I’d written 3 blog posts on the topic. Typically these posts and emails experience higher readership than almost every other topic, except for when I write about the Cotswolds.

Why does decision fatigue garner such interest? To be honest, I don’t have a great answer, except that at no other time in history have we been inundated with so many queries requiring a response, decision, purchase, plans. I believe many of us are becoming weary as a result.

From emails to activity-specific apps, texts to social media platforms, we are at everyone’s beck and call, available to make decisions or respond to a need at any time of the day or night. Even up until very recently, the only way we could be summoned or interrupted instantly was via a landline.

We have access to endless search options for just about everything from travel itineraries to grocery items. Clothes shopping, hiring a plumber, or registering kids for activities were far more limited and simplified processes prior to our digital era.

Today’s digital constructs offer up information, requests, and options in tireless fashion, ever eroding our rest. As I witness my rest being upset by the endless barrage of information and communication, I’m learning to set better boundaries with regards to how I handle the overload and reduce the decision fatigue that it invites.

Below are 3 digital/device habits I’ve begun implementing over the past year in order to reduce decision fatigue:

My phone (and Will’s) stay in the kitchen for night. I don’t need the temptation of the internet, texts, photos, etc., if I wake in the night and am struggling to sleep. It’s not natural or timeless, and as my desire grows to implement more slow living strategies, those habits that don’t have a history are less likely to make the cut when it comes to my daily rhythms.
I (mostly) avoid checking my email, texts, or other message-related apps first thing in the morning. The same goes for online shopping or searching. My plans, my prayers, and my practices (working out, journaling, making tea etc.) need to come before the rest of the world is allowed to make their requests known or their products and services offered. I’m also trying to do less checking of my device in the evening and make ‘business hours’ a thing. If it’s not social/relationship-oriented, it probably doesn’t need to take up space in my head between dinner and breakfast.
With bigger decisions or requests I’m trying to spend more time thinking and praying about them instead of making decisions sooner than I ought. The decision or answer might wind up being the same in the end, but the habit of not responding, scheduling, or purchasing so soon is better for my nervous system and leaves me more calm and confident in my timing, responses, and choices.

Feel free to save or repin the image above for easy reference in the future.

Ultimately, I feel like I’m reclaiming my brain through these slower, more intentional processes. Through boundaries that limit my access and exposure to the digital world and my devices, I’m giving myself the gift of rest. This helps to reduce decision fatigue, not because the decisions go away (they don’t), but because I’m able to make better decisions with more clarity when I address them at more appropriate times.

Is decision fatigue something you struggle with? I would love to know what aspect of this issue is a weak spot for you, as well as what has helped you manage decision fatigue. Feel free to write me at: hello@bringinginspiraitonhome.com or message me on Instagram @bringinginspirationhome

If you’re up for letting me share in a future newsletter, just let me know and I’m happy to either make your contribution anonymous or provide a first name. Click HERE to subscribe to my weekly newsletter for more slow living strategies, travel tips, and inspiration to help you tap into your creativity and experience deeper rest.

In the meantime, here are a few blog posts I’ve written over the past years that have helped me to reduce decision fatigue. I hope you enjoy them and pass along anything you find helpful to those who find themselves wanting the same thing: how to minimize the overwhelm and enjoy more abundant rest.

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Our friends’ Missy and Dave’s orchard at the Cambium Cider Co. in Vernon, British Columbia.

As a Canadian growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I don’t recall learning about the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving. My experience of Thanksgiving was certainly rich with the shorn stubble of a prairie harvest on the horizon, red wooden baskets filled with crabapples plucked from my Grandparents’ orchard, blue skies crowded with endless V’s of Canada Geese headed south, and first frosts shimmering on October mornings while whitetail deer snuck silently across our fields. This feast for the senses all culminated in the bounty of tantalizing, steaming dishes that lined my Grandma’s countertops on Canadian Thanksgiving.

As the great-grandchild of immigrants who fled persecution, I always felt that gratitude for freedom and for such bounty was easily summoned. The ever-present pot of soup, bubbling on my parents’ stove-top during this time of year, with flavours of the old country mixed with ingredients from the new, was an easy reminder my personal origins. But the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving? All I knew was the American version from the movies which depicted school-aged kids performing plays that featured Pilgrims, the Mayflower, and a harvest feast shared with Native Americans.

“But the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving? All I knew was the American version from the movies.”

After I moved to the US, I insisted on celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving so as not to lose the tradition and see it swallowed up by its much more exuberant counterpart. I was often asked about Canadian Thanksgiving traditions, which I could easily rattle off: turkey, football, pumpkin pie. But when asked about the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving, I was stumped. So I went digging. And every October I read a little more about both Canadian and American Thanksgiving origins. This year, I thought I’d share some of the details with you.

“Thanksgiving was certainly rich with the shorn stubble of a prairie harvest on the horizon, red wooden baskets filled with crabapples plucked from my Grandparents’ orchard, blue skies crowded with endless V’s of Canada Geese headed south, and first frosts shimmering on October mornings while whitetail deer snuck silently across our fields.”

While the Indigenous peoples of North America had been holding feasts to celebrate the fall harvest long before European settlers arrived, the first European Thanksgiving is thought to have taken place in North America in 1579. Following a treacherous expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, English explorer Martin Frobisher celebrated his fleet’s arrival on Baffin Island with a Thanksgiving sermon, Communion, and meal of mushy peas, salt beef, and biscuits.

Lauren’s First Canadian Thanksgiving. Photographed at the Cambium Cider Co. in British Columbia, Canada.

Thanksgiving in modern-day feast-form doesn’t appear to have occurred until 1616 when French explorer Samuel de Champlain and a host of French settlers held a celebration of Thanksgiving in Port Royal, Nova Scotia with their indigenous neighbours, the Mi’kmaq. Not long after, a group of settlers who arrived in Virginia aboard the ship Margaret, held their own Thanksgiving celebration in 1619. The more well-known American Thanksgiving feast, which included Pilgrims who had traveled on the Mayflower, along with the local Wampanoag people, took place after the Pilgrims’ first harvest in 1621.

Between the Pilgrim and Wampanoag’s first Thanksgiving, and Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 declaring Thanksgiving to be held on the 4th Thursday in November, the holiday was celebrated intermittently in the United States. During this time, however, Americans who fled to Canada during the Revolutionary war brought with them turkey, squash, and pumpkin. Many thanks to our southern neighbours indeed!

Canada declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday in 1879, but couldn’t decide on a specific date until 1957, when the second Monday in October was officially declared Thanksgiving Day.

Our first fall photos as a family of 3 over Canadian Thanksgiving in 2014.

If you’re a history buff, or are just interested in learning more about Thanksgiving origins and traditions, this is obviously just the crust of the pie, there’s so much more beneath the surface that deserves digging into! Maybe I’ll make this a yearly post and share more next fall!

Historic details aside, I LOVE that our family gets to enjoy the fall season bookended by two Thanksgiving celebrations, one to kick it off, and the other to wrap it up. Truly the best of both worlds.