Holiday snacks and other office hazards: Let love, not guilt, guide your choices

Dec 02, 2025

You walk into the staff lounge and there they are again: the holiday snacks.

A mountain of cookies, fudge, and a mystery tray that may or may not contain peppermint bark.

You may not even be hungry, but somehow your hand is already halfway to the plate.

This time of year, it can feel like the holiday gift baskets are personally testing your willpower. The real challenge is not the food itself. It is the autopilot.

You spend all day making decisions that matter. Your brain simply wants something easy, something that it thinks will feel good for a moment.

What if you took a moment to ask yourself:
“What is the more loving choice for me right now?”

Sometimes the loving choice is to have the treat because it is your favorite once-a-year cookie or your colleague baked it especially for you. Enjoying it mindfully can be an act of connection and care.

Other times, the loving choice is to walk past the pile of chocolate because you realize you are not actually hungry or you don’t even really like peppermint bark. Or perhaps a better treat right then is a pause, a drink of water, or a few gentle stretches.

Either way, you can make a loving choice from awareness rather than habit.

This season, let care and kindness guide you instead of impulse or guilt.

The guilt snack nobody ordered: A sneaky reason urges stick around

Ever notice how quickly a harmless urge turns into a full-blown self-improvement project? You're scrolling your phone. And then your brain jumps in: "I should be able to put this down.""Why am I doing this again?""This is such a waste of time." We usually tell ourselves these things because we're trying to stop. A little guilt should help, right? Except it does the opposite. Now you're not just...

Don't think about this: There is a difference between growth and tolerance

You’re learning how to shift your thoughts.And you’re getting kinda good at it.Maybe even a little competitive about it? You’re in a difficult situation and you go to work.Reframing. Searching for a more helpful angle.There must be a way to choose a thought that makes this feel okay. All this thought work feels productive. You want to be an A+ self-coacher. But sometimes thought work turns into...

You're not late: What if this is exactly when it happens

After a long, long time of not exercising consistently, the two of us crossed over the 6-month mark of meeting daily at 5:30am to do strength training. While every once in a while our brains offer us thoughts of pride in our consistency, way too often we hear the internal refrain of “I should have started this years ago.” Exercising.Writing.Saving.Setting boundaries.Making that change you kee...

Holiday snacks and other office hazards: Let love, not guilt, guide your choices

PLB Membership