Good life skills make communities go round smoothly, so be intentional this new year in 2024. I encourage you to look into the condition of your “soft skill tool kit.” Cleaning up, sharpening or simply picking up and using those “hidden talents'' will help make life easier to navigate. According to the ATYLA Foundation “Looking at the list of skills that are normally listed as soft skills, the most accurate definition is: soft skills are the skills that cannot be learned theoretically, but have to be experienced and pratised in order to be improved.” One of the best ways to perfect your life skills is through hospitality, not as a job, but in your daily life, by using those personal attributes to positively affect those around you.

Hospitality is being kind, considerate, generous, helpful and friendly with others. People appreciate a friendly welcome. Businesses will prosper with genuine and helpful customer care. Individuals will enlarge their society when they practice sincere hospitality.  Hospitality can be simple gestures, like a friendly smile or elaborate ones like a generous gift. Most assuredly, food is almost always a part of a nice hospitable experience, a very welcoming gesture.  Food brings people together with a sense of comfort and well being. Delicious Mexican tamales are an excellent source of hospitality. 

Simply stated, food gifts are good old fashioned Hospitality. According to the situation and traditions, appropriate food gifts are appreciated and comforting. 

• Kids that discover the skill of sharing their candy at an early age gain friends and the benefit of reciprocated candy gifts. 
• Sharing your coveted box of chocolate candy at the office might be a magnanimous choice, but coworkers will appreciate the sacrifice.
• Bringing a fresh batch of yummy brownies to your new neighbor across the street is nice and it can open the door for a beautiful neighborly friendship.
•  A snack basket or home cooked meal for your house guest as he or she settles in is well appreciated. It is the Mexican way to cook up delicious aromatic food to greet a guest, we love sharing food and helping others feel right at home.
• Paying for dinner at a good restaurant or sending a meal to someone faraway is a thoughtful gesture, that encourages others to “pay it forward”
• Making tamales and sharing them with the neighbors is an age-old hospitable tradition. The ancient sustaining food called tamales has evolved into a beautiful and flavorful Mexican tradition of a delicious Mexican dish that must be shared way beyond the family circle.  

Hospitality abounds through food gifts. In today's quick “one-click away” world the possibilities are easily attainable. This fast pace technology driven era can be intimidating and even isolating, but it doesn’t have to be. Mankind was created to prosper in peace together. Technological improvements are just that, improvements meant to speed things up and ease the tension and pressure of life making room for more of the pleasures in life. 

As you practice hospitality and enlarge your horizons this new year, take up your soft skills and before you know it, your smile and  good will attitude will lift up another person along the way.  Right in the comfort of your home embrace the “fast-pace” technology of this age and visit the 
Texas Lone Star Tamales store. You’ll have plenty of options to click, view and choose your food gift. Delicious authentic Texas style tamales will definitely improve your soft skills.