Dear Love Seekers,
As my year of intentional acts of love comes to a close, I am feeling so grateful for the experience. I am grateful for the support of others who shared with me that they appreciated hearing from me every day about my journey and sharing how they were inspired to do their own acts of love.
I feel grateful for the many lessons and insights I have learned throughout this year like the fact that more times than not I do things without intention. That sometimes I take myself too seriously and judged my acts of love as too little or too selfish or not enough. I also feel profoundly grateful that I was able to have this experience to remind myself that I can be a stand for love no matter what. That I have a choice of how I want to be in the world and that by creating a goal and sticking to it I can feel proud and strong. I am grateful for all the reminders of my capacity for love and the capacity of love from others. I am in awe of the power of love.
This month I wanted to explore gratitude since we are in the season of giving thanks, spending time with the ones we love and preparing to move forward into a new year. All of which can make us feel wonderful or devasted or some variation in-between.
I opened my email today and there was this from Tony Robbins. Thank you, universe!
You can’t be angry and grateful simultaneously.
You can’t be fearful and grateful simultaneously.
Gratitude is the antidote to anger and fear.
When you live in gratitude, you have more to give. You no longer focus on what you lack, and you no longer feel like you don’t have enough. Gratitude is the vehicle that gets you to a life overflowing with abundance and fulfillment.
By definition, grateful is feeling or showing appreciation for something done or received. It is a positive feeling and usually triggered by some event. The event could be as simple as someone smiling at you and you then feeling positive.
This power we have to take an event (smile) and then create a story around it (thinking) that then creates our (feelings) which ultimately creates our (action) and leads to the (result) of what we then have in our life is forever a puzzle that we each alone need to navigate.
That one smile could lead us to think (what a nice person or what are they smirking at) which would result in a feeling of (people can we so warm or everyone is trying to get something over on me) which then would lead to a result (smile back and feel warm thoughts or turn away and believe your story of how they are a bad person) which ultimately will result in (perhaps making a new friend and feeling good vs. bumming another person out and feeling bad and alone).
There is no wrong or right here – just choice. What will you choose to be grateful for? How can you be grateful for whatever comes your way? How do you want to feel?
Change your thoughts, change your feelings.
I have kept a gratitude journal off and on over the years and diligently tracked the 5 things I was grateful for each day. I have woken up in the morning and laid in bed to ask myself questions to start my day and one of them is what I am grateful for. I have practiced meditation with a series of questions I begin with and one of them is, what I am grateful for. I try to tap into the power of the moment when I am in traffic and want to scream by asking myself, what am I grateful for?
All of these practices have been powerful and helpful, but what about finding what to be grateful for when your car stalls on the 405 or someone you love dies or your identity is stolen? How can we be grateful in the moments that are mundane, horrific or sad? I’m not saying that you should not feel the pain of what’s happening but at some point if you can ask yourself, what am I grateful for in this moment, this situation or what is the lesson or how can I help, then your thinking will move toward what you want vs. what you don’t want – your energy will automatically follow.
This life thing is practice. Here are some simple ways to practice living a life of gratitude:
- Think positive thoughts. When negative thoughts bombard your mind, slow down your thinking and replace them with positive thoughts.
- Help someone.
- Do something creative or go into nature
- Move your body and get active.
- Make a gratitude list.
Wishing you all a love-filled holiday season. I am grateful to you, for you and because of you.
Thoughts on GRATITUDE:
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.” – Mary Davis
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” – Anonymous
“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”
– G.K. Chesterton
Please read my January 2019 post for the details of my original idea to intentionally spread love.
Follow my Facebook page www.facebook.com/SusieGolitiCoaching where I will share how it’s going. Feel free to post your version of what you want to put out in the world. Let’s flood the world with LOVE (Kindness, Joy, Peace, Happiness, Faith, Ease, Grace, Truth, Power, Forgiveness and Gratitude).
If you are you looking for support in creating your life from your intuition, your inspiration, your truth – Please book a FREE consultation with me to see what may be possible for you.
May your life be filled with more moments of gratitude and may that gratitude spill over into our world.
In Love, Kindness, Joy, Peace, Happiness, Faith, Ease, Grace, Truth, Power, Forgiveness (and Gratitude),
Susie Goliti
(aka Transformation Junkie)
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