Gratitude 24/7, 365

Constant Gratitude

Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude. To some, it’s the only time they remember to be grateful. I’ve learned gratitude needs to be a way of life, 24/7, and 365 days a year. I would say that’s the biggest, most powerful lesson I’ve learned on a healing journey I can now say spans decades.

I’m sure by now you’ve read somewhere that expressing gratitude attracts more of what you’re grateful for. I’m here to tell you, it’s truer than true! But you have to trust in right timing nonetheless. There are many ways to show gratitude, though. It’s not simply saying “thank you”, or saying your thankful. It’s actually a give and take kind of thing. Holding the door for someone else is a way of showing gratitude. Allowing a friend to help you with something, even if you could have done it yourself is, in its own way, showing gratitude.

So is writing 5 things you’re grateful for every day. It doesn’t have to be publicly like I do. A gratitude journal where you write your five things is perfect. Saying “thank you” aloud because you caught several (or even 1) green lights in a row is one of my favorites. Or if I receive some kind of windfall, no matter how small, I always say: “Thank you. Bring me more.” In this way I was able to turn an opportunity I was given a couple of years ago into unimagined abundance, not to mention, my dream job.

Imperfectly Perfect

Sure I back slide now and then, and indulge in self-pity and lack mentality. We all do on occasion. It’s what makes us human. The trick is to recognize you’re doing it, and flip the switch, so to speak. Remind yourself gratitude isn’t just for Thanksgiving. It’s a gift you give yourself, so why not give it as often as you can?

The real challenge is showing gratitude for seemingly not-so-great things; getting stuck in traffic; not getting the job; the end of a friendship or other relationship. I’ve learned to look for the blessing in disguise in such situations. In the first case, a delay invariably kept you from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You may never learn why you were delayed, but trust it was in your best interests. In the second, I know there were a few times I dodged a bullet by not being hired, and it left me open for something much better.

Admittedly, it’s tough to find the blessing when a relationship ends, especially when it ends badly. It challenges your faith in everything working out as it’s supposed to; if not in fairy tale, happily-ever-after fashion. Yet with each relationship that ends, you take both lessons, and happy memories with you. You grow as a person for having given yourself to that relationship in the first place. So take the time, as the door closes behind you, to find aspects of the relationship for which you’re grateful. Not only can it reduce the amount of trauma you experience, and the time it takes to land back on your feet, it keeps your heart from closing, as it so often does when things don’t work out as you’d imagined, and hoped they should.

Finding the Blessing

The bottom line is, it’s impossible to be depressed when you focus on gratitude, so when you’re going through a tough time, you’re in better spirits, with a clearer head to face the challenges ahead of you. You’re better able to see the possibilities instead of a long, dark, empty road ahead.

My challenge, if you accept it, is to write down 5 things you’re grateful for this Thanksgiving, which don’t look much like blessings at first. Peel back a layer or two to find the good in the disappointing; the unpleasant; the frustrating. You might surprise yourself by not only lifting your mood, but by attracting what that unpleasantness was meant to make you ready for much sooner than if you’d wallowed in the sadness of it all.

Grateful for the Challenges

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for the endings which sometimes drop kicked me into a new, unexpected, amazing beginning.
2. I’m grateful for the doors that closed so I had to go looking for ones that opened more easily.
3. I’m grateful for delays which kept me from trouble I might never know.
4. I’m grateful for a world where hope can keep you putting one foot in front of the other even when things appear especially grim.
5. I’m grateful for all the times the Universe has pushed me off the path I was on, and forced me to forge a new one.

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

The Small Stuff Can Make or Break You

Small Wins, Great Improvements

With a little help from a friend, I finally got the LED shop lights in my garage hooked up to the switch on the wall, thanks to an outlet another friend had put in for me a few months ago. The old-fashioned, fluorescent bulb style lights my ex had hard-wired in after trash digging on one of his construction jobs were getting worse and worse. Whenever there’s any dampness in the air, they don’t want to come on, and as they’re the old style of fixture, I can no longer get ballasts or bulbs for them. Eventually, I’ll have to disconnect them, and take them all down, but for now, my garage is as bright as day in all the previously dark corners.

Having my car out of the garage to install the lights meant a couple of other fixes could happen as well. It makes me so happy to flip the switch, and have all the lights come on without the finickiness of the old fluorescents! The small things in life make me so happy! Speaking of small things, I was panicking because SCE had scheduled 2 maintenance outages 10 days apart, and the second was supposed to be on November 30th. To most people, it would be a small inconvenience, but I use the last day of the month, especially when I’m lucky enough to have it fall on a weekend, to prep for monthly billing. Having the power out most of the day would have been a massive inconvenience, to say the least. Fortunately, the powers that be rethought their plan and moved the second outage to December 7th which is much better for me! Another small win for my team!

Internal Setbacks

At the same time, a lot of small stuff has been weighing me down of late; things I know are fleeting, yet have allowed to drag my heart and mind away from what’s important. Even though I know it’s a temporary lapse, it’s wreaked its share of havoc on my life for the last couple of weeks. However, that havoc, and the mindset which sapped my energy and motivation for a time has brought me full circle to where I’m writing daily. In so doing, I get to put things back into perspective, and fan the flame of my spark of hope with each post I write.

As I see it, these mental and emotional setbacks which force me back to basics (e.g. writing regularly) are reminders I’m neglecting myself in some fashion. Just as failing to take care of my physical self leads to an increase in aches and pains, and flare ups of arthritis, neglecting my mental and emotional self creates a plethora of internal aches and pains when the floodgates open, immersing my heart and spirit in old, unhealed traumas and outdated coping mechanisms. Only writing seems to allow me to work through those deep-seated, toxic cesspools.

Stretching the Mind, Body, and Spirit

Just as my body needs to stretch and move every day, so does the body housing all of my emotions, both experienced and withheld. As such, stretching my emotional self through my writing, is as necessary, if not more so, than stretching my body regularly. In both cases, the stretches need to be uncomfortable, if not a little painful in order to be effective. Failing to take the time to air those emotions is the internal equivalent of sitting on my butt all day. In both cases, I get stiff, sore, and need to move things around until they’re loose enough to flow more easily.

Admittedly, it’s usually easier to move my body than the well of unmanaged emotions I’ve bottled up for decades because, all too often, I have to remove another layer of protection to get to the next pit of feelings. I was taught from early childhood how to bottle things up, but not how to work through the pain, express the emotions, and let them go. Although I’ve made significant progress in this second half of my life, old habits still come roaring in when I let my guard down.

This daily writing is doing so much more than simply airing the emotions and preparing them for release. It’s also addressing those coping mechanisms which are all too happy to jump in in a misguided attempt to protect me from harm when instead, they’re doing more harm than good. If I’m ever tempted to give in to them, I have only to look back at my parents and the lives they led. If I am certain of nothing else, it’s the fact I do not want to live my life like they lived theirs. Only now do I see what a cold, lonely, depressing place that would be.

Stop Sweating the Small Shit

Yes, I have my sad, lonely, depressed moments. The difference between me and my parents is I’m able to own those moments, and dig deep inside to release the pressure they only released by drinking excessively. Even then, it was only a temporary release, as they never actually worked through the impacted emotions to free themselves from the relentless grip on their lives. Truth be told, they’d be mortified by the way I air my deepest thoughts and feelings semi-publicly like this. (I don’t delude myself I have a huge following, but the one I have is precious to me)

While I may sweat the small shit for a little while every so often, I’ve learned, and am still learning to write about it, and even talk about it to my few, precious, real friends when I need to, but also to help myself keep healing. I do hope, in being able to drag things out of my psyche, autopsy, and release them into the much wider Universe, I truly am (as some have suggested) helping someone else out there realize old lessons in suppressing emotions were dead wrong. Only by pulling them out, sometimes kicking and screaming, examining them microscopically, and going through the process of feeling them once and for all allows the healing process to proceed.

We are all a huge conglomeration of feelings and experiences, yet all too often we try to deny the feelings. Kindness and compassion aren’t just words on social media. They’re gifts we give, not only to ourselves, but to the Universe itself because we touch every, single soul on this planet in some way, and perhaps elsewhere in the Galaxy as well.

Grateful for Breakthroughs

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for friends who offer me new experiences.
2. I’m grateful for my following, even if I’m never going to be an “influencer”. I know what I write isn’t going to resonate with the many, but rather, with the few.
3. I’m grateful for the plethora of ideas which have been filling my head, and spilling out onto the screen the last couple of weeks. May it continue unabated.
4. I’m grateful for the encouragement I’m getting, letting me know my words aren’t falling on deaf ears. I know those who’ve given up on me don’t really matter in the general scheme of things. They weren’t meant to walk my path for long, if at all.
5. I’m grateful for learning to let go of other peoples’ expectations; even if some of those people are blood family.

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.