Creating and celebrating the good stuff presents more and more opportunities to practice gratitude.
If we could practice gratitude at all times - we would be a superwoman who made our desires manifest almost instantly. If you do not believe this, practice feeling gratitude as often as possible for a while and see for yourself what happens.
It's not possible to feel grateful without feeling good.
We can feel grateful for feeling good (ie things are going our way, our bodies are healthy, etc) or we can work from the even more powerful space of feeling good by way of feeling grateful.
So, let's say we have made the decision to eat healthier and then - we eat a doughnut.
(why is spell check not allowing me to spell this glazed devil "donut" - I guess donut is just a dunkin' thing - how have I forgotten this?)
But let's say before we decided to eat healthier we would have chowed down on 3 doughnuts.
Well, we know from science that beating our self up is not a good thing. If we personalize our feelings and beliefs we are investing them with too much emotional power and our brain will be flooding our body with neuropeptides on the search for cells with keyholes labeled "I screwed up".
(this is what karma really is - the belief we put on that emotion so we can be sure we reap what we sow and so we can be sure we repeat what we sow - our beliefs create both)
Once we start feeling grateful for the little things we once called "not enough" ie - "I'm so grateful for the willpower to stop at one doughnut, YAY FOR ME" - we will know we are doing enough because we are choosing to feel grateful.
Quantum science (and spirituality) tells us that giving and receiving are really the exact same experience - they are just being viewed from two different perspectives. It's the same with all kinds of contrast.
We can even find gratitude in things we previously would have labeled "yuck" because it is the "yuck" we don't want that teaches us what we do want - this is a planet where we evolve from contrast after all. We get to make our own rules with this.
Now the step after feeling grateful is to feel great (full of great actually) - so we celebrate it.
It's best if we have someone (or a whole lot of someones) in our life we can opening brag about ourselves to - without having to apologize or toss in statements of humility. Humility can be a good thing, but for this exercise we are giving humility the boot (grab your Uggs and give him one of those drop kick corner moves we learned in soccer). If we do not have this someone, we can totally brag to ourselves, or our pets, I brag to Olive.
When I started this blog I planned to document the growth of my business along with the growth of my puppy. But I started thinking that no one would want to read about all the good stuff that happened - that I would be bragging. I thought it would be funnier to write/whine about the "bad" stuff and it was and so I did .. until I found myself looking for stuff to whine about and then more and more whine-worthy stuff started happening to me (I tried to think of this as wine-worthy stuff - since I need the corks and all, but it got harder and harder) - I realized this was not a good thing for me to be creating.
I have found a good way to celebrate is to make myself a list of rewards (3 hours at the library, 2 episodes of Downton, a movie in the middle of the day, the beach for 3 hours, a long soak, etc)
and celebrate the thing I am grateful for.
We are totally allowed to trick our self with this stuff - this isn't about earning rewards.
(school's out folks)
This is about choosing to celebrate what we are grateful for.
When my daughter was little we had all kinds of celebrations that we no longer have. Just last month both hubs and my birthdays passed almost unnoticed (by us - this isn't about other people - we were sick at the time, but we told ourselves we would party later and now we are 30 days later and still haven't celebrated). We need to take celebrating seriously if we want to see some serious results from it. I am ordering the party hats.
There are more ideas for celebrating HERE.
Up next part 5 - how to tie all this stuff into our business (yes, I sometimes remember this is a business blog) xo all
2 comments
I came home the other night tired from the mandatory overtime. I wanted more time at home. More time to do things for myself. I acknowledged that I was "depressed" but in the next breath acknowledged that I was really glad to have a job that I liked that I was good at that pays well and is stable. I was still tired- I was never really depressed- but that was okay. Now to find some time to do all that stuff for me. I think I will start with a celebratory shot of whiskey. Cheers Cat.
I think this is exactly right - we don't cover up the crap - we feel it but we don't live in that space, we affirm what we do want (more time for yourself), we celebrate what we do have - a job you like that you are good at that is stable and pays well - we have a shot of whiskey and we go to bed ... perfection my friend
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