Today I am grateful for forgiveness.  This week seems to have been filled with a lot of backstepping and it feels like I lost a lot of ground in regards to personal development.  I engaged in behaviors I know aren’t conducive to growth like fear, envy, anger, jealousy, over-spending, over-eating.  I am grateful for one thing: those old behaviors felt wrong the entire time.  I mean they physically felt icky, heavy, and made me feel like crap.  I’m grateful for that because it means that I’m aware the old patterns don’t serve, they aren’t right for me anymore.  So I’m working on forgiving myself and moving forward.  Forgiveness is new for me because I’d normally be angry with myself, chastise the behavior, and wallow in regret.  I want to heal the part of me that needed to engage in the behavior in the first place and I’m grateful for that opportunity.

Today I’m grateful for KNOWING.  Along with working on root causes, I’m grateful to get in touch with my KNOWING when it comes to my needs.  I’ve known for a long time that I have to take next steps and I’ve felt off the whole time, like things still weren’t clear about the goal.  The way to make that better is to rely on intuition.  Intuition can be as small as gut feelings telling us something is off or it can be as blatant as having to refuse an opportunity or invitation that doesn’t align.  To get to that level we need to have complete clarity.  Clarity about who we are.  Clarity on our intuition.  And we need to act from those places of knowing constantly and without shame or regret. 

Today I am grateful for new beginnings.  Along with forgiveness and knowing comes new beginnings.  We are so fortunate to have the opportunity for new beginnings over and over again, multiple times a day if needed.  I’m even grateful that I’ve been grateful for new beginnings before.  Life isn’t permanent.  We can change and redirect course any time.  Sometimes we need a pivot in order to get where we want to be.  Take that chance.  Try something new.  Try something that feels better.  Even if it’s unknown and we only have an inkling that it might work, try it.  You never know where it will take you.     

Today I am grateful and proud of myself for sticking with my limits.  We had to go to the pet store today for fish food and, naturally, we started roaming looking at different animals.  A beautiful chinchilla played in his enclosure and I felt this immediate rush of needing to bring him home.  We used to rescue chinchillas so they’ve always held a spot in our hearts.  My husband felt the same impulse to bring him home and, of course, my son was so excited.  As we calculated the price of the things we needed to get, I reminded myself that this was a whim.  We have goals for this year and spending that kind of money on an impulse purchase that lasts over a decade isn’t the way to get there.  We came home without a new addition to the family, and as sad as it was to turn down the little guy, it was the right thing to do.   

Today I am grateful for a much needed moment of flow.  Chaos will never stop around us so we have to control and regulate the environment within us.  I mentioned above that I’ve felt like I was backstepping this week, engaging in negative behaviors and thought patterns.  I put myself into such a deep panic attack the other evening that I couldn’t fall asleep until after 3AM and I woke up at 6:30AM.  Throughout the course of the day, I noticed my thoughts slowing—perhaps due to tiredness or just the overwhelm I put on myself.  And I realized I had to give over.  I don’t want to fight my life.  I don’t want to argue for things to be a certain way.  I don’t have the energy for it any longer.  I’m between the places where the new is coming in and the old is what creates security.  How we spend our energy is entirely up to us and I’d rather go with the current than against it.

Today I am grateful to recognize need.  I’ve been pushing myself too much lately.  It’s been a whole lot of too much.  Too much consumption, anger, arguing, demanding, spreading myself too thin, whining, feeling alone, confusion. All of these things would have irritated me to no end previously, and I would have taken it out on myself.  I took a moment to ask where all of this is coming from.  How did I find myself right back where I started? There was a need still left to fulfill.  I don’t want to go into too much detail on this one, it’s a fresh wound so to speak, but the need to be heard and seen is still high on my list.  I’m not finding the appropriate outlet to honor those needs and it’s catching up with me.  So instead of being angry and frustrated, I just need to hear what I really need.  In that way all of the negative self-soothing techniques I picked up over the years don’t serve here.  I’m ready.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.