Today I am grateful for recognizing fears.  It takes a lot of work to dig deep enough to find the specific fears that hold us back—even more work to find the cause of them.   When we do that work, we tap into parts of us that need to be healed.  It’s amazing how much healing takes place in this life.  The mind is also a fascinating thing when it comes to finding out what it needs to heal from.  There are things we don’t even think would be a bother for us only to find out it’s a rooted fear.  There are fears we inherit from our parents—and those can be trippy when we find out it’s something we aren’t afraid of at all.  But the point of recognizing a fear is to heal and in that regard, that is the piece I’m most grateful for.  It can be a slow process to move forward/recognize all of this (it has been) but once we know what the issue is, once we address it, there is no holding back.

Today I am grateful for cleaning up the spaces around us.  It’s true that the oust side truly does reflect what’s on the inside.  When the space around us is chaotic and disorganized, that is typically reflective of our mindset.  Yes, it takes time to clean and organize, but doing the work is so worth it because once the outside clutter begins to clear, the inside clutter begins to unwind and clear as well. We carry so much with us, so many things we don’t even think about, and the longer we ignore them, the more cluttered our lives become.  Seeing the clutter can be overwhelming and we may not know how to begin to address it, but sometimes all it takes is moving one piece.  We can’t let our perception of how long it takes to fix it intimidate us or prevent us from starting to clear the external and internal spaces.  We often make the process bigger than it actually is.  Once we get started, the rest kind of falls into place.    

Today I am grateful for partnership and addressing mindset.  My husband and I are having a challenging time (I have more about this later this week or early next week…) and it has a lot to do with time and how we spend it and what we want for the future.  Cleaning up spaces was something I forced him to address yesterday because we were at the point we could barely walk through our garage (one of three key areas that were barely passable).  I told him that it’s time to get it done, procrastinating isn’t going to solve any of the fears/issues he’s having at this point, tackling them head on is going to get him the answers.  If the outside is clear, then maybe that will help clear the inside.  I didn’t go into anything deeper than that, I didn’t force him to discuss the fears he told me he’s having—we started simply with the physical work.  Sometimes we get so caught up in what we want to do that we focus on the things we don’t have when we really need to be focusing on what we CAN do.  Sometimes when we see what we can do, possibilities open up and the more possibilities open up, the more solutions we see to things that bother us—and we may learn that what we thought bothered us isn’t the actual issue but we see what IS. It starts with one step which is often less scary than we think it is.  We just need to begin.

Today I am grateful for health.  Part of what has been bothering both of us lately has been the passage of time.  As cliché as it sounds, we are at midlife and neither one of us are quite where we want to be.  We are well aware of that, and we are well aware that we need to make a choice in order to move forward.  Neither one of is entirely unhappy with where we are at, but we are acutely aware that this is not specifically what we were hoping for and we both have the sensation that there is more that needs to be done, shifts we need to make.  We have been taking small steps—the first was actually addressing the food in the house.  After we spoke about using our environment to set us up for success, we looked at the food in the house and realized that we needed better alternatives.  I downloaded an app that explained the quality of food and the specific issues with it (risky additives, too high in salt, saturated fats, etc.) and that started making my husband think in different terms—health is something that starts with what we put in our mouths.  We get one shot and we need to set ourselves up for success and that means taking care of our bodies.  Plus I love getting to teach my son early as well (he loved scanning items in the app—he was devastated by Doritos though).      

Today I am grateful for creativity.  I’ve been reading more fiction lately—my brain needed a break—and it has been delightful.  I have so much love and respect for the creative state and it’s a joy to read other people’s works and feel the inspiration.  I also love getting lost in a story, period.  It’s amazing how the art of story telling takes us to another world, another time, place, another viewpoint.  It is such a gift to take a medium and communicate an imaginary place and feel the experience of another person (that doesn’t even exist), and feel vested in their lives.  This is something that I want to do, but I want people to be able to wake up to their own creativity as well.  The creative state is filled with endless possibilities, and I think that is my favorite part about it.  We need a place where anything is possible, and that is the mind.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.