Today I am grateful for taking my future in my hands.  I’ve come to learn something new about creating our futures and taking chances: the very people you think you can rely on may not be as reliable as we would like to believe.  Others do not have our best interest at heart and there are times we need to take a stand and do what we know is right.  Several months back I took a step to do just that.  Over the last week I’ve been fully reminded that people will take care of themselves and sometimes, if they aren’t getting what they want, they will do what it takes to undermine others.  So I made a decision and I went to the top of the food chain—and I got a bite.  I have feelers out there for several other things as well, but I’ve put my hat in the ring and secured an opportunity to discuss something I actually want to do.  It was a chance that should have been taken 5 years ago and I literally wasn’t allowed to—and now I’ve gone and done it anyway, and I am so thrilled that I have.  Not only is it a sense of empowerment but it is a sense of ease and alignment—I know this is exactly what I’m meant to do.  I’m taking the chance and running with it.

Today I am grateful for community I am building.  Support comes in different forms and we all need to feel some level of support in our lives.  I went through so many things alone, believing I needed to prove I could do it.  There were moments I wasn’t supported but I knew I had to do the thing anyway, and I will say, when it was over, it felt good.  But I carried around this indignation for a long time—and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that I had to do things on my own.  I spent a long period of my life in resentment feeling like I never got help with what I asked for but people would come and do the things I didn’t need help with at all—and still expect me to feel grateful.  Then I’d feel guilty for not being grateful.  But there comes a time when we have to set the boundary with someone who does that and explain they understand the difference.  It’s not like we don’t appreciate the gesture, but if I need help with x and you do y, how is that actually helping?  So I’ve begun forming a space with people who understand this and, more importantly, understand me.  There are wolves in sheep’s clothing who tell us they are for us and we need to be aware and find the truly like-minded.  I am grateful to have that.

Today I am grateful for sticking with new habits.  I was on the struggle bus for a long time, a constant up and down of starting and stopping taking care of myself.  Something shifted.  I’ve talked about changing before and sticking with a new regime—and I was always really good about it for a few weeks.  Inevitably something would happen and put me right back to the start because I would feel terrible, or I would feel uncertain about what to do, or old habits simply crept up because I didn’t know how to react differently in stressful situations.  The process of becoming someone new is really tough but I see the more aware we are, the easier it is.  My issue was that I would find something I wanted to change and then drop it cold-turkey.  Will power would last for a while but it wasn’t an integration of who I am.  So the next time I faced something similar, I didn’t have the actual foundation to make a new choice so I would fall back on what I knew.  I’ve taken this path slower and I’ve felt that foundation shift for real this time.  It’s not like a slight change as it was before—I’ve done the work to make the choices consistently every day. Consistency, not perfection is the goal and I’ve managed to do that.

Today I am grateful for movement.  Even something as simple as walking has made a difference for me.  I had been in such a deep depression that I had barely been moving 6,000 steps a day.  It was truly difficult to even attain that number.  My entire being began to feel sluggish—like it started to even hurt moving.  And then it started to hurt staying still.  I literally became uncomfortable in my own skin no matter what I was doing—so there was no peace.  I’d want to sit but couldn’t sit for long, or lay down, so I would try to move and I’d become exhausted.  As cliché or even as superficial as it sounds, I saw a picture of myself and knew that wasn’t how I wanted to look.  I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that the outside didn’t match what I felt inside.  So I started walking more.  Then I started lifting.  Then I resumed boxing. Then stretching. Then cardio.  I have no excuse because every time I start moving I feel infinitely better—it’s just getting over the hump to create a new habit, a new response.  I am getting older and I want to appreciate myself more.  And I am grateful to incorporate more of what my body can do.

Today I am grateful for aligning.  I truly don’t know what the ultimate goal or the big picture is at present, but I know what I feel, and I feel things coming together.  As I mentioned in the first gratitude above, this isn’t about power.  I thought for a long time that I was looking for power.  What I really wanted was freedom and autonomy in my own life.  It was never about power over people, it was about power over my decisions.  I’ve had serendipitous things happen in my life, but this is different.  This was making a choice and the universe instantly saying, “YES”.  In most scenarios like this I start to feel like the other shoe is going to drop.  Not this time.  This is a moment where each step feels like it’s drawing me closer to where I need to be—not like I’m stumbling along, hoping to find the next step.  This is a stride. It feels good and it feels more and more my own with each step I take.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.