Today I am grateful for nudges.  I wanted to take a break from believing in signs for a while because I feel I spent a slew of time misinterpreting what was meant for me.  The things I was excited about and wanted to do never really came to fruition and I felt jilted because I didn’t want to do the things I was less passionate about.  It seemed the doors were often closed to the things I felt genuine passion about.  It took a lot of effort to keep the door open to the things I liked doing and it often seemed that the things I didn’t want to do were wide open.  On some level I still believe there are hints from the universe that I’m on the right path.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to put my spin on it and learn to stay present until I feel compelled to move—or maybe I need to learn to jump on the moment even if I’m not entirely confident.  There are still things the universe shows me and I’m working on trusting them again. 

Today I am grateful for inspiration.  This follows nudges because the nudges in this case referred to a specific dream I have.  My ADD has made it really challenging to complete any of my goals and I recently made the decision to slow down and focus on one thing at a time—it’s been so hard to not feel like I’m falling behind in other areas.  But I recently saw that three of the people I follow regularly are publishing books again.  It was the clear indicator that at this time in my life, I need to focus on my writing.  I had bene so preoccupied with generating income that I let the more creative side, the urges, fall to the wayside because I have a potentially lucrative business forming.  Each endeavor has benefits and amazing potential to be honest, but I can’t do both at once.  Right now the writing is calling to me, sharing my message keeps repeating in my mind.  And to see all of these people putting out multiple books and repeating their success is a great reminder that I am in good company and need to be honest about what dream I want realized first.  This is where I’m at now and I am following the inspiration. 

Today I am grateful for the life I have been gifted.  It’s our 23^rd anniversary and after the year we’ve had, I wasn’t even sure we’d be together.  I can’t say that all we’ve done is bad because I’ve seen in the last few months how it was all a comedy of errors of sorts—we both thought the other wanted something and we acted as if that was the case instead of speaking with the person to identify what the other really wanted.  We each took each other for granted in certain aspects.  We’ve endured and we’ve grown.  And we are still here.  It isn’t perfect, we are still trying to get our bearings, get our feet under us. And no matter the pain we’ve been through in the last year, I can’t say I’m not grateful we’ve made it this far.  No relationship is perfect, and we have a lot to work through on both of our parts, but I am grateful we’ve built this life together and I’m grateful we are learning these lessons together because we are still safe enough with each other to learn who we are all over again.  It’s a scary feeling but I appreciate coming to clarity together and doing the work together.  I can’t believe that someone would simply stay together for 23 years for no reason other than personal gain—neither of us were giving that much.  But now we can acknowledge where we were, be grateful for what we’ve done, and get honest about where we want to go.  We can work on actually building a dream together.  I’m grateful to have this life with him because it’s still teaching me to this day. 

Today I’m grateful to learn.  I prided myself on my intelligence for years. It was my staple throughout my entire childhood—I could remember and recite most any bit of information you gave me and I could put it into context so it was clear I really understood my stuff.  I never looked at how it was a defense mechanism.  I also never looked at how that inhibited me from learning.  If we think we already know it all then there isn’t anything left to learn and we close ourselves off.  There were lessons about myself that I really didn’t want to admit I needed to learn.  Things I didn’t want to address head on or believe about myself.  But I knew that in order to successfully move forward, I would have to drop what I thought and learn all over again.  Learning was always a fun process for me, going into the depths of what needed to change in my life could be viewed the same way.  The more we learn the better we can be at expressing ourselves, at serving our purpose, and understanding others.  I am grateful to learn where I can improve and where I can serve.  I am grateful to let down the defense and be open to learning what I need to.

Today I am grateful for persistence.  If it wasn’t for stubborn persistence I’m not sure I would still be going right now.  Look, I’m fully aware of all the advantages I have—I have a comfortable home, a family, friends, a secure (ish) job, additional work that can help my family, I have free time to do things I enjoy, and I have choices.  We are all in different circumstances and we are all different people so, based on our experiences, we all react a different way.  It took me decades to learn that there was a degree of safety in full expression of self.  Call it ego or stubbornness (maybe both at times) I would have given up.  There was so much in me that knew from day one that I was not meant to carry someone else’s yoke—I was the one to free people from it.  We didn’t like what we were doing and it bothered me that we blindly kept doing it so I talked about the issues.  I talked myself in circles and then I learned the lesson in trying v. doing.  And getting honest about what I’m really doing and if that is enough.  But most of this life comes down to the fact that we just keep going.  Keep going.  We never know what comes next, so we keep going. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.