Today I am grateful for a new path forward.  I’m taking a leap on a new adventure, a new role.  It means giving up a lot of what I worked for, a lot of what I wanted.  It’s touchy because I have issues of self worth in that regard, perhaps more related to faith than anything.  I have a pattern of getting what I want and turning it down.  Like, there’s some sort of self-sabotaging behavior where I’m telling myself I’m not worthy of what I really want and I reject the exact thing I want when it’s handed to me on a silver platter.  That’s a habit I’m breaking as I’m dealing with faith and worth.  But I am giving up what I thought I wanted because I found that what I wanted was vastly different than what I thought it was—at least getting it was a different way than I thought I would get it.  Different than what I got.  Everyone has different priorities and I’m a stubborn enough person that when I make a decision I want to stick it out to prove I made the right choice.  I mean, that’s not true in every case because I am also quick to admit when I’m wrong and pivot.  And I’ve taken chances before on things that were close to what I wanted hoping they would turn out—sometimes it has—but there were times if it didn’t look exactly as I expected I’d turn it down.  But there comes a time when we have to take the leap again, even if it isn’t 100% what we want, if we can move forward with 90%, then it can become 100%.  So that’s what I’m doing.  It’s time and I’m grateful for the chance.

Today I am grateful for learning who I am.  There is nothing more exciting than seeing something we’re working on come together and it’s even more exciting when seeing the results of that project feels like the perfect recognition of oneself in an outward expression.  Like, seeing the vision come to life and feeling like it was completely right all along, like the vision was in alignment the whole time, a representation of who we are to our core.  It feels amazing when we no longer have to settle for what people give us, when we can envision something ourselves and bring it to life, showing the world exactly who we are.  It’s the most natural feeling in the world and there are so many ways to see who we are, so many ways to find who we are.  It’s like accepting ourselves when we see those pieces come to life.  I never realized how much work it would take to find and express who I am—I always thought that would come entirely naturally.  For so many it does because they aren’t deterred from their natural state/ability/who they are.  They’re allowed to express self from the beginning. Not everyone is so lucky, so to peel away the mask, the layers, each piece an admission of who I am, a welcoming of what works, is a gift that I do not take for granted.

Today I am grateful for everything I have been given, both divinely and physically on this Earth. I am so grateful for the peace that comes with accepting those gifts, for the skills and abilities that open up.  For the opportunity to use them and for the decision to stop hiding them.  None of what happens next is how I thought it would look, the type of leadership I thought I would be in.  I mean, I thought I wanted to lead people so I could call the shots and not deal with crap and in the position I’ve served, I’m seeing that their definition of leadership is different than I thought.  I was always able to self-lead and in this case, people would rather spend their time fighting what they are told and what they know is right than they would take direction from someone they deem unfit.  I have been given different gifts than others and I see things differently—just like anyone else sees it differently.  Our perception dictates our reality—but I am tired of what I know as reality being distorted by how other people FEEL about reality.  I was given the gift of seeing things as they are and seeing things from multiple sides—in short, the gift of understanding.  Others simply see how they are told no and they work on fighting to get their way—I genuinely have always sought what was right for all.  Now I see that doesn’t matter to people in certain arenas.  I thought I had to hide my gifts to meet the vision other people had in this world instead of just living my own.  Now I see that is entirely false—I am meant to use the gifts I have been given to help others and I am grateful to have them.   

Today I am grateful for the process of letting go of physical clutter.  I am a record keeper on so many levels.  I hold onto things, many far longer than I should.  I always had this idea in the back of my mind that I never knew when I would need to prove something to someone, to show them what really happened—that was part of where I learned my objectivity.  I held onto things long since passed.  And now as I’m shifting that focus toward building the new, toward the next steps in life rather than going back to prove the steps I’ve taken, I see there is a time to let go of the things I held onto for both nostalgia and protection.  I’ve burdened myself with the task of holding everyone accountable, policing other people’s words and actions.  I’ve also burdened myself with the weight of proving myself with physical accomplishments, physical representation of success.  The funny part of that is knowing how hollow it feels to succeed mentally, to be ok with what I’ve done only to have it crushed by someone else yet still needing to hold onto those pieces that demonstrate my side of the story.  I’ve literally carried lifetimes with me, mentally and physically, the documentation and history of all I’ve done, thinking I needed to prove myself, trying to control the narrative/defense of why I’m like this and what happened.  I was born like this, with the need to understand how things got like they did.  I didn’t want people to misunderstand me and in working to clear/control that perception, people still created their own version of events.  I don’t want to waste my time/energy/strength holding onto these things anymore.  The space they take up, the physical and mental real estate is too big—and better served for other things.  The things don’t matter.  I can’t control how people see me today nor will I be able to control that perception 100 years from now.  So it doesn’t matter.  I can only carry what I know matters to me—I don’t need to hold onto what was to justify what is, my existence, who I am. I can let it all go.      

Today I am grateful for rebirth.  Once I made the decision to accept and honor and truly change my course (the course I truly wanted), everything shifted.  Once I saw that the things I really wanted were different than what I thought I needed (IE, I wanted peace and thought I needed control to get it when really I just needed to allow a new way for peace to enter), I felt a different pull.  I saw the right way to align with what I wanted and it wasn’t a matter of “Getting what I wanted,” it was a way of allowing what I wanted (the truth of who I am) to shine and be seen in this world.  It was away to align what felt right with doing that in the physical realm.  I always knew there was an element of pain in shedding the mask because I wanted that mask to be true—that was the only version of myself fi really knew even as all the other pieces poked through.  The pain came from the ego in realizing something I’d prided myself on and thought I wanted didn’t work (turning down what I asked for) and it came from not being recognized, and then it came from being stifled (and stifling myself).  Once we make it through the other side, we see the pain was from how we held ourselves in a space that didn’t fit—and we didn’t fit in it.  The pain was from keeping ourselves small when we needed to grow.  I am grateful to be on the other side.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.