Today I am grateful for acknowledgement.  I grew up in an environment that rarely celebrated accomplishments or milestones.  It was always “Nice, what’s next?”  Perhaps that’s a bit of the entrepreneurial spirit because if you slow down or rest on your laurels you get in trouble and miss what’s needed to adapt, evolve, and remain successful.  By that logic, part of that reaction is appropriate.  However, it created a deep separation from the moment.  Forward thinking is a survival skill—we need to be able to plan ahead—but when ALL we look for is what’s next, we completely lose the moment. We forget the value of presence.  Constantly pushing minimizes the now.  The other habit we learned (again possibly from the entrepreneurial side) was an inability to trust that when people did something it wasn’t with strings attached.  We rarely accepted help because it always came at a price.  Those lessons coupled created an environment with little praise and high expectation with no real pause to appreciate the work that was done.  It also led to a lot of people pleasing and working beyond our means to make other people happy.  I put in a lot of energy keeping certain people above water with not so much as a “thanks.”  And I’d keep doing it because I wanted someone to see the value I was bringing.  Sure, that’s a little bit of ego but I’ve learned it’s important to acknowledge what people have done.  It isn’t about satisfying ego, it’s about letting someone know their effort is noticed and appreciated.  I recently had someone tell me they were grateful for my actions from nearly a decade ago.  I had let it go at the time and didn’t think the person thought anything of it but they acknowledged how important what I tried to do was.  It was a shock to have this person say it meant anything to them because at the time it felt clear that it didn’t.  So take the time to appreciate those around us and let them know. Take the time to be proud of what we’ve done.  Acknowledge our own effort and energy and be grateful if someone else acknowledges it as well.  Let’s stop taking each other for granted. 

Today I am grateful for setting a boundary.  My car has been on a trickle charger for months now because there is a draw somewhere in the system. It won’t have the energy to start if it isn’t charged once we turn it off.  We’re taking care of it, but we still haven’t found the cause of the issue and I recently realized that my energy has been depleted just like that battery.  I recently finished my on-call, which for us is 7-days, 24 hours a day.  This time around was exhausting.  Even if little effort was needed to resolve the issue, it was constant.  That constant draw of energy can eventually suck us dry—and it nearly did for me.  It’s the mental strain of constantly being on alert for something to go wrong.  Some people are fine with that but as a naturally highly anxious person, it’s a struggle.  So my battery has been drained and I haven’t been fully able to recharge in a while.  So I had to set the boundary and realize when there was simply too much stimulation and I needed to disconnect from all that was gong on around me and I needed to find a way to plug in.  Truth be told, I’m still a bit on edge and working to come back down because there is a never-ending list of crap to do around the house as well.  But my boundary is with myself to stop engaging in every little distraction and to learn to turn down the sensitivity to what is a problem.  Take a minute to breathe and relax.  The world isn’t ending and it will not end if so and so doesn’t have a response in 30 seconds.   

Today I am grateful for switching up the brain.  Mental health and different brain diseases are a topic very close to my heart.  Both my maternal and paternal sides suffer from various forms of dementia and they both have their struggles with mental health.  We have to find ways to keep the brain from cycling through icky thoughts and habits, even the little things.  Like this weekend we shopped at a new store.  It took far longer than normal to find what we needed because we were in an entirely different environment and had no clue where things were.  But the act of walking through a new store for our daily essentials drove us to cooperate as a family and we got to see new things that aren’t normally offered in our regular store.  Working from home has limited my interaction with people and I often find myself being really socially awkward or resisting being with people or trying new things. Knowing my family history, I know this is something I have to keep an eye out for.  So changing up a routine is more meaningful in keeping my mind in balance.

Today I am grateful for the ability to help.  As mentioned above my family struggles with certain facets of mental health.  Along with that, my mother has an injury that limits her mobility at this time so we are facing multiple issues with seasonal factors, mental health, and physical health.  We’ve had to come together as a family to find a way to help them through this.  We’ve all had to adapt to the shift in roles and accept the caregiving position.  I’m grateful that I get to help my parents because, frankly, it’s what they are owed.  I’ve helped my parents well before this as well, but this time is different.  Now we are all witness to the changes in them as they age and we all have varying degrees of acceptance to work through.  It’s a change in dynamic but it isn’t a change in the feelings for them.  It’s nice to see my siblings helping as well and even nicer to work with them.  We all have a common goal so we can stop competing with each other and simply work together.  We all love our parents so we can direct that toward their care and it is a gift.    

Today I am grateful for health, wealth, and abundance.  There is no denying the abundance in my life.  We are abundant and wealthy in things like health and love and drive.  We work to focus on the joy and when we look at how much joy there is, we see how wealthy we are.  We are abundant with life and the ability to create what we want.  We are truly blessed to experience life and we can find joy in anything.  We find that abundance in health is the greatest thing we have because without health, we see how poor we really are.  Wealth comes in so many ways beyond just financial or material and we need to recognize what is truly important.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.