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Today I am grateful for the air in my lungs.  Feeling my body inhaling and exhaling kept me centered nearly all day.  I had to remind myself that sometimes we have to take things slower than we intended and that it is ok to take it one breath at a time.

Today I am grateful for my beating heart.  Feeling the rhythmic pumping, so automated in its job, reminds me not to waste it because we never know when it will stop.  Each beat is a gift and it is filled with purpose.  Our job is not to waste those precious moments.

Today I am grateful to remember it is these key functions in life that push us forward.  We are given the ability to move and create and build a life—it is up to us to make the most of it.  I struggle with the perception of time and today ended up much further from where I wanted to be, but I moved forward nonetheless.

Today I am grateful for getting back into routine.  While I’m working on building the life I want, I see what works for me and what doesn’t.  I am reshaping the routine that I was used to in favor of the routine I want to have for myself.

Today I am grateful for a weekend spent rejuvenating (for the most part).  We were supposed to get a terrible storm so we had prepped early so we could stay home as needed.  While there were some tense moments, I was definitely able to spend time at home working on the other things I wanted to.  Saturday was much more productive than today, but, seeing as change is uncomfortable, switching it up and learning what works for me self-care wise is a worthy investment.

Today I am grateful for seeing the real side of people.  I learned a painful lesson last night, one that will take a while to want to discuss, but I learned it.  Sometimes the people you think are in your court simply are in their own.  It doesn’t mean you are bad or stupid, it just means you left your heart open to the wrong people.  Cut your losses, wish them well, and move on.

Today I am grateful for the time to really think about my role in this world.  My husband was not feeling the greatest today so we ended up with quite a bit of down time.  I felt frustrated and alone, but as the day went on, I realized the pause was there to help me recognize where I have the opportunity to readjust.  Not only that but where I have the opportunity to really move forward where I want to.  I had the time to think about the things I need to do and the changes I have to make to achieve those goals.  None of it is easy, but if I’m honest with myself, it is necessary.

Today I am grateful to understand what it means to have a team.  Based on the events of the last few weeks, I see the pattern that I really need to be cautious about who I spend my time with and where I direct my energy.  I see the people, or at least they type of people, I need to have in my court.  Since I am no longer trying to play small for the sake of others, I feel this is the natural progression of things.  The people who were with me for personal gain, whether it was money or things I gave them, will fall away as I evolve into a person who creates things.  Elevate my mindset, elevate my life, let the rest fall away.

Today I am grateful to understand that I’ve been holding onto things.  I thought it was about taking things slowly and being cautious, but now I understand it was about fear of letting go because I didn’t know what was next.  Sometimes we have to approach change like pulling off a band-aid.  Rip it off quickly and move on—especially when we’ve been holding so tightly to things that don’t serve.

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“When I introduce joy to a situation, I change the vibrational frequency of what’s happening around me.”  Gabby Bernstein, Super Attractor deck.  I love this because it is the perfect sentiment to what is going on around me has no bearing on how I react and behave.  I can still be joyful, it’s a choice.  I used to get completely annoyed with people who would profess things like that because I never understood how you couldn’t react to a situation.  Then I realized it’s about understanding who you want to be and behaving like that and living at that level.

Tonight is a trying night for me because of little silly things:  the cats are acting insane, the dog peed on the floor, the dog won’t go to the bathroom outside, my husband is crabby for no reason, and my son didn’t want to come home and then he didn’t want to eat dinner.  Nothing major by any means but enough of the tiny things to annoy me nonetheless.  I know I can still be happy in spite of the storm around me.  Sometimes when that storm is raging for others, as difficult as it is, you can still be the port for someone else.  So I’m working on this and listening to my son play and I’m giving my husband some space to figure out what exactly the issue is.

I’ve been thinking about the way we’ve allowed ourselves to become so narcissistic.  I let those silly little things get to me and they are so not part of the big picture.  There are real tragedies befalling this world right now.  People talking about world war three, Australia is on fire, the government is so corrupt it isn’t even funny and we still allow ourselves to fall into the trap of the small stuff.  The things we think are important but in reality have no bearing on what we do or what happens in the world.  I feel helpless in some regards but I know the one thing I can control is my attitude toward these situations, both small and big.

The world needs people to vibrate at a higher frequency with more thought and intention.  We need to operate from a place of understanding and mutual compromise.  I don’t profess to have the answer to fix the overall situation but I do believe it always starts with us.  The more we connect with authentic self and learn about what makes our individual worlds light up, the more we can put that out into the world with love and joy.  From there we will understand more of what doesn’t resonate or promote a feeling of positivity.  I truly believe that we can then begin to reconstruct our belief system to something that does work for the benefit of all.

The universe in its breadth and span of time is so enormous that it seems to me that much of what we do here is so trivial and outmoded that we need to elevate to a higher level of functioning.  With that being said, we have to learn to speak the language of the universe by recognizing that language within ourselves first.  Only then can we begin to understand how we are all connected and how the little things we have created here mean nothing.  All of our rules were devised by man in an effort to elicit control of some sort.  I believe that once we have a different understanding of our role in the universe, our motives will shift as well.

So start small.  Start with what makes you happy and move toward that.  Speak of the joy you feel when you work with something that speaks to you.  Speak of the joy you feel when you feel it—don’t wait for the “right” time.  There is no reason to play small—the universe is plenty big enough to support all of our dreams.  We created this system based off of what we knew at the time.  It’s time to know better and to behave better because it is the right thing to do.  Start small.  Start with you.  Joy begets joy and light will attract more light and that is something the world needs desperately.  Remember the beautiful gift we have all been given in this opportunity to be here and now and share it as far as you can.

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In case it isn’t clear yet, I ponder the messages of the universe a lot.  I don’t pretend that I can do any of this on my own.  I absolutely need guidance from something other than myself.  So much of what goes through my head is a twisted jumble that takes me years to sort through.  If I’m honest, I’m not sure if I’ve ever managed to finish sorting through anything yet.  I’m still learning to be this person.  It’s taken me over 35 years to learn that you don’t have to be who you were at the start.  Life evolves and we have to evolve with it.  If we don’t we will never truly thrive.  We may survive the turmoil of living a half-life between who we think we need to be and who we truly are, but it will never be as great as it could be.  I personally think everyone benefits when wake up and start answering and honoring our highest potential.  When we fulfill our purpose the world benefits.

As I was working through the fact that I am a work in progress and I can continue to define who I am and what my work entails, I turned to my Super Attractor Deck.  The card I drew was “Believing in spiritual guidance gives me certainty and the freedom to keep dreaming, even when I can’t yet see the result.”  This beautiful card nailed it.  If we are a work in progress (which we all are) we will never see the end. We haven’t defined anything to the point of knowing how it ends yet.  Specifically related to this work, having faith in the work I am doing and in the evolution I am sharing with all of you is what I want to do now.  I don’t know what it is going to turn into.  I don’t know where it will go from here.  My hope is that some of you find value in these messages and apply them to your own lives to spark something wonderful that is already present in you.

The beauty of life is that we can constantly start over.  We have to retrain our mind to understand that we don’t need to be perfect from the start.  90% of what we see on a daily basis is either the result of a ton of work we didn’t see or it is fabricated to elicit a result out of us.  When we look at the speed media flies nowadays, it’s easy to set up the expectation that we need to match what others are saying they have done without knowing the details.  Forget the expectation.  Forge the results you are looking for by following the path you are meant to follow rather than spending a gifted life playing catch up on someone else’s trail.  Yes, that may mean you have to start over a million times until you find what works for you.  But keep taking those steps and trust that it is ok to shift as everything else shifts.

We are not meant to stagnate.  We are not meant to make a definitive decision about what our lives will be when we are still children and then stick to it because we said that is what we wanted.  Life is about the experience and the dance and, my friends, the music changes constantly.  You can’t keep shuffling the same steps to a new tune.  Hone faith in whatever it is you believe in.  For me that is spirit and source.  It took a long time to even get here for me and I have a long way to go.  But I love the work and I love being able to share it with all of you.  Watch me dance 😊

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Today I am grateful for teamwork.  My husband and I managed to get ourselves back on track with cleaning the house after the holidays and our son’s birthday party.  We even managed to do some rearranging in our bedroom and get some furniture fixed.  It was a wonderful feeling to be working together and to be productive going into the next week.

Today I am grateful for the ability to prepare nutritious meals for the week.  After the recent illness in our house, it gave me some pause about keeping my body healthy.  I was able to take some time today to organize and prepare food to help keep me on track.  This isn’t a resolution thing, this is a thing to help me stay healthy after my body went through the ringer with being sick.

Today I am grateful for awesome music and dance time with my son.  While we had the house torn apart again in an effort to clean and purge toys, I was able to make a game of it with our son and we danced and laughed together.  The pure joy on my son’s face was absolutely the most fulfilling feeling because I was able to share those moments of song and love with him.

Today I am grateful for clean clothes.  I was able to get a lot of laundry done with the help of my husband and able to prepare that for the week as well.  It felt good to be able to get that done while we were doing other things around the house.

Today I am grateful for the little things.  The toys I managed to purge are going to my great-nephew and I love that we can give them to a good home.  He will be able to make wonderful memories with those the same as my son did.  I love that we could spend time together working on family projects because we were able to build our communication as we discussed what needed to be done.

Today I am grateful to spend time with my animals.  It was nice to let lose and have some fun and watch the animals run around enjoying their toys.

Today I am grateful for the party we threw for my son yesterday.  He had an amazing time with family and friends and we had good food and he was gifted so many things he can use and play with that he won’t need anything else for quite a while.  Having everyone together for my son was so nice as he is the common thread between two families and our friends.  We are truly blessed.

Today I am grateful to have the opportunity to spread some light in the world.  There are a lot of dark things going on right now and it helps to think of the things that we have that are going well.  We need to remember more often that this world is full of light.  Even though there are dark things, the more light we bring to them, the less power they have.  It is up to us to make the time to focus on the positive because it’s time to deescalate the volatility currently happening.  We all need to pause and remember what we have to be grateful for and to spread the reminders of the beautiful little things out there.  Be the light.  Be the love we all need right now.

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On this last day of 2019, I release it all.  I am leaving the weight of my anger, expectations, and perfectionism behind.  I am moving forward with grace, compassion, and faith.  I am also moving forward with hope and belief.  Belief in myself.  Belief in my ability.  Belief in my creativity.  Believe in my purpose.  Believe in trust.  Belief in love.

I seek to control my emotions and to be the driver of my life.  I seek to co-create the life of my dreams.

I will live each day with gratitude.  I will remember the joy in the beautiful in-between moments.  I will work with my anxiety to give it space, not control.  I will live limitlessly—I want to be drunk on life.  I will let endeavors take off and dance with my dream of coaching and writing because it feels good.  Feeling good is enough reason to do it.

I will dance with the bad days too because even on those days I AM ALIVE.

No one has control over how my future goes except me and I choose to live lightly from now on.  I do not have to react to their behaviors as long as I stay centered in my own.

My health and the health of my family is a priority.  We will live well and simply.

I invite clarity into my world.  Clarity and ownership for my actions.

I’m leaving the weight of what others have done to me behind as well.  Other people’s garbage is not my burden.

I feel the opening of an amazing life—the life of my dreams.

I am grateful for the amazing life I have and for the opportunity to mold it into more.  I choose to feel GOOD.  Fear will not hold me back.  I embrace me and I love me.  It’s a choice to do it differently.  I don’t have to jump to the same orders, the thought of what I’m “supposed to” do.  I can change the steps.

Let what doesn’t serve lay where it is.  Rachel Wolchin said, “Bad News: You’re growing and it’s uncomfortable.  Good News: It’s uncomfortable but you’re growing.”

Here’s to health, success, happiness, and wealth in every form in 2020—make it beautiful, make it everything you want it to be, make it joyous.

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Over the last few days I have allowed myself to sink into the pre-holiday panic.  Thoughts swirling of the million things that I feel like there are left to do, places we are supposed to be, finishing planning for the new year and what I want this new decade to bring—the overwhelm got to me.  The universe in her funny way knew exactly what needed to happen: I needed to let go.  My husband’s vacation has been cancelled so the week we were going to have together where we could both prepare and clean up after hosting is now entirely on me.  The list that may have been half a million things definitely increased to a million and I am left on my own to make sure it gets done.

I began the day at my normal time, waking up at 5:00AM without an alarm clock and proceeded to start checking boxes off of my list.  My son woke up about 30 minutes into my rev up.  I thought to myself, “No big deal, I have plenty of time, this is why I woke up early.  He needs you right now.”  So I picked him up and asked him if he wanted to sleep on the couch to which he emphatically cried no and wrapped his little arms around me.  I sat down with him on the couch and I melted as he instantly placed his head on my chest just like he used to do when he was an infant.  He knocked out again in no time, but rather than try and get moving, I felt myself sink into the moment.  My son is now almost three and it hit me that I hadn’t felt him sleep on me like that in nearly two years.  Time goes so quickly and life is so precious and I just wanted to stay in that moment.  I sat with him until the cat got himself locked behind the gate and started crying in desperation for assistance.

I slipped out from under my son and went about the list again, trying to keep myself centered.  Focusing on one thing at a time and just moving the best I could.  I tried to look at is as a test run of what it may be like working from home when my business is up and running.  So in quick succession a few things happen: the garage door we were nursing through a broken spring made it clear it needed to be fixed ASAP and, naturally, I get the phone call that my husband will not be getting out early.  I’m trying to at least get through the things I don’t need his help for but the situation is escalating at home as well.  As I hear the frustration in his voice, I desperately want to keep my panic at bay, but I’m at the point where I need him here to move on.  I HATE doing things last minute and that is why I had prepared so I could be done, with time to enjoy.  Life never works out that way—we plan, the universe laughs.

I keep reminding myself that the list is getting smaller so we are making headway.  I also keep reminding myself that this is a test of who I really want to be.  I have told myself for so long that I no longer want to be the panic-stricken martyr who angers at the slightest inconvenience.  I want to be adaptable and creatively go with the flow.  These hiccups are letting me put that into action and giving me the opportunity to see how that feels.  Now there are a few things that I’ve had some hard limits on even though I’m working on change.  For one I asked my husband for the last week to come up with a recipe for the roast so I could go buy the ingredients (since he was working) and he never did so I got pretty irritated over that.

I’m not beating myself up for slipping into old panic habits.  I’m bringing awareness to them.  Of course in the moment it feels like everything is falling down around me but the reality is that is not true.  It is becoming easier and easier to focus on the things that really make us blessed.  That changes everything.  There were definitely a few more hiccups today (more than I want to talk about, actually) but it was all worth it.  As I was putting my son to bed, I told him, “I love you angel baby” and he gives me a huge hug and says, “You’re my angel too mama.”  He doesn’t give a damn about the presents or the decorations or the food—he just wants to feel safe and loved by his mama.  His words instantly brought me back to the moment and remind me of why I’m doing all of this (the holiday, the work I do, writing).  It’s all so he knows how much he is loved.  It’s nice to have the reminder that sometimes it’s just about the time I can give him.  Presence is enough for a child: now is a wonderful time of year to remember that the same applies to us.