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Grateful, Thankful, Blessed

11/23/2020

It's the time of year where gratitude, giving thanks and counting our blessings get a lot of attention. This week many of us will be celebrating Thanksgiving. This year taking time to pause, reflect and acknowledge our blessings holds even more importance. It's the perfect time for each of us to ramp up our practice of gratitude. However different this Thanksgiving might look and feel to you, I invite you to go deeper with your gratitude practice.

Being grateful is a daily practice of mine. Formally in the morning and before bed each day, recounting and expressing gratitude for the many blessings throughout my day and in my life. And informally throughout the day as I'm aware of all of the things in my life that I am grateful for. This practice has significantly changed and enhanced my life. It's become something that I rely upon...it gives me hope, strength and nourishment. During these past several months it's something that I've intentionally ramped up to help me keep perspective and offset the negativity happening in the world.

Gratitude has also changed the way that I pray. I start off all of my prayers with expressions of gratitude and thanks. I believe that gratitude is the key to leading a life of happiness, and also the doorway to the Divine. Starting out praying with expressions of gratitude acknowledges the many blessings we already have in our lives. You leave something in return when you pray with gratitude. I believe that my relationship to God, with the Divine, begins with a grateful heart, with gratitude.

I have spent a lot of time studying and researching positive psychology and happiness and the one thing that consistently comes up over and over again is the power of gratitude in leading a positive, happy, joyful life.

Our brains are programmed for a negatively bias. We are 3-5 times more sensitive to negative information. Our brains are trained to scan the world for the negative, for the threats, so that it can help us to survive. Our brain is like velcro for negativity and teflon for positivity.

Negative emotions put us into fight or flight mode and narrow our ability to think. Positive emotions broaden and build our brain's ability to think and see. Positive emotions flood the brain with dopamine and serotonin. Chemicals that not only make us feel good, but also dial up the learning centers of our brains. This helps us to organize new information, to keep the information longer and retrieve it faster.

There are many scientifically documented advantages to having a positive brain versus a negative brain. So how does this all relate to giving thanks? Gratitude is a system to offset the negativity. It amplifies the goodness. Gratitude is the gateway to happiness, the gateway to the advantages of having a positive mindset. The practice of gratitude invites joy into our lives, not the other way around.

When life is going well gratitude allows us to celebrate the success. When life feels like it is going poorly and we are challenged, gratitude gives us perspective. It is a beautiful perspective shift. Gratitude is an engine for holistic change. When you are grateful for what you have, you make energetic space for more abundance to flow into your life. When feeling grateful you feel more open, generous, connected, aware and alive.

I invite you to go deeper with your gratitude practice. Each day journal at least 3 new things that you are grateful for, be as specific as you can. Or, take a few minutes each day to write a thank you note to someone, thanking or praising them for something they have done to make your life lighter and brighter. Let's turn up the volume on gratitude and ramp up the vibration this week!

I would like you all to know how very grateful I am for you. Thank you for receiving my posts, for taking the time to ponder their message, for taking a moment to leave me a comment, for sharing with me your insight and wisdom, and thank you for sharing it with others. I appreciate you inspiring me, for keeping your hearts open to light and love and infinite possibilities. Thank you for being curious, for being vulnerable, for practicing with me, and for helping to create so many beautiful ripples. I am truly grateful for each of you.

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What Thoughts Are You Listening To? The Power Of Positive Affirmations

11/17/2020

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Have you noticed a pattern in your thoughts that tend to lean toward the negative? We all have that tendency. Most of the time it’s so pervasive we’re unaware of its impact in our lives. Here’s the truth, a negative mind will never give you a positive life. Part of awareness of self is to realize the role our thoughts are playing in our day-to-day lives and understanding what we can do to change them from those that don’t serve us to those that move us toward the life we desire.

I'm a strong believer in the power of positive affirmations and I love how Louise Hay’s explains them. Rather than re-phrase, following are her words on how powerful your thoughts are and how to change them.

“An affirmation is really anything you say or think. A lot of what we normally say and think is quite negative and doesn’t create good experiences for us. We have to retrain our thinking and speaking into positive patterns if we want
to change our lives.An affirmation opens the door. It’s a beginning point on the path to change. In essence, you’re saying to your subconscious mind: “I am taking responsibility. I am aware that there is something I can do to change.” When I talk about doing affirmations, I mean consciously choosing words that will either help eliminate something from your life or help create something new in your life.

Every thought you think and every word you speak is an affirmation. All of our self-talk, our internal dialogue, is a stream of affirmations. You’re using affirmations every moment whether you know it or not. You’re affirming and creating your life experiences with every word and thought.

Your beliefs are merely habitual thinking patterns that you learned as a child. Many of them work very well for you. Other beliefs may be limiting your ability to create the very things you say you want. What you want and what you believe you deserve may be very different. You need to pay attention to your thoughts so that you can begin to eliminate the ones creating experiences you do not want in your life.

Please realize that every complaint is an affirmation of something you think you don’t want in your life. Every time you get angry, you’re affirming that you want more anger in your life. Every time you feel like a victim, you’re affirming that you want to continue to feel like a victim. If you feel that Life isn’t giving you what you want in your world, then it’s certain that you will never have the goodies that Life gives to others - that is, until you change the way you think and talk.

Some people say that “affirmations don’t work” (which is an affirmation in itself), when what they mean is that they don’t know how to use them correctly. They may say, “My prosperity is growing,” but then think, Oh, this is stupid, I know it won’t work. Which affirmation do you think will win out? The negative one, of course, because it’s part of a long-standing, habitual way of looking at life. Sometimes people will say their affirmations once a day and complain the rest of the time. It will take a long time for affirmations to work if they’re done that way. The complaining affirmations will always win, because there are more of them and they’re usually said with great feeling.

However, saying affirmations is only part of the process. What you do the rest of the day and night is even more important. The secret to having your affirmations work quickly and consistently is to prepare an atmosphere for them to grow in. Affirmations are like seeds planted in soil. Poor soil, poor growth. Rich soil, abundant growth. The more you choose to think thoughts that make you feel good, the quicker the affirmations work.

The way you choose to think, right now, is just that - a choice. You may not realize it because you’ve thought this way for so long, but it really is a choice. Now...today...this moment...you can choose to change your thinking. Your life won’t turn around overnight, but if you’re consistent and make the choice on a daily basis to think thoughts that make you feel good, you’ll definitely make positive changes in every area of your life.”

You’re the designer of your life. Plant the best seeds and cultivate the richest soil for them to grow. You’ve got this!

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Kindness And Hope

11/10/2020

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World Kindness Day is this Friday, November 13th. I think the world can use a lot more kindness, especially right now! I am a huge proponent of intentional acts of kindness. Kindness is not only a nice thing to do, but it's been proven as instrumental in creating a life of happiness, positivity and wellness.

Kindness not only makes us and the recipient feel good, but it's contagious, it causes moral elevation. That warm and fuzzy uplifting feeling you get when you have witnessed human goodness, kindness, courage and compassion is called moral elevation.

Studies have found that the natural high of moral elevation makes people want to behave more altruistically toward others, causing compassion and kindness to be contagious. Elevation makes people optimistic about humanity, something we could use more of right now. Ripples of kindness not only cause a ripple in the direction of the person receiving, it also casts out ripples in the direction of the giver and all of who witness the act.

This ripple effect can extend out to 2 and 3 degrees of separation. Experiments with large numbers of people show that if you are kind and compassionate, your friends, your friends’ friends, and even your friends’ friends’ friends are more likely to become kind and compassionate. A powerful ripple of kindness!

Here's the thing, most people don't want to hurt others. What we really want is to live in a moral world where people treat each other well, and where we can satisfy our need for love, productive work, and a sense of belonging.

We get the sense that we do not live in such a moral world when we see people behave in petty, cruel, or in other unkind or selﬁsh ways. But when we see a stranger perform a simple act of kindness for another stranger, it gives us hope that maybe we do live in a good world. It restores our sense of hope and goodness in humanity.

I love this quote by Scott Adams, "Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end." Today and every day I invite you to ripple out intentional acts of kindness into the world. Let's lift each other up and restore optimism and hope that we live in a moral world.

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Holding Space For Loving Kindness

11/3/2020

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It's officially Election Day here in the United States. The weeks leading up to the election have been a stressful time for many citizens. I, like many of you, have cast my vote. While I can't control who wins this election, I can control the energy that I choose to put out into the world over the next several days.

Today and for the next several days I will be holding space for loving kindness. Intentionally blasting out love and kindness into the world through my thoughts, actions, meditations and prayers.

Meditation has been proven to not only positively impact the person meditating, but to have a spill over effect that positively impacts the meditator's community as well. Just think about the powerful effect groups of us meditating on peace, love, kindness, compassion and healing could have within communities all over the United States and the world.

As Gabrielle Bernstein says, "Be a mirror reflection for the light, rather than a sponge for the darkness. Your job is not to soak up and absorb the negativity, your job is to stay grounded and committed to the light. Do not try to fight the darkness, just stay committed to the light, to forgiveness, to love, to nonjudgement, to compassion, to empathy."

We are lightworkers and the world needs us to radiate our light out to each other. Choose to shine yours, choose to shine it bright. Focus on reflecting the light versus absorbing the darkness. We've taken action and voted, so I invite each of us to now focus on thoughts and feelings that cause our light to illuminate greater...love, compassion, empathy, gratitude. Let your light glisten and shimmer and dance out across the world.

A loving kindness meditation is an easy and beautiful way to hold space and shine out love and light into the world. A loving kindness meditation includes the repetition of the following phrases...May I be healthy and strong. May I be happy. May I be filled with love and ease...first directing them toward yourself, then toward someone you are thankful for, then toward someone you feel neutral about, then toward someone who is frustrating you, and then to the Universe as a whole. Repeating each as many times as you would like. The phrases can be modified to suit your intentions, these are the ones that I enjoy using.

Let's all cast more light out into our communities and hold the space for loving kindness, especially in the upcoming days and weeks.

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Grateful, Thankful, Blessed

What Thoughts Are You Listening To? The Power Of Positive Affirmations

Kindness And Hope

Holding Space For Loving Kindness

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