As I continue to recover from an injury, I’m working hard to maintain a positive mindset. It’s so easy to feel sorry for myself and believe me I do some days. The truth is, it is hard! Today, I reminded myself that an attitude of gratitude can create spaces of light. Today, I gave myself time to rest and reflect on all I am grateful for. Today, I am resharing the first of a two part blog series I wrote on this topic last November.
Discover the transformative power of gratitude! It’s so easy to overlook the small blessings that can lead to happiness and success. In this blog post, I shared how an attitude of gratitude created space for happiness after a difficult time. Click to read the post and learn how a simple shift in perspective created space for positive changes! A reminder I needed today!
My true self is always grateful. I am connected with everything else in the universe. I am like an ocean -- the deeper I go within, the more I connect with the stillness of my true self.
I have been revisiting mantras, like the one above, that speak of the importance of gratitude on my journey to reclaim my health. My focus on gratitude has been helping to shift my attitude about myself. As I discussed in last week’s blog, I had lost my sense of gratitude due to stress, which took a huge toll on both my emotional and physical health. I talked about my use of a gratitude journal to find my way back to grace, positivity and motivation. This week, I’d like to talk about the essence of the true self, the person we are at our core.
When we are born, we enter the world alone. When we die, we transition alone. In both cases, we are hopefully surrounded by loved ones, but we spend our entire lives with ourselves, 24 hours a day. Nobody knows our true self as well as we do, the good and the bad. Think about it for a moment. Who do you speak to every moment you are awake, all day, every day?, yourself! I wonder though, how often do we show others our true self?
Many strong, high level executive women struggle in their professional lives with something known as the Imposter Syndrome, which refers to their inner fears. The fear of not being good enough, that they will be discovered as not worthy of the position they were given. In my professional career, my colleagues and I used to talk about having to wear masks all the time at work. We needed to portray ourselves as strong confident leaders, at all times, to create safe environments in which students and staff could thrive. When I think back now to our mask conversations, I wonder how many of us had these same types of fears, questioning our worthiness.
When you dive deeply into your true self, what is at the core of your inner thoughts? Do you think you’re not pretty enough, thin enough, popular enough, etc.? Or, do you think you’re strong, beautiful, smart and worthy? If you were asked to remove your mask and introduce your inner self to me right now, what would you say? Would you list your titles of mother, wife, friend, lawyer, doctor? Or, would you list your hopes and wishes for your lifetime?
As part of your health journey, I strongly believe you need to address that inner critic and make peace with your true self. We all need to remove our masks and accept ourselves as we are, not strive to be who others say we should be. For far too long, I have been trying to change my outer self, without addressing my inner self. I think this is why I have failed, time and again with this health journey. Our true self, is the one we must come to accept and love. I have been approaching this journey from a place of weakness, thinking I am not good enough as I am, leading me to a self fulfilling prophecy of failure. Reframing my health journey from a place of acceptance of who I am at my core nudges me back to gratitude. I am grateful for who I am and don’t need to change that, rather I need to use that to help me stand strong on this journey to health. I am enough, you are enough, we are enough just as we are.
Walking with my dog Jasper
In order to stay grounded in gratitude and positive self talk, I use my daily walking time to honor any feelings, either positive or negative, that I may have. Many people use meditation to reflect, but I prefer moving meditations out in nature. I walk without headphones and music and I walk alone. If my husband joins me, he knows we are not having a dialogue walk, just a quiet meditation. It is the best part of my day to just be alone with myself in nature. I walk in the silence and am able to think and meditate on my successes and failures. This sacred time allows me to better process this journey I am on. Pairing this walking time with journaling has been powerful. The journal keeps me grounded in gratitude, which helps frame a more positive inner dialogue. The walking is a clearing time. It is when I can feel whatever emotions I’m feeling, which in the past led to negative talk and quitting, acknowledge them and then let them go. This process provides space for healing and also keeps me grounded in gratitude and positive self talk.
I hope you take some time to reflect on your journey this week in your journal and out on a walk. Please reach out and and share how it is going for you? I learn so much from your journeys as well.
Today in yoga class, my teacher shared the following mantra:
Dhanya Vad – I feel gratitude. When I’m grateful, I find grace. By looking for the blessings in my life, I open up a space of light in every experience; I open up the path for grace to flow. I make room in the middle of everything for gratitude.
This mantra truly resonated with me, especially as we move into my favorite season. The essence of Thanksgiving serves as a reminder to be grateful, but gratitude is more than a one day event. As an elementary school Principal, the school motto we created included the mantra, “have an attitude of gratitude.” It is something we sought to instill in our students, staff and selves. As much as I engaged in this worked, it was not always easy to truly stay in an attitude of gratitude.
Last year when my husband was very sick, I was struggling to balance work and his illness, which made it very difficult to maintain my focus on gratitude. Being at my unhealthiest definitely didn’t help either; in truth, it felt like whatever could go wrong, did. My attitude of gratitude was slipping away and in its place an attitude of complacency seeped in. I didn’t care what I ate, what I drank, how little I slept or moved. I didn’t care anymore about getting healthy, in fact I decided I hated healthy living. Que sera became my new mantra and I felt I’d just take life as it came, one day at a time.
It’s funny that I didn’t notice at the time, but the more I walked away from my attitude of gratitude, the more negative my life felt. When my trainer told me to create a gratitude journal and write in it each day, I laughed. I mean, really? She needed to tell me that? After all the work I had done around the importance of gratitude, someone needed to remind me of the power of it. Well, yes, I actually needed that reminder.
In the summer, I pulled out an empty journal I had here and decided to begin writing in it each morning. I kept things simple and followed the same pattern each day on a new page. First, I wrote about my why; why I wanted a healthy lifestyle and why I was on this path. I wrote three positive statements about myself each day. Finally, I wrote one power statement – what I hoped I would accomplish as a result of this lifestyle. I wrote these things every single day. It took about two months before I started to feel the power of them seeping into my soul and each week I felt myself growing emotionally stronger.
The truth is, I have so very much to be grateful for. Despite all I went through, I’ve found a way to get some traction again. I need to hold on to that and continue moving forward. I share all this, to remind you of the importance of gratitude. When I look around, as the mantra says, I see the blessings of my life. This has helped me find and give myself some grace. It has opened me up to new possibilities, that I would not have engaged in had I stayed focused on the negativity.
If you are feeling stuck, perhaps you can look at the blessings of your life. Believe me, sometimes I know they are hard to find, but I promise they are there. Perhaps begin with a journal as I did. Keep it simple. Take a breath and give yourself the grace you deserve. I hope this week brings you the will to start again and join me on this quest to reclaim our health.
Reclaiming My Health 