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Is gratitude the same thing as giving up?

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gratitudegivingup

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you are having an amazing day with your loved ones.  I’m gathered in Cleveland with Jonathan’s extended family. There are four babies under two in the family right now so we are having a great time.  It’s been amazing to have four generations under one roof.

Today is a great day to talk about gratitude and to be honest with you, I used to think gratitude, and gratitude practices, were the same thing as giving up and living a complacent life.  I just wasn’t into it.

I was WAAAY more into dreaming big, manifesting and thinking about all of the love, prosperity and adventures I wanted to experience in the future.  Why waste my time in the here and now when things didn’t seem all that great?

Well, here’s what went down… because I was only focused on what I wanted, I felt like I didn’t have what I needed.  I felt like I needed to have a bigger house, a smaller butt, a larger wardrobe, more clients in order to be happy.  This kept me in a constant state of hustle, anxiety and lack.  Not fun.

When my anxiety was at its peak, and I was wracking my brain to understand how I could manifest MORE, FASTER – I called my most trusted, spiritually minded friends for advice.

All of their answers were the same: Gratitude.

Ugh.  Fine.

So I decided to sit on my bedroom floor and list off in my mind all the things I was grateful for: having a roof over my head (even though it wasn’t the 4 bedroom Victorian I wanted, I just moved into my dream home; check out my new dining room pictured above), having a body that worked (even though I wasn’t a size 4), Jonathan, being able to pay our bills, living in a beautiful city, having great friends, being part of an incredibly loving and fun family, etc., etc.  After just 5 minutes of rattling off this mental list, I felt a completely foreign and incredible feeling come over me…

Relief that I had everything I needed.  I felt a sense of deep relaxation and space to just be.  The rush and the anxiety to go out and get all these things I thought I needed to be happy, went away in that moment.

The biggest aha for me after I started actively listing what I was grateful for. is that you can be grateful that you have what you need, and still work towards what you want.   In fact, creating, manifesting and hustling for what you want is a lot more fun when you are intimately aware that you have everything you need.  Knowing you have what you need makes us feel safe, grounded and less anxious so our creative energy can flow.

So here’s what I want you to do:

1.     Write, or verbally recite a list of things you are grateful for.  Don’t forget the little things we take for granted.

2.     Bask in the relief that you have everything you need.

3.     Make a list of all the things you want, that would add fun and sparkle to your life.

In the comments below, I want to know how you felt after making your gratitude list, tell me how your needs are currently being met, and what you want for your future that you’re excited about.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I can’t wait to hear from you.

Love,

Sarah

P.S. I’m also grateful for the community of women here and I want to share with you one of my favorite programs for coaches. I’ve been receiving a lot of requests for business coaching and I sense that some of you may have the feeling that you could be an amazing coach, but wish you had more confidence, more tools, more practice or more of an online presence before pursuing your dreams. It has been so wonderful for me to be a featured Celebrity Mentor in my friend, Jeannine Yoder’s Mentor Masterclass. If you’re feeling called, check it out here.

 

 


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