Greetings and welcome to the Why Struggle Podcast.
I'm your host,
Barbara J.
Faison,
And my intention with this podcast is to offer ideas,
Insights,
And inspirations
so you can live life better.
Greetings and welcome to 2024,
Week 8,
Be Grateful.
This is an episode about how I believe being grateful is an attitude and a practice.
A few weeks ago,
I talked about the 40-Day Plan my friend Regina London created over 16 years ago.
It's a journal with questions,
Reminders,
And encouragement to focus on what you desire for 40
days.
One thing I love about this plan is it gets the momentum going for me and I usually continue
beyond the 40 days.
It is Day 52 of 2024 and I'm still reading,
Writing and journaling,
Doing Qigong daily,
And really grateful that I am.
Sometimes we need a little boost or
encouragement to get started and to keep going.
Regina and I chatted earlier this week and we
are both still doing what we started on Day 1 of the 40-Day Plan.
Yay us!
Please remember to pat
yourself on the back.
My mom taught me that.
I believe gratitude is an attitude and a practice.
Most days I wake up with immense gratitude.
Grateful for another day to be here.
Grateful
for good health,
My family,
And loving relationships and much more.
This week I
restarted a few other practices that I haven't done in a while.
Morning Pages and EFT,
Emotional
Freedom Technique,
Also known as tapping.
I used to do morning pages back in the last century
when I was writing more regularly over 30 years ago.
I learned about this practice from Julia Cameron's book,
The Artist's Way.
My version of morning pages
is to set a timer to write for a specific period of time and write out what comes up.
I set my
timer for five minutes and today what came up was immense gratitude.
It was a stream of conscious
flow of the things that I'm so grateful for in my life.
In addition to what I mentioned earlier,
A few other things I feel grateful for in this moment.
Drinking a hot tonic from my mom's china
cup.
Listening to the birds as I journal at my kitchen table.
Having practices that sustain me.
My beautiful home.
Friends I've known for over three decades.
An interesting life.
Breathing through both of my nostrils.
Recognizing that the word evolve has the word love in it.
Dear friends that keep me smiling and laughing.
Doing daily writing or journaling feels great right now.
I'm telling you for me,
Discipline
and commitment beat motivation and inspiration every day.
I talked about that and the 40-day
plan in episode 6,
Be Yourself.
I hope you enjoyed the Be Grateful excerpt from my book,
E-book,
Audio book,
Why Struggle?
Life is Too Short to Wear Tight Shoes.
Be Grateful.
I say thank you God all day long.
I feel so blessed and grateful for my life and the people
in my life.
Even when things are not as great as I would like them to be,
I'm still grateful
for I know I have the ability to move forward.
Do you have all five senses?
Be grateful.
Can you walk?
Be grateful.
Are you able to eat?
Be grateful.
Do you have shelter?
Be grateful.
Do you have clothing for your body?
Be grateful.
Can you read?
Be grateful.
Can you think and express yourself?
Be grateful.
Being grateful has now been scientifically proven to be a stress buster.
Grateful people are more optimistic and reap the health benefits of the practice.
Cultivate the practice of appreciation and look for what you are learning from your experiences.
Simply say out loud throughout the day,
Thank you.
Practice.
Do you have clothing,
Food,
And shelter?
What about sight,
Touch,
Smell,
Taste,
Hearing?
Be grateful if you do.
The next
time you begin to feel ungrateful,
Think of all the basic things in life you have to give thanks for.
Affirmation.
I am grateful and appreciate my life.
End of excerpt.
Practicing gratitude for me is often just saying thank you all day long,
Silently and aloud.
I can feel my body surging with such warm feelings when I do this simple
practice.
Writing down these gratitude gems was an additional surge of energy that started my day
off just right.
What do you feel grateful for right now?
You can leave a comment wherever
you're listening to this podcast.
