Character Development: Gratitude

In this episode, we explore the strength of Gratitude, an expression of the virtue of Transcendence.

Gratitude is our capacity to recognize and appreciate the goodness, support, and care that exist within our lives. It invites us to slow down long enough for moments of kindness, connection, and beauty to truly land. Gratitude reminds us that we do not move through life alone—that our lives are shaped by relationships, communities, and countless visible and invisible forms of support.

Through reflection and affirmation, may we strengthen our ability to receive the good that is already present, acknowledge what sustains us, and remain open to the many ways life supports us. May we remember that gratitude is not about denying what is difficult, but about allowing goodness to exist alongside it.

Peace and blessings,

Hannah

Transcript

In a world that often focuses so much on what we lack, It's easy to overlook the incredible internal strengths that each of us possess. Grounded in ancient philosophy and modern science, This series invites you to reconnect with the innate strengths that make you who you are, Promoting balance and harmony in everyday life. Whether you're looking to boost your confidence, Overcome negative self-talk, Deepen your relationships, Or simply invite a greater sense of well-being, My hope is that this series offers a practical and uplifting path to personal growth. Hello lovely people and welcome back to our character strengths affirmation series. Each episode we explore one of the 24 character strengths identified by positive psychology all of which fall under the virtues of courage, Humanity, Wisdom, Justice, Temperance, Or transcendence. These strengths and virtues are universal and they form the foundation of our best selves. Today we are continuing on our journey through the virtue of transcendence. This is the family of strengths that connect us to something larger than ourselves and help us find meaning, Awe, And perspective. Perspective. Transcendence includes the strengths of appreciation of beauty and excellence. That's one strength. Hope, Humor, Spirituality, And today's strength, Which is gratitude. I am very excited to be talking about this strength because it is one that gets a lot of attention in the wellness industry, In the personal development worlds, In spiritual and religious contexts, Is the importance of being grateful and having a gratitude practice. It's just going to be really interesting. I'm excited to hear about how people relate to this. I will always keep it real with you guys and tell you the ways in which I have fumbled the gratitude ball. And was left either feeling disconnected or like I was using my gratitude actually to compensate. For things that were happening. So I, Yeah, I think it's going to be a good dialogue to discuss the ways in which sometimes we get gratitude wrong. The Values in Action Institute defines gratitude as being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen. And taking time to express thanks and it has to be in that order pretty much for it to be like real gratitude. You can't just say thank you and be like, And that was gratitude. No, That's being polite. Character development is an internal experience. It is shaped deeply by our environment and our relationships and our culture, But ultimately it is a relationship to ourselves and to our experience of reality first. We cannot intellectualize our way there. It's what do you actually like? Gratitude is less about saying thank you and more about letting something actually register and truly appreciating it. We have to actually let it land, Whether it's a kind gesture or a quiet moment or support that you didn't expect, Or maybe don't even feel like you earned. And instead of moving past it, Or trying to, You know, Rush through it, Really receiving it. And appreciating it and allowing ourselves to feel this greater thing. My understanding of gratitude is that it's deeply connected to our capacity for perspective taking because the more we expand beyond ourselves, The more we start to recognize what may have actually gone into the things that we've been able to receive. What it may have taken for it to be offered, The time. The effort, The sacrifice, The intention, The care. Sometimes gratitude deepens when we pause long enough to imagine another person's inner world. A parent working while feeling exhausted. A friend checking in while carrying their own pain. Someone offering patience or kindness or labor or creativity or presence. And this, For some, Extends beyond people. This can become more spiritual, The recognition of the larger systems or lineages or ecosystems or sacred sources that sustain our lives. The earth growing food we did not create. Ancestors whose choices shaped our existence. Communities that held knowledge before we ever did. And that awareness naturally softens us. It creates humility, And care, And instills within us a sense of reverence and respect and appreciation for the opportunity to be here and to be alive. As always, I recognize that character strengths exist on a spectrum and that health is in balance. I use Aristotle's golden mean, The idea that virtue exists in the balance between two vices, That of underuse and that of overuse. You can overuse a good thing or misuse it. So I like to talk about some of the things that I've seen personally and in the world and talk about what findings balance looks like. When gratitude is underused, We can start to feel disconnected, Entitled, Lonely. Even when support is present. One manifestation of this could be the self-reliant striver. This is those of us who believe that we have to do everything ourselves, Especially if we want it to be done the way that we want it to be done. So support gets minimized or overlooked because the priority becomes around having control. And on fearing the vulnerability that would come from trusting somebody else to actually be able to contribute something meaningful, Be it to our own lives or to some greater project. It becomes hard to receive or to acknowledge interdependence because of maybe something that happened in the past where you felt like you could trust somebody and in the end you were let down. Or maybe that happened many times. Gratitude can be a really simple way to bring ourselves back to a place of being able to trust where it's like, Let's start small. What would make me actually feel appreciative without me freaking out? You know, I don't have to give up all the reins right away. We can start small. Similar but different to this one is the burnt out giver. So, Gosh, This one, This one I find to be when I was like sitting down to write these, I was like, Ooh, Ooh. Whoa! Whoa, This one is interesting to me. The burnt out giver is so focused on other people being grateful for them and basing their worth and other people being able to recognize that they are there to be of support, That they do not focus on having a balanced relationship where they also receive. And I want to use this as an opportunity to, This is a PSA, Public service announcement. We're going to put a pin in everything that we're talking about in this podcast and otherwise. Is this a podcast? Is this a curriculum? I don't know what this is. I'm just in front of a mic. PSA, It is a gift to give other people the opportunity to support us and to be of service to us in any way. You are not a burden for needing support. Welcome to being human. It is a beautiful thing to be able to be there for others. And it is a beautiful thing to give others the opportunity to be there for you. So many of us put so much pressure on ourselves to be okay because we don't want to be a burden. I see it every day with my clients. I see it all the time when I look back at my old journals. And it's so disappointing because it's actually through the vulnerability of recognizing that we need support because of course we do. Of course you think you can do it by yourself. You think you can just navigate this human experience all on your own. Good luck. Let me know how that works out for you. Maybe you're special, Maybe you're unique, Maybe you've got all the talents. Not me. Not me, If there's one thing that doing all this strength stuff has taught me, It's that I don't, I am not perfectly balanced in all the strengths. So for my world to function, I need people who have other strengths. And then what can I do to bind us together? What's the peanut butter and jelly that keeps this bread of individualism working? Appreciation, And gratitude. And in healthy relationships, PSA over, I'm getting back to the burnt out giver archetype now. In healthy relationships. This gratitude is balanced. It's bi-directional. It does not mean that we are contributing the same things to one another's lives. Part of what I hope that this series and what this series becomes can offer is the ability for us to give ourselves permission to not be perfect and to be human. And then to be really curious about what are my actual strengths? How can I create boundaries in my life so that I protect the ways in which I personally contribute to the world? So that I don't become a burnt out giver who's just basing my worth purely in being able to give and to do, But instead in the quality and the quality of my offering, But also the quality of my own being as I do the offering, Those things are related to each other. So that I can also more deeply appreciate the ways in which other people contribute to my life. There is humility and gratitude that says I cannot do it all on my own. And I do not have to. And furthermore, If I try. I will end up either resenting myself for not living up to an impossible standard or resenting other people for not being able to read my mind when it's become too much. Part of this is because we don't have the skills to be able to advocate for ourselves. It's too scary to be able to say, Hey, I could really use your help with the dishes. Or, Hey, What I need right now is just a listening ear. I don't need advice. I don't need the answers. I don't even know if I want to solve this problem right now. I just need for my experience in this moment to be recognized and seen. You know what I'm saying? Part of the gratitude is being really clear on what it is that we actually need help with, And then being able to communicate that to those around us. Which I will just say on the topic of gratitude that sometimes the reason that we're not grateful is because we don't actually know what we want. So another underuse of gratitude and archetype would be the confused receiver. How do we know to be grateful if we don't even know what we want? You know what I'm saying? We got to sit with ourselves and be like, What do I need? What would actually be helpful to me? And I'm going to tell you right now when I'm rushing around my apartment, Or I'm in a transition mode, Or I just got off of like a really intense session, That is not, I'm not available to even know my middle name. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know. I'm all over the place. This is why we meditate. This is why I sit on my cushion for 15 minutes every morning is so that I can actually catch up to myself. This is like the basis of acceptance and commitment therapy act. Let me slow down. Let me sit with my body and my heart and my mind and sit behind it so that I can figure out What base needs actually need to be met here? And then from there, What do I actually care about? And what does that actually look like in my life? This next archetype is the negativity filter. I like thinking of it as a filter because it's not about who we are at our core. It's like a lens through which we start to see the world and it's just grayscale. This is when our mind automatically scans for what's wrong, What's missing, What's not enough, Good things happen. We just don't see them, Okay? And sometimes this is because we're entitled, And we'll get into that in the next one. But other times, This is because we are just so acclimated to a stressful environment, And our nervous systems are not available to receive or appreciate things in the moment. Now, Gratitude is a coping skill. Okay, When I was really struggling in college, My freshman year in particular, I was seeing everything through the lens of grayscale and that even came through in the way that I was dressing. I wore like black and white trousers every day. I don't know how you dressed when you were 18, But I was in black and white trousers and black dress shoes and some kind of neutral top like every day. It was giving, I thought I was like a poet from the 60s. I don't know what to say. Say about that, But that grayscale translated to every part of my life until. And this is very important until as the snow in Wisconsin started to melt, I would be walking back from class on campus and what I thought was melting snow, I would look up and I would realize it was a bunny rabbit. Now I live in Georgia and there are way fewer rabbits, But back in Wisconsin, Everywhere. Rabbits all over the place, Which is awesome because I love bunny rabbits. Very special animal to me. Part, It's because of this reason, This part of my story. Even in these moments of challenge. And in these moments where I felt like just so dim. The spark of life that would come through when I would see a bunny rabbit. And it was so simple. It wasn't that anybody was going out of their way to do something for me. All I had to do to be grateful was receive the light and the beauty that came from this simple, Small animal. We can start little. And that will start to regulate our nervous system in the moment. We don't have to start by being grateful for the greatest stressors in our lives out of some desire to make meaning out of them in the moment. We'll talk about that in the overuse, Because I've played that game too. I was like, Oh, Gratitude works. I'll just use it for everything. No, No, We need balance. We need flexibility, Right? So when it comes to this negativity filter, Have some compassion with yourself. Instead of asking yourself, How can I be more grateful? Which can, From this negativity bias, Can quickly turn into just being negative towards ourselves for not being more grateful. I bet that one landed for some of you. How can we ask instead, What does safety look like first? What does creating an environment within myself that makes me feel safe enough to receive the present moment actually look like? Maybe it's being in a calm place in your home. For me, It's often going out into nature and laying down on a large rock and taking at least 10 deep breaths, Maybe 100. This comes back to the broaden and build theory that we talked about episodes ago. I'm not available to be curious and in awe and wonder if I don't feel healthy or at home within myself. Pete Holmes, Years ago on a podcast, I couldn't cite the podcast. I just remember this like it was yesterday. And it was probably around the time that I was coming out of whatever funk I was in my freshman year of college that I heard this. So it's really sweet that we're coming full circle and I get to say thank you, Pete Holmes, For saying this because it landed with me in may I say things that land with some of you guys. He said, If you sleep deprive me. I'm not available to be curious about and in awe of the wonders of the universe. I'm just focusing on the task at hand. If you trigger my nervous system, Into the sympathetic response where I'm in some kind of fight or flight. Especially if that happens over years, I am going to have a much harder time being grateful. Now, This is not to say that challenges and resilience do not prompt opportunities for gratitude. It's just to say that the goal is not to force it. And the whole point of the archetypes and me sitting down and thinking about all these manifestations is not just for me to engage in mental puzzling. It's so that we can appreciate that under using a strength, Can be for any number of reasons. And if it's because of a burned out nervous system, Because of being in an environment that was unsafe for a long period of time for any number of reasons, Let's be gentle and patient with ourselves in our pursuit of gratitude or else we will absolutely fall prey to the overuse that we will talk about in a little bit. Continuing on with the underuse examples, This next one is the entitled mindset. So, This is expecting things without acknowledging the effort that went into them or the privilege that we have to be able to receive them. And maybe it's because of how somebody was raised. I leave room for that. But it can also be a natural tendency for us as humans to acclimate. Where things that once felt meaningful slowly become expected or natural or just the way things are. In the same way that we get used to cold water and it starts to just feel like water. I don't know if that makes sense. What once felt really special and meaningful starts to become invisible simply because it's familiar, We get used to it. Gratitude asks us to resist that numbing by pausing and remembering this person actually doesn't have to do this. Or even if they do, The effort is still effort and it's still something that I value and is meaningful to me. Even if I'm paying this person to do this, I'm still appreciative of the fact that it's happening and maybe they're doing a good job. Relationships often begin to erode, Not only from conflict, But because of slow loss of acknowledgement. Now, We can start to imagine how the entitled mindset person might create a dynamic with the self-reliant striver or the burnt out giver. Can we see the ways in which what's happening for both people is an underuse of gratitude and recognition and appreciation? And how as a result of that, Or maybe in relationship to that, That starts to create an imbalance of responsibility. Or power or authority or simply an imbalance of care and consideration in the context of a relationship. The last archetype is the emotionally guarded. So whereas the negativity filter was not able to focus on the good because it needed to be focused on all the things that needed to be fixed in order to be okay. The emotionally guarded, In my experience, It has more to do with when there was nothing that we could do. There was a certain level of powerlessness, And so we just shut down. This is not letting things that are good land because we're just not, We just don't feel safe enough to open up, Period. This is often shaped by past experiences where openness wasn't met with care. Now, What all of these archetypes have in common is the thread of disconnection. And it's not from the goodness. It's not that we're not connected to something that we could be grateful for because there's nothing in our life to be grateful for. It's that we're not able to receive it or acknowledge it. And for many of us, This disconnection is tied to guilt and shame. Guilt says, I have to earn this. I'm going to owe something in return. I need to be doing more because it's so overwhelming for me to receive this goodness from somebody else that all I can focus on is the fact that I'm not doing enough. Shame goes even deeper. It says, I'm not worthy of receiving this period. When shame is present, Gratitude feels uncomfortable because truly receiving care and support and kindness or goodness requires letting something positive land inside a part of us that may not fully believe it deserves it. So instead we deflect, We minimize, We rush to repay, We make ourselves smaller in response to what's being offered. How can we see small gratitude practices as an opportunity to interrupt that cycle? It's not about pretending that the pain or insecurity isn't there. It's about creating little tiny moments where we can relearn that opening ourselves up won't lead to more hurt. And instead it will lead maybe even to a certain level of healing. And that's where we start getting into the ways in which gratitude can start to lead to hope and is related to the character strength of hope. There are the deep existential things that are available to us to be grateful for. For me, When I'm in the woods and I'm doing healing work and I am so surrendered and so like a child in my heart, I am overwhelmed with awe and wonder and gratitude for the earth that holds us. And if you want to know the truth, The thing that ultimately allowed for me to find that relationship was. . . Getting to a place in my hardship that I felt so undeniably broken open and found that I was still held. That I was able to find, That's the deepest core of my gratitude, Like of the iceberg beneath the surface that is my genuine heartfelt gratitude, That one. On the other side of like complete reckoning with the human experience, I can surrender all of who I am and still be held by the earth. The experience of thisness. And have it just be enough. Oh, I'm grateful for that. I am grateful for that. Your spirituality might look completely different, Okay? Like I love that, I love that we have so many different ways to appreciate the fact that we're just here and we're alive and it was, It may be in some way granted to us. That is why gratitude is in transcendence, Is because it's like, Wow, There is a greater thing happening here and I get to be a part of it. I'll just say that you don't have to start with the hardest things. You can start small. Virginia Woolf wrote, Happiness is in the quiet ordinary things. A table, A chair, A book with a paper, Knife stuck between the pages, And the petal falling from the rose, And the light flickering as we sit silent. What we need to be asking ourselves is, What are my quiet, Ordinary things that bring me joy? And Can I just take a moment to appreciate them? Not despite our other challenges that we have going on that deserve our attention as well. But because of them, Right? There's the humor in it too, That transcendent humor that we'll get to in one of the next episodes. Thank goodness at least there's that. Thank goodness. There can be chaos going on in the world. There can be all these things going on in my life, But wow, Isn't it great that I can call this person and they know to ask if I need advice or for them to just be there with it. Oh, Wow, These protective factors that we have against the hardship. Ordinary, Small, Easily taken for granted. And yet. . . Who would we be without them? In the last episode, We talked about awe walks, Which is, I'm just going to say it. It's a weird, It's a weird term to say awe walks. AWE walks, A-W-E, AWE walks. And they're in the research, Which I talk about in that episode. But it's the it's the practice of just going for walks where you allow yourself to be like, Wow, This is actually quite lovely to be around the living thing that is the earth that is actually alive. And truly is the original thing that we admired. It's hard not to get existential with gratitude because on a certain level, I'll put it this way. I had a teacher, Complicated teacher, But a teacher nonetheless, Say once, Say actually many times. Do you know how many love stories it took for you to get here? Do you know how many individual decisions it took in your ancestral line? To come into existence. Do you know the likelihood that you were born? Do you know what that is? On the other side of all of that. Gratitude. Can become overused, Overextended. And this is where things start to get a little tricky because gratitude is one of the easiest strengths to lean on when we're trying to cope. Overused gratitude isn't really about appreciation and savoring. It's about rushing past what's real. It's about redirecting our perspective away from some of the more challenging aspects, Whether it be external or internal, So that we don't have to look at it. It's true bypass, Okay? It's true, I'm actually just gonna use this strength so that I can avoid engaging in these hard challenges. And the reason I'm laughing about that is, Uh, Yeah. Yeah. I, Yes, I did. I did do that. I did. I did do that. Research is me search. Research is me search. So this could show up as the silver liner. This is the part in us that is, Has a tendency to jump too quickly to the, At least something you know at least i still have a job you know or at least they were honest or at least i have a roof over my head or at least this will make a great story or and this is the one that got me this is the one that got me was at least I learned something. At least I can make meaning out of this by using it as a learning experience or as something that's making me even more wise. This is something, You know, I got to the point where I was like all hardship is just chipping away at me and making me better and refining me and I still believe that. The issue. And this is where it'll start to get into the other archetypes. But the issue is that I wasn't also acknowledging that it hurt. Or that it was hard. The good news is that there's a pretty easy solution to this one, And it's that everything gets a seat at the table. It's okay to recognize challenge first, Hold it, Grieve it if you need to, And then the appreciation that you'll experience on the other side of it will be authentic. I mean, When I was just trying to be grateful without grieving, I was like so grateful, But my like chest was tight, And my throat was tight. And I think about like the Arthur meme, Where it's just like the fist, The closed hand. It's like, I'm so grateful for all that this is doing on who I am as a person. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, Like, How can I be grateful? For the growth that something is doing for me on anything more than an intellectual level, Which matters. I now think of things in terms of this instead of that, But am I going to make new choices in the future? If I didn't learn my lesson also by feeling the way that it made me feel, Can I be grateful for my ability to hold all of my human experience? Or am I going to practice the next archetype, Which is the minimizer? This is using gratitude to downplay pain or struggle. It's not that bad. I should just be grateful. What you're ultimately saying when you say that is like gratitude is a deep felt sense of appreciation. This is where it's like it's not just saying thank you. It's not just making meaning with our mind. It's a felt sense of, Wow. Thank goodness! And we get that felt sense by staying in touch with the body. So if I have to disconnect from my feelings in order to be grateful, How am I gonna feel the gratitude? Another manifestation that this can take form in is the people pleaser. Over appreciating others while abandoning our own needs. What I mean by this is actually expressing gratitude and saying, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. And it's actually still just you not being able to actually receive the thing. And if you did, You might see it's actually not that big of a thing that this person did this. This can take form when people are in a relational dynamic and somebody starts doing the work. And as that person starts to do the work, It's thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Almost as a means of saying, I feel guilty that I'm even asking you to do this. So let me overexpress my gratitude because I fill in the blank, You know, And this might be I you know, I have a bias because I work with with families and with close relationships, But this could be in a work relationship. This could be in. . . A spiritual relationship where you're so quick to only express gratitude that you're not actually leaving space for yourself to to be honest about the way that you feel and be vulnerable. All of these are attempts to regulate and to cope and to make meaning. And that's really sweet and lovely. Let's not shame that from jump. Okay. Like that, That's really nice. Because when something is painful, Or uncertain, Or disappointing, Or overwhelming, It makes sense that we would want to move ourselves toward relief as quickly as possible. And gratitude can be very regulating. It can widen our perspective. It can reconnect us to support, Allow us to make meaning, And it contributes to our capacity for resilience. But there's a difference between using gratitude to support that experience and using it to escape the experience. When gratitude becomes a way of avoiding discomfort, It loses its grounding. We stop relating to gratitude as an honest response to what's here. And start using it as some kind of strategy for controlling how we feel. And over time, That creates distance from ourselves, And it creates distance from those around us, Because it's honestly just not that relatable. The discomfort is still there. The grief is still in there. It's still in that body. The anger, Fear, Disappointment, Resentment, Whatever, It's still there. It's just not getting talked about. And I think this is where people sometimes get confused about emotional health. The goal isn't to stay stuck in painful emotions forever. But it's also not to try to force ourselves to immediately transcend them. If that's authentic to you, Awesome. As Ram Dass would say, You're just here to bless us. Thank you. But for most of us, We got to meet ourselves where we're at first in our true human experience and work with that and work through that. And that's actually what allows us to learn transcendence later. That's the secret. The goal is to build the capacity to stay present long enough for the experience to to actually move through us honestly. And from there, Gratitude becomes something very different. It's not forced. It's not performative. It's real. And that is one of the most delicious experiences. It's one of the experiences I think that is what keeps us wanting to be here. Balanced gratitude is honest and spacious. There's room for the challenge and the hardship as well as the gratitude for things outside the hardship and inside the hardship. And just for neutrality, Just for things that are just what they should be, You know. All of it gets room. Everything gets a seat at the table. Using one part to avoid or banish another part. What that means in terms of our language. Is changing our butts to ants. It's not This was really difficult for me. But tomorrow's a new day. It's, This was really difficult for me. And tomorrow's a new day. It's not redirecting away from. It's not trying to only have the joy and the gratitude. It's just full acknowledgement of truth for ourselves in any given moment. And starting and ending with gratitude is lovely. That's a wonderful thing to habituate ourselves towards. We just want to. Not let it separate us from ourselves, Because if we do that, I mean, It really does impact our relationships. Think about the times in your life when you were going through something and somebody else was quick to try and point out the positives. Did you feel seen or felt or understood in that moment? Was the problem that you are incapable of seeing positive things. If that's the case, You know, That's something to work with. If that's not the case, Then that there's insight there. Into the fact that we want this to be something that's genuine. And that means being genuine first. Balanced gratitude receives without minimizing, Acknowledges without performing, And connects instead of bypassing or avoiding. Practicing gratitude is simple, But it requires intention. It looks like pausing to notice what is supporting you. Letting something good actually land in your body. Naming what you appreciate out loud or internally or writing it down. That's a classic. Acknowledging effort, Both your own and others. Letting yourself feel cared for. Resisting the urge to rush past positive moments. And catching the moments where it arises naturally. Before we begin, We'll start with a brief blessing or intention. May we be blessed with the awareness to notice what is quietly supporting us each day. May we allow moments of goodness and care and connection to fully land within us. May we have the courage to receive and to experience the truth that we are wholly interconnected and supported by so many things outside of ourselves. And may our gratitude remain grounded enough to hold both the beauty of what is present and the truth of what is hard. I will read each statement twice, Pausing in between to give you a chance to repeat them out loud to yourself, And I do recommend saying them out loud. The statements that are easy to embrace, Savor them, Appreciate them, Stand like a mountain in their truth. And then the statements that feel not so good, That feel uncomfortable or foreign. Go ahead and say them anyway. This is where we are doing the work, Rewiring those neural networks. This is also where we gain insight into unhealed wounds, Limiting beliefs, And ingrained biases and judgments toward ourselves or toward a particular way of being. It's great material for journaling or discussing with a counselor or trusted friend, Maybe even someone doing the series with you. Whether you're just waking up. Walking your dog, On your commute. Or getting ready for bed. I hope these affirmations serve your deepest, Greatest, Highest self. And with that, Let's get started. I am grateful. I am grateful. I notice what supports me. I notice what supports me. I receive with openness and ease. I receive with openness and ease. I allow goodness to be felt. I allow goodness to be felt. I appreciate the people who shape and support my life. I appreciate the people who shape and support my life. I honor my full experience and remain open to gratitude. I honor my full experience and remain open to gratitude. I welcome care, Kindness, And connection into my life. I welcome care, Kindness, And connection into my life. I recognize the seen and unseen ways I am supported. I recognize the seen and unseen ways I am supported. I notice the small moments that bring meaning to my day. I notice the small moments that bring meaning to my day. I let appreciation naturally deepen into gratitude. I let appreciation naturally deepen into gratitude. I receive life with presence, Awareness, And openness. I receive life with presence, Awareness, And openness… I allow gratitude to expand my perspective. I allow gratitude to expand my perspective. I recognize the effort, Care, And intention around me. I recognize the effort, Care, And intention around me. I remain open to giving and receiving in balance. I remain open to giving and receiving in balance. I am grateful to be an offering to something greater than myself. I am grateful to be an offering to something greater than myself. As always, Thank you guys so much for showing up and being with me on this wild ride called life. It really is a curriculum, This human experience. And I'm trying to say it's here for us to take the curriculum. We don't have to skip to the last page. We don't have to be the finished product already. It's okay to be a work in progress. And thank you for working exactly where you are in this moment. And I meet you exactly where I am in this moment. And may we continue to orient ourselves towards balance and virtue and goodness, Staying flexible, Along the way, And may the work that we do on ourselves be an offering to our contribution in the world. Please go forth with peace and many blessings and I will see you next time.