Attitude Of Gratitude

In episode 32, your spiritual besties are talking about what it’s like to choose an attitude of gratitude. If that word feels a little cringey to you, we can seriously relate. But what is gratitude, really? It doesn’t have to feel forced or inauthentic if we search our own hearts and minds for something we genuinely appreciate. To choose to be grateful doesn’t mean we pretend we’re not in pain when we are; it means that we look for what gifts might be inside the pain. Let's explore together!

Transcript

Thanks for joining us here on Pretty Spiritual where we're attempting the unthinkable about how to navigate this messy,

Beautiful,

Imperfect life with spiritual tools,

Principles,

And our own personal stories.

So we're not experts,

We're not religious,

We're definitely silly.

We're honest,

Real,

And willing to share.

So join us as we connect,

Bond,

And grow together.

Hey everybody.

Hey friends.

Hello.

Welcome back.

We're Pretty Spiritual.

I'm Annie.

My name is Lindsay Poney.

Hi,

I'm Ella.

We are so grateful that you're here with us today.

Oh,

Sneaky.

Nice choice of words,

Annie.

Because today our topic is gratitude.

Very exciting.

And I know that gratitude is a very frequent theme on Instagram.

Truth be told,

I'm disgusted.

And just in any kind of spiritual communities,

And it makes a lot of sense because when we're in this place of thankfulness and generosity and a feeling of kindness,

It's a lot easier for us to be the people we want to be,

I guess,

In the world.

But what does gratitude really mean?

And how can we cultivate it in our lives beyond just talking about it or kind of giving it lip service?

So today we're going to talk about our own journeys with gratitude,

How it's changed or not in our lives,

How we engage with it,

And the tools that we are using to help it grow in ourselves.

Yes,

Ella,

Why don't you talk about what gratitude looks like in your life today and if you've seen any changes over time,

If there's been an evolution.

There's definitely been an evolution of something.

I share Lindsay Pony's sentiment about gratitude,

Sometimes still,

But it used to be kind of like a habitual stance where I was just like,

That is so gross.

Why are people making me talk about that?

For me,

The things that usually get in the way of gratitude are that I'm turned on myself.

I can't hold how I am,

What I'm doing,

What's happening in my life with tenderness,

Or that I am grasping after something that I think I need to be,

Fill in the blank,

You know,

Enough,

Happy,

Whatever.

So there's that thing that I've heard so much in spiritual communities,

Which is gratitude is an action.

I get it.

And I'm like,

That still confuses me.

In thinking about this,

It was helpful for me to reflect on the idea of karma in Buddhism and the root of that word is kur,

Which is the root for action in Sanskrit.

I used to think that karma was this really hokey,

Kind of like fatalistic idea that it didn't apply to my life in a meaningful way.

When I started really exploring karma in my own life,

What I started to see is that it's a really subtle and complex phenomenon,

And it looks at all of the different ways we choose to interact with our thoughts,

Our speech,

Our behavior.

There is room inside of karma for a lot of choice,

Which is the part that,

That to me opens it up as an action.

And the tricky part is realizing that we're choosing to do things.

Because if I want to feel grateful about my life,

I have that choice at any moment,

But until I really see what I'm already choosing,

It doesn't feel,

It feels like I'm on a train headed in a direction I can't change the course of.

And so I was reading,

It was a transcription of a talk that Gail Fronso gave.

He's one of our favorite Vipassana teachers.

This is what he says about it.

One of the functions of mindfulness is to show us where we have choice.

Then the question is,

How do we make choices?

Karma is a great chain of cause and effect that starts with our intentions.

And then he goes on to talk about how habits get formed.

And he's basically saying the neurons that fire together wire together phenomenon of neuroscience,

Which is that the more we think down a certain path,

The more we act in a habitual way,

The easier it gets to get into a kind of like habit rut.

What is scary for me about that and a little disheartening is when I think about all of the kind of like habit ruts,

Like the buying things to make myself feel like enough habit rut,

I'm like,

Oh my God,

I've done that so many times.

I'm like so rutted in it right now,

You know.

But then it also helps me to think about how we can have these,

How we can form these healthy habit ruts of like interacting with life from the intention to grow spiritually.

I really relate to this delusion that we have a lot I think as humans,

Which is that not getting what I want is what stands in the way of my happiness or contentment or positive attitude.

The reality is that where it starts is on the inside.

It's an inside job that starts with my intention.

So I was trying so hard for a brief period of time not to buy this necklace that I'm wearing right now.

And then I bought it.

What I'm exploring in a place where I feel like really stuck in this habit that I feel kind of powerless to shift or change,

I have this intention to not shame myself.

And when I start with that intention is if what I value is spiritual growth,

How can I use whatever is right in front of me,

Whatever the circumstances of my life are to further that value or intention.

And for me,

That's where gratitude comes in.

It's a choice.

It's a choice about how I'm going to interact with what's right here,

How I'm going to make peace with the person I am right now.

And even more than that,

How I'm going to actively look for the places in my life where the seeds of intention can blossom into something that feels like genuine gratitude instead of my previous idea of what gratitude was,

Which is like life is amazing all the time.

And I'm like,

That's not true.

So I can find a genuine and personal feeling of gratitude in my own life,

Take refuge in that.

Thank you,

Ella.

I really like that you talked about gratitude as action.

And when I started on this spiritual journey,

That's something that I learned too.

It's not just this thing that gets gifted on to me because the circumstances are all exactly what I want or the sun just happens to be shining on me that day.

It's like I have to work for it,

Essentially.

And sometimes that's easier than others.

Pony,

What's gratitude like in your life today?

I'm so ready right now.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Oh,

Thank you,

Ella,

For everything that you shared.

And Annie,

Too.

Thank you for the topic.

I was thinking about the absence of,

From what I recall,

I didn't know what gratitude was.

And that's why I want to talk about the absence of gratitude.

There was a real absence of gratitude and there was an abundance of problems and pain and chaos and hardship.

You know,

I just didn't have the examples or the mentoring or the tools at that time,

Especially being a young child,

To who would ever think,

Oh,

The exact opposite of what you need is going to fix things or of what you have.

Right.

So the counterintuitive piece has always been,

You know,

It's taken years and years for me to get on board with anything,

Like the inversion of math always was so hard.

Like I couldn't understand.

Oh,

It's simple.

You just invert it.

And I was like,

No,

I need to know more of how you do that.

Well,

It's just what it is.

My brain just broke.

I think about that all the time.

For gratitude,

I just,

I couldn't have gotten here a day sooner or a day later when it comes to gratitude.

And what I found for myself is all these years and years of the absence of gratitude coupled with me looking for what's bad,

What's wrong,

What's the problem has been the mind state,

The mental place where my mind actually goes back and rests.

And I wouldn't have known this or gotten more of an idea.

I wouldn't even say I know it really,

Honestly,

Because if I knew it,

Then today maybe I would have the choice to feel different than I have.

I'm cranky and I'm mad and I don't,

I'm not super grateful right now.

I have a lot of feelings and in a real way,

I'm choosing the problem.

So back to gratitude.

It's difficult.

And I know I haven't liked that all along when someone's like,

Oh,

It's a choice.

This could be different.

I really want this to be succinct right now and I can't make it.

It's coming out so perfect.

Yeah,

I love it.

What I want to say is that I went on this four day set and actually we got to go home at night.

I want to be very clear.

I have not been on like the actual four day,

No look at phone,

No talkie again,

But I'm willing and hopeful it's coming.

Because what I did learn from that is this really amazing thing that would happen is I'd be sitting there and I've listened to instruction and I'm choosing to be here and I'm willing to sit with my mind and see what's here.

And then my mind kept doing this thing where it would go and just rest on crankiness and what's the opposite of gratitude?

What is it?

Fussy.

So we're fussy.

I don't even know.

I should look up what the opposite of gratitude is because then maybe I could point it out to myself when I see it and I could remember that it's time for me to get into gratitude.

What I'm so grateful about going to this sit for is that I got to see how automatically my mind would go to rest upon problems,

Issues.

It wasn't resting on gratitude and what's okay right now.

It wasn't.

It was upsetting to even see that.

So then I just get more upset.

And I guess I'm trying to talk about feeling tone and the absence of,

Even with the absence of we can really start to navigate and see and get to know what is here when gratitude is not here.

Oh,

And I just don't like that automatically.

Me too.

I was like,

Oh,

What's not here when gratitude is not,

You know,

I just have all this tightness and I'm just,

Oh,

Wow.

I am just really loving myself right now.

We love you too,

Blond.

We love you so much.

Really loving the side that gets to be here.

And we just show up as we are.

I can't be anything other than I am right now.

So as much as I'd love to show up to the podcast and be like,

It's very simple.

And of course,

I feel great all the time.

You know,

Right now I am learning how to be with what is here,

Recognizing the stuff that is here,

Even sometimes putting names and telling my most beloved people that like,

Oh,

I'm really uncomfortable and sad and I'm trying to make sense of the world and it doesn't seem like it makes sense.

And sometimes it's not going to.

And I remember when I first came into spiritual practice and being around people who were trying to better themselves and be different and change their behaviors and their habits.

And a lot of times people would talk about how grateful they were.

And I took it as a personal attack.

Me too.

Yeah.

Rude.

This person is grateful and there is not enough gratitude for everyone.

So if you're grateful,

I'm not going to get the chance to be grateful.

And oh,

Spoiler,

Big shocker.

I was mad.

There was my mind resting on annoyance,

The opposite of gratitude.

I'm going to need a lot of editing.

You're doing very guilty.

However you edit,

It's fine too.

I actually do not care how I sound.

So I just I was saying this before we launched into recording,

But there are times where I like feel like I have all the answers on a spiritual topic and generally what how that is received by others is not well.

And how it feels inside of like,

It's kind of disingenuous,

You know,

Like I'm like trying to be someone and get praise for something that like doesn't really match up with what my insides feel like.

But then at the times where like it's all falling apart,

I can't possibly hold it together and I'm just kind of like being messy and telling the truth about it.

That's at least for me,

That's when other people actually help me because they like are speaking to my heart.

And when I get helped because I'm like,

Well,

This is the mess that's here right now.

Do with it what you will.

The end.

You know?

Yay.

So I love you and I think you're doing great.

And that helped me a lot.

So thank you.

Oh,

Good.

That's really all it's about.

We're just here to share our own personal experiences and maybe it will help you all to call on your personal experiences and then share with us,

Of course.

So I feel like I've complained enough.

I hope that was very helpful.

It was.

Okay.

Yay.

I'm really so happy about this topic and just due to circumstances,

We pushed back this topic a couple of weeks and it's so fun how like Pony was sharing her experience right now with gratitude and Ella sharing her experience with gratitude and how much it can change just based on where we are right at this moment in our lives.

So when I picked the topic,

I was just coming back from this wonderful three week trip with my wife.

It was for our anniversary,

Three year wedding anniversary.

It was so beautiful.

We had a wonderful time.

We're so in love.

I just felt like so juiced up creatively and like,

I just want to talk about gratitude which is wonderful.

You know,

I felt so grateful and then I had another experience and it was made me even more grateful.

And so I was happy that we got postponed because this feels a bit more real is not the right word but a bit more.

It's easy for me to apply gratitude and be grateful when things are really beautiful and always I should celebrate that stuff and it doesn't mean that it has less value.

But for me,

The practice comes in when I don't have things how I want them and then to still be able to find the gratitude.

So we got back from this trip and immediately the next weekend,

I got to do two public readings for things that I had written.

And one was a really big event.

It was a fundraiser for a local nonprofit and there's a famous,

Like world famous author was going to be one of the judges who I was really excited about.

And then another famous radio person was going to be the interviewer and there's a,

It was a beautiful venue.

It was this whole thing.

So there had been,

You know,

About a hundred submissions and there was three finalists who were chosen to get up and read and be interviewed and be part of this process.

And so I got to read my story on stage in front of,

You know,

Hundreds of people and it was all very fancy.

I was wearing this exact same skirt I'm wearing right now.

And I went into it thinking,

Oh,

I'm whatever happens,

It's okay.

You know,

If I,

If I don't win,

But of course I want to win,

You know,

Like I,

I wanted to.

So the whole evening goes on and I think my reading went okay,

But I wasn't sure.

And then they go to announce the winner and it's not me,

You know,

And they're like,

It just like in the beauty pageants,

They go first runner up is Annie Crawford.

And I was like,

Dang it.

And then of course I stood up,

You know,

Graciously and pretended that I was really happy to have second place.

My parents had come down for this event,

Which was so sweet.

And my wife was there and it was like,

I got to just practice being disappointed.

I kind of wanted to cry and which was okay.

It wasn't like anything wrong with that because I think it's normal to be disappointed.

And one of our previous episodes was about expectations and like,

I didn't have an expectation that I could,

Was going to win,

But I was also hoping that I would.

So I was disappointed and it was normal and I had a really nice rest of the night,

But you know,

It's kind of sad.

And the next day I just had this new perspective on it and I was like,

Wow,

I am so grateful that I didn't win because I had this opportunity to see a parallel of about three years ago.

I was doing more readings and I had entered into this event or whatever and I was writing a romance novel and I was reading an excerpt from this chapter and it was just like fruity,

Light,

Playful,

Fun.

And I go to this reading in Berkeley and I swear everyone's in like black turtlenecks and berets.

And the girl who read before me was the most beautiful,

Powerful literary prose you've ever heard.

Everyone's like,

Oh my God.

And I was like,

Holy crap,

I have to read this silly thing.

And I got up and read it and it was totally received so awkwardly.

You know,

It was just not like the whole room was like,

And I'm like,

I'm in a sequin blazer.

Like it was just so over the top,

My dream.

And so I read it and I just immediately knew that it didn't go well.

And I was in such a fragile place that I couldn't have things not be okay,

You know,

And it wrecked me.

I had to leave the event.

I grabbed my wife,

I left the event.

She went and took me to ice cream.

It was just like,

All that stuff sounds silly,

But inside I was like crumbled.

I couldn't handle the fact of not performing well or like showing up or just,

You know,

Not being great.

Essentially it messed me up and I didn't do any public readings for years,

You know,

And I was like,

Wow,

How cool I can do this big event.

First of all,

I got selected.

Second of all,

What if I can just have the humility to be who I am right now,

Which is someone who wrote a cool story and it wasn't picked for the first place and somebody else wrote a really awesome story that got picked for first place.

And I just had this like gratitude that I got to have be a person who has a more stable foundation so that I can get disappointed and be okay.

Whereas before my foundation was so shaky that if stuff happened,

It would gut me,

You know,

And like put me in a tailspin basically.

So that's what gratitude looks like right now.

So let's talk about tools.

I desperately need some.

So yes.

So we say we can be grateful,

But how do we really practice and cultivate real gratitude in our hearts and minds?

How do we let this beautiful light shine?

Miss Ella.

It's so funny because like you were saying,

I think gratitude is supposed to be the like resting state of my life.

And from the outside,

It looks like other people who are like happy,

Content people are just that way.

Like there's not a lot of behind the scenes action that's happening to like sustain that attitude.

So it's not just like,

I am grateful all the time and life is amazing.

I think of that tombstone in the Kurt Vonnegut book that said everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

If only.

Oh,

I love that so much.

I know.

I'm like,

If I were dead,

I might be able to have that.

Thank you for reminding us all that it's work to choose gratitude.

I wish it weren't.

Trust me.

No wonder I'm so annoyed.

My tool is when I notice dissatisfaction,

Which I guess is the place my brain settled for an opposite of gratitude.

When I noticed dissatisfaction,

That's the first step.

Even notice that I'm upset,

Dissatisfied,

Cranky,

Frustrated.

So when I noticed that I have an opportunity to see what's here right now.

For me,

The things that get in the way of gratitude are feeling like I'm turned on myself.

So like,

I can't be friends with the person I am right now or what's coming up for me right now.

That's definitely one way.

The other way is because I'm like grasping after something that I think will change my like resting state into gratitude or like happiness or contentment or whatever.

Sometimes I have the awareness that I could ask myself that question and I'm like,

F that.

And when that happens,

Then the next thing I get to ask myself is,

Can I get on board with that?

Can I get it on board with like,

I'm cranky right now and like,

No,

I'm not going to soften into my experience.

And like,

That sounds like a terrible idea.

And like,

No,

For me,

It's like all about whatever is here right now.

How can I let it be okay?

Like how,

Even if I can't feel like grateful for it,

How can I not be at war with it?

You know,

Usually just asking those questions softens my kind of like heart stonewall enough to at least feel some kind of ouch,

Really get in touch with like,

Ouch,

This hurts.

A place I have a lot of experience doing that is with body pain.

So annoying.

Like,

I'm grateful that I have a lame disease and you know,

It's like F that.

No,

I'm not grateful for any of this.

I use that kind of line of inquiry about my body all the time,

Like what's here right now.

When the answer is like pain or hurting,

A lot of the time what is going hand in hand with that is some expectation or judgment I have of myself.

Like I should be more productive than this.

I whatever,

You know,

And when I can soften into that,

What I think should be happening isn't happening,

Then I can get a little like inch a little bit closer to what's here right now.

And once I have kind of adopted that line of inquiry or like attitude or stance,

Then I can get a little closer to offering love.

And that's my other tool.

And so I have a I have these resources,

These spiritual resources that have worked for me in the past.

One of them is to put my hand on my heart.

That's when I angling to offer love toward myself.

And then there are ways that I can practice that with other people,

Which is actually even been possible because I've offered it to myself.

One example of that that I want to share because it is it feels like a pretty big deal is the way I was at work wasn't working.

I really got to look at what parts of it weren't working and communicate that information in a way that was as loving as possible.

If I don't communicate my needs,

Oftentimes I get stuck in resentment.

When I'm in that place of resentment,

I am afraid of people.

I'm afraid to communicate my needs because I'm scared of how people will react,

What it will say about me,

Like,

You know,

All the fears that we have.

Instead,

When I get to act from a place of love,

My feelings change,

My feelings toward the person change.

And so I got to come from this really loving place and say,

Like,

Hey,

I'm on your team.

I have our best interests at heart.

I want to do good work.

And here's what's getting in the way.

Can we shift that?

You know,

It was great that it was received well,

But I was prepared for it not to be received well and prepared to trust that I had come from my true values and deepest intentions in offering this way forward.

And if it wasn't the way,

I could get on board with that,

You know?

OK,

So how does that relate to gratitude?

When I can come from my deepest intention,

Then I'm able to be grateful for whatever is here.

And since,

You know,

Like you can do this exercise of reflection for yourself,

That's what I did before I communicated with my employer,

I looked at what is the thing I value most?

What's important to me?

Where are my real intentions?

And my surface level intentions are like to be safe,

To look good,

Whatever.

But my deep intentions are to stand in a place of integrity in all the parts of my life,

To be of service.

So when I come from that intention,

Gratitude follows.

When I reflect on what my deep intentions are,

I'm able to really see how the conditions of my life today are helping me grow spiritually.

And when I'm looking at life like that,

Gratitude necessarily follows.

Thank you,

Ella.

I'm so grateful for your experience.

Lindsay Poney,

What is gratitude?

What kind of tools are you working with?

What kind of tools am I working with?

Ella,

Thank you for sharing.

I am just pondering my own experience and what I would love to say about tools that I am the queen of the gratitude list.

I would get behind that statement.

I second,

Third,

Fourth.

And I'm really only saying this because I want to let you know,

Because I would never talk about myself this way,

First of all.

But I want to let you know that even though I have been working this muscle trying to build a gratitude muscle,

That it's not fail proof.

It's not going to be a bulletproof vest.

I bet though,

It is really helping me.

Oh,

Yeah.

I really bet that it is.

I know that it is because in my active daily life,

I've been attempting gratitude list as on the daily attempting.

And there will be times where something will happen in my,

I will feel my mind take a different pathway and instead of it saying,

Oh,

Yeah,

Of course it's happened.

You're worthless.

Well,

You know,

The usual.

I'll say,

Oh,

Well,

At least it wasn't all the way.

And that's a huge step in feeling tone and change in my life that makes it worth it.

And so I am grateful for that.

And I'm annoyed that I do all this work and amen and that my tombstone's not going to say nothing hurt.

Everything was beautiful.

You don't know yet.

If I have anything to say about it.

I know.

And when I was talking about earlier,

What's the opposite of gratitude?

You know,

What are the signals that I can look for and see upon some research is talking about it's all within our attitude,

Which of course I'm,

I hate how that rhymes.

Oh my God.

Gross.

Attitude of gratitude.

Oh,

It makes so much sense.

Of course I've been being taught this for years and years and I'm just so just have my heels in so much that like it's really fun to experience and watch.

So sweet with you ladies.

I would want to beat myself up forever.

And instead of here,

It's like,

Oh,

How very sweet.

Can I point out that you were excited that those things rhymed and I was like wholeheartedly disgusted.

So I'm incredibly excited because maybe it can remind me that the attitudes that are going on for me right now are like never enough.

There's a lot of scarcity.

I'm really scared.

And I loved what you were talking about Ella about like deepening down and like dropping into and like being with what's here and giving love to myself.

And as you're saying all of this,

I'm like,

No,

That is never going to work.

And I am really grateful.

You know,

It's like carving out this space to see that I have these resources and these mentors and I'm like on this path really actively showing up in a tuning to what is here for me and where I could point my sales.

You know,

I just have this idea that like I just have this wrong idea.

I just have these old ideas.

Just don't look.

Don't be here with what's here.

Just motor through and just like bulldoze through.

And I'm like bulldozing myself.

I thought I would save my crying for therapy,

But it turns out it comes out whenever you need it out.

Okay.

So I'm talking about attitudes and I'm talking about the absence of gratitude and I'm talking about how in my personal experience,

It's been great for me to do a daily gratitude list.

And also with all the tools and all that I am attempting to force and be,

There is a space of really needing to drop into of what is here at any given moment.

And for me,

That is like what I do not want to do.

I'm just like really becoming more aware of like the resistance and all my strategies for like don't look,

Don't touch,

Don't feel,

Don't be here.

You'll be fine.

Keep it going.

Keep it moving.

And that strategy may have worked before and it's not working now.

It's well,

I'm pretty sure it's working still.

That's going on in my mind.

So there's a lot here to unpack and that's great because we will have more episodes that maybe this aligns with.

So my tool is gratitude.

Do your little gratitude lists.

You could let us know if you want to be added to that gratitude list.

Because what I do is I write 10 things.

So this morning I've like had a really hard weekend.

I feel if I wanted to like over dramatize it,

You know,

I feel emotionally distraught and dysregulated and I can't find my feet on whatever all these words are.

So I'm having a hard time.

And this morning I was like better do that gratitude list right away.

Just get on it.

Then you just write 10 things that you're grateful for and it can feel like a struggle and it can feel stupid.

And in the experience of doing the gratitude,

You really get to learn a lot about yourself and what being grateful for something feels like.

What an experience.

So I talked about my gratitude list and that I'm feeling very vulnerable right now and I'm sharing that with all of you and this is what it's like to show up.

Thank you all for getting to know me.

And you know what?

I'm going to thank myself for getting to know myself.

That's so nice.

That's all.

Thank you,

Pony.

Thank you for demonstrating what it looks like in practice.

Okay.

You really are a wonderful person.

I'm so grateful to be your friend.

Seriously.

For people who don't know,

Lindsay's gratitude list,

She really spearheads it and it's such a cool community and there's this group of people from all over the country that participate.

So go to our website,

Go to the contact page,

Get connected,

Get on the Grat list.

Yeah,

We love it so much.

We all really would.

Maybe sometimes it's happy,

Maybe sometimes it's sad.

I don't know.

You just have to get on and show up and give it a try.

How fun.

Grow that muscle.

Build it.

I see the muscle working for you.

Thanks for being so vulnerable and honest with us,

Pony.

It's really sweet.

Thanks everybody.

My tool is two part and I'm going to use it in relation to the story I shared about reading.

So the bigger picture tool is seeing how being on a spiritual path and continually,

Like Pony was demonstrating how she's continually working this tool,

Gratitude,

Whether she feels like it's working or not.

Being on a spiritual path and continually working to get more connected with my body and my own experience.

How different those two feelings of disappointment with reading were.

And you know,

I was being kind of jokey about like,

And then my wife had to take me for ice cream,

But it gutted me and I was filled with this shame.

I just couldn't bear how I felt.

And I,

So I just shut off that part of my life for a couple of years.

Like I just didn't do it.

I stopped writing that novel.

Like everything just kind of shut down around that.

My nervous system wasn't wired to like anything that kind of felt dangerous.

The alarm bells will go off.

It just shut down.

Having this gratitude that over time I've been able to say,

Oh,

I can get more and more courage and more and more try new things as I keep growing this spiritual base,

Which for me of therapy and meditation and prayer.

And so things will not always go my way,

But I am more resilient.

So I guess that's me being grateful,

But also like I was not able to be grateful or make like Ella said at the beginning of this,

Have a sense of humor.

I couldn't have any of that around it.

And I couldn't,

Lindsay was showing us how to be vulnerable.

I couldn't be vulnerable either.

You know,

There was,

I had invited people to come to that and I had to just pretend it was fine,

You know,

And it wasn't horrible.

Like no one was throwing tomatoes,

But I just like,

It was awkward.

It was very awkward,

But I just had to pretend it isn't.

I couldn't let people see that it was hard for me,

You know?

And then fast forward three years later,

For me,

The gratitude could come the following day after the reading this weekend because the night of I could just let myself be disappointed and sad,

You know,

Instead of being like,

I'm fine.

Like Pony was talking about,

I'm a bulldoze through this.

The solution is just not to think about it.

Shut it down,

Clamp a lid on it,

Put it in a box and just forget that night ever happened.

Part of gratitude for me when things are hard is having the room to not be okay for a little bit and to just be like,

Oh baby,

Annie,

You are sad and you're disappointed and that's totally reasonable.

And then getting up the next day and being able to have some shift and be like,

Oh,

What's the stuff that came up for me?

Like my ego got hurt,

You know,

My pride,

Like my sense of what's okay or not okay.

And starting to have this shift of like a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset where it gets all or nothing.

And instead of being like,

Wow,

What a great opportunity to learn.

You got to do something new.

For me,

That's this continuous tool towards gratitude of having the room to have the experience and then having this practice.

And I don't participate in the gratitude list every morning.

I get like 10 gratitude lists every day and I read them and I see people list everything from coffee to being able to have space from a traumatic relationship and having boundaries around it.

So this whole spectrum of what people are grateful for and that seeps into my brain and I reach for it.

Like we've been talking about this action of gratitude.

My life is changing as I get more grounded and as I can see other people around me practicing gratitude and start to notice what my character defects or defenses are getting in the way of me being grateful and being able to talk to other people about them.

Admitting to my friend who put on the event that my ego was injured,

That was really helpful for me to just say it out loud,

You know,

Because then I could have room for the other stuff.

I just wanted to say one more thing now that I am here.

So I was just going to talk about positively present and how gratitude month is in November and using the hashtag gratitude 30.

It's already a little bit of a community because they've been doing it for a few years now,

But they do every day is a different theme too.

So everyone's kind of doing it together and you can jump on later or you can do whatever you want.

You don't have to go through it,

But every day one will be family,

One will be love,

One will be work,

One will be.

Perfect.

It's at the account,

Positively present.

That's right.

And you can go to positively present.

Com.

They have their own website and everyone's doing this and you know what?

We will do it.

I was just going to say,

If I can presume.

Yeah,

We're going to do it.

Just check us out on Instagram and we'll be doing all kinds of stuff.

And if you make gratitude posts during the month of November,

Tag us,

Pretty Spiritual Podcast,

Do hashtag Pretty Spiritual Podcast and we can share your gratitude in our Instagram stories.

Oh,

We would love to do that so much.

What a great day.

I love you girls so much.

It's so nice to talk about this stuff and just be where we are and grow together.

Thank you for accepting me.

Yes.

Appreciate it.

So easy to accept you.

So if people are not connected yet,

We have an awesome email that goes out and lets you know about our new podcast.

You can go to our website,

Prettyspiritualpodcast.

Com.

Join our email list.

We're on social media at Pretty Spiritual Podcast.

We want to connect with you.

We want to have a community there.

What other news is happening?

We're definitely cooking up some stuff for Patreon and you will get some exclusive content from us.

We're going to be doing some.

.

.

Before we even release it,

Right?

Yeah,

It's going to be before.

So if you want to get our episodes early on video,

You'll be able to do that.

Yeah,

We're also going to try and do some spiritual tools,

Real life application and show you all how to do that.

Patreon is a whole thing and it's really sweet because people who want to help support us and support what we do can do it there.

So it makes it really simple.

We also have PayPal on our site,

Prettyspiritualpodcast.

Com.

So if you wanted to go through that avenue,

Slash donate,

That's where you can find it.

That's right.

So there's lots of ways.

And of course we do this for free and our only aim is to help people and build community and grow together.

And so everything that it is,

Is already enough.

And if you feel inspired to help,

We'd love to be able to keep doing this.

Hooray.

We love you so much.

Do we know what our topic is for next time?

I wish I could.

.

.

Self-confidence.

Of course we know what it is.

I'm so confident in my self-confidence that I can tell you that next time we meet,

We are going to be talking about self-confidence,

Whether you have it or not.

Oh,

This is going to be great.

Can't wait.

Hooray.

We love you.

Well,

Thanks so much.

Reviews

Thank you for your honest and down to earth dialogue ❤️

Imma bulldoze through that! Ughhh. Learning how to shift the perspective and make the room is hard! Thank you for the tools! 😘

Another great podcast.

Love you girls 🥰🥰🥰