Grateful For The Hateful

Gratitude.  It's a powerful force.

I found myself in front of the washing machine again last night, marvelling that all I have to do is put dirty clothes into a machine, press a button and VOILA! clean clothes.

Then I turned around and looked at the five piles of laundry that still needed to be done.

One part of me was very grateful for the ability to wash clothing so easily, that I had access to hydro and clean running water to make it all happen.  Another part of me was frustrated that I still had five piles left to do (knowing full well that it would easily be six piles come morning - how does laundry multiply so fast?).

This morning I woke up and ran through my daily 'things to be grateful for' list, then made my way upstairs for the dreaded 'wake Benjamin up for school' task.

Again one part of me could see all the things to be grateful for (a good nights sleep, a warm bed, my health, etc.) but when it came to waking up my son that gratitude went right out the window.

Do you see a pattern here?

Does this pattern seem familiar to you?

I didn't realize this was happening.  In fact, I thought I was doing a pretty good job in the gratitude department.  Making my neat little lists, taking time during my walks to look around and find things to be grateful for.  Focusing on gratitude before I fell asleep at night.  These moments of gratitude were filling me with a sense of peace and purpose.  Being grateful works!

But what about when the shit hits the fan?  Where is my gratefulness then?  That's where my challenge lies.

Gratitude moves you forward, my experience has been that any amount of feeling grateful is a very good thing for making positive change in your life.

I wonder though what kind of powerful force gratitude would be if I applied it to all those other times in life when things aren't running so smooth.  You know like your car breaking down (aka paying that hefty mechanic bill), physical pain or an unruly child.  These are the moments when gratitude is needed the most and when we don't acknowledge that, it slows the forward motion down, sometimes causing it to come to a screeching halt!

Gratitude 'should' be something we automatically feel, no matter what is happening around us.  I think though that we've become so busy with doing things and buying things and keeping up with things that it's not as natural as it was; once upon a time. 

So I would categorize being grateful as something you have to do on purpose.  It's something you have to be thinking about on purpose until it becomes a natural part of your personality (PS, it really is part of your personality but it's been hiding, practicing gratitude brings it back out into the open again).  Especially when you are being grateful for the hateful things in life, and there are sometimes a long list of hateful things. 

So....I am grateful that there are ONLY five loads of laundry left to do :)  And I am grateful that my son is healthy and strong enough to fight me off when I am trying to pull him out of bed :)

There, that's better.

I Thought I Knew...

I thought I knew who I was... 

I thought I could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was an unconditional lover.  That I was living my purpose on purpose, loving myself, full of happiness and joyful abundance.  I thought I could maintain peacefulness, patience and a loving demeanor throughout a challenging situation.  That I was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound....Ah, okay, maybe not that last one.

Then I found out I was only human.  Ha!  Imagine my surprise that my 'unconditional' love turned into love with hoards of conditions!  Imagine my surprise when I began to put someone else's emotional needs before mine (again) and proved to myself that I indeed did not love myself as fully (or unconditionally) as I thought!  Imagine my surprise when life began to place in front of me people and circumstances of all shapes and sizes whose sole (or soul) purpose was to mirror for me the things I had missed about myself, the flaws, the faults, the things I had tried to hide so neatly behind my smile.

Ack!!!

And then, the vulnerability, the shamefulness of this realization.

"Oh what a fool I have been" she says dramatically as the back of her hand rests on her forehead, head thrown back in anguish. 

Personal realizations like this one are probably the number one reason why many people don't even look at themselves in the mirror, for fear of being 'found out'.

That used to be one of my biggest fears, or at least the thing my ego would scream at me the most "what if people find out that you are a big ole fraudy pants?"

I think that subconsciously I knew what my shadows were and I knew I wasn't proud of them but I had no idea how to use them to my advantage.  So instead they became something I feared.  The very idea of the closet door swinging open to expose all of my skeletons made my skin crawl.

And here we are, the closet door has been kicked in and I have been staring into the deep empty eye sockets of those skeletons for over a month and you know what?  They are nothing more than plastic props made in China used by the ego to keep me stuck in fear and worry.  That's it!

I wish I could say that facing these skeletons didn't affect me emotionally, mentally or physically.  They definitely did.  But there was something that I kept in mind every time one of them would peek out of the door. 

I kept in mind something that I heard Joyce Meyers say on one of her programs.  She said "God knows every inch of you, He made you just the way you are, nothing you do surprises Him.  So there is no sense worrying about every move you make and wondering if you'll ever become the perfect person because in His eyes you are perfect.  So just live!  Go out there and do what you do with passion and forget about what the 'devil' is trying to tell you through your faults.  God loves you beyond your faults."

I used that quote/reminder like crazy!  It made sense to me and it brought me back from the brink of insanity.

I like that!










 

All Hail Chiropractors!

So last week I decided it was GO time in the self care department.

After three months of living with more opportunities for stressful reactions than I can count; I hadn't been sleeping well, was experiencing WAY too many headaches and well, after one deboched (I don't care if that's a spelling error) speaking engagement because my brain forgot where I was; I figured it was time to take a look at what all of this stress was doing to my nervous system (clearly it was wreaking havoc, but I needed proof). 

Remember that commercial of the eggs frying in a pan on the stove and the announcer saying "this is your brain on drugs"?  This is kind of how I felt walking into the chiropractic office last week.  I should have been wearing a "this is your nervous system on stress" sign.  I was a walking freak show, science experiment!

My symptoms included:  fatigue, loss of appetite, loss of joy/purpose, depression, diarrea, regular headaches ranging from low grade constant to occasional migraine, stiffness in my neck and lower back, brain fog/mental confusion, insomnia, unfocused thoughts, quick emotional reactions to the slightest incident, lack of interest in anything that usually brings me excitement and passion.

From the sounds of these symptoms you'd think I had been in a major accident or something.  The only thing that was causing all of this was the fact that I was taking on too much responsibility for other people, taking things personally and allowing my negative thoughts to run around unsupervised.

After the kind doctor informed me of the parts of my spine that were out of alignment and the fact that I had been walking around with a rib out of place, we had a good chuckle and he asked if he could run a scan during my next visit.  He had a 'kid in a candy store' look on his face, like he just hit the jackpot!

We did the scan today and I got another adjustment.  The scan shows some pretty major 'deficiencies' in how my nervous system is functioning.  It will take time and gentleness with myself to get back into a healthy state of being.  I'm looking forward to it.

I left his office today with a print off of my scan as a reminder to be kind to myself.  I also left feeling like there was  hope for me afterall, that I wasn't some sort of zombie mom without a future (a little dramatic?  NOT!)

After just two treatments my creative potential is back; I'm gaining perspective on where I've been and I feel good about moving forward.  In fact during the first treatment I began to feel lighter and more joyful.

Say it with me  "All Hail Chiropractors".