When Gratitude Is Dangerous

Thanking people for these behaviors reinforce the perfectionism patterns that put people on the fast track to burnout. Shifting what we express gratitude for is crucial to break the cycle.

Gratitude becomes stagnant 

For years so many of us have been told that gratitude is a beneficial practice for our emotional, mental, spiritual and even physical well-being. And in my own experience, and research, gratitude has been the bridge from anxiety, grief, chronic stress to a more regular peaceful, joy-filled and meaningful, purposeful day to day life. But after a while of writing our gratitude down in our journals, making a mental note of what we are grateful for, it becomes stagnant. The beginner’s practice plateaus and the impact of the gratitude we feel is stunted. So I started asking “what if we activated our gratitude beyond the pages of our notebooks or our running mental list and passed it onto the thousands of people over our lifetime who have contributed in...

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Gratitude sounds like...

Gratitude sounds like: I love you, I appreciate you, I see you, I hear you, I feel you, I celebrate you, I recognize you, etc. Gratitude is bigger than Thank You.

How it started

A few years ago I found myself bed-bound, lost both of my businesses and my husband was working multiple jobs while also taking care of me and our two elementary age children. It was a dark rock bottom as I was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and told I’d be lucky if I didn’t get worse. I was in bed 20-22 hours a day, couldn’t tolerate light or sound most days and it was devastating to reflect back on my life at 37 and realize I might be done truly living.  While In bed, in between sessions of researching how I could heal myself, I discovered that the reason my body was struggling so much was because I had spent the majority of my adult life following the rules, trying to meet expectations and fulfilling obligations I had learned from the world around me. Responding and...

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Vulnerability

 

Vulnerability - This word is definitely a trigger for anyone operating from perfectionism patterns. It’s the thing we avoid because by simply leaning into it, we are unsafe, available for criticism and others will see that we have flaws, challenges, emotions and tender spots in our human experience.

Vulnerable: open to moral attack, criticism 

So many perfectionists struggle to express gratitude in many of their relationships. So many of us have relationship structures that are based on codependency, narcissism or extreme independence. None of these models are going to invite someone to feel grateful and express gratitude easily, effortlessly and frequently. It can feel like knowingly walking into a fiery building every time. Do you remember the last time you received a compliment from a stranger? Someone told you that you had a nice smile, they liked your jacket, your work was well done? What did it trigger in you? Did you feel shy or nervous or...

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Autonomy

All Relationships have expectations and rules - mostly unspoken and even more often we don’t realize we have them. These rules aren’t malicious - we have habits and patterns in relationships because as humans it makes sense that over time, there are predictable behaviors from one another.

Surrendering your autonomy

Loyalty to someone other than yourself is breeding ground for inauthenticity and for surrendering your autonomy. Loyalty from others as a core value says that no matter what you need, being their support, on their side, in their lane is the priority. This means ignoring your own inner voice, your independent and individual needs. Autonomy is, by definition, the the quality or state of being self-governing especially. It is the ability to make your own decisions about your own person. It’s the freedom to decide what happens to you, with you and around you physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Autonomy is the antithesis of codependency...

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Stop Hoarding Your Gratitude

Let’s continue the journey to release and unleash the gratitude hoarded in our hearts and our journals to amplify and affirm the impact people have on each other’s lives. Taking a closer look at what stops us from sharing it, we are going to look at the rules we have in how we share gratitude. 

 After receiving a dismal prognosis on Nov 11, 2017

I started asking different questions. This curiosity started a few years prior when I first became symptomatic. Having surrendered, finally, to my body’s begging to rest, I found myself seeking answers for all aspects of life. I had been teaching and preaching gratitude within our team and my community well before I started the journey to writing a book about gratitude. But as I was lying in bed, cataloguing all the ways my life was positively impacted by the people in my journey, I realized how few knew it. And by my count, I had done a pretty good job reflecting back and sending messages of gratitude to the...

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Gratitude Beyond Journaling

What would happen if we stopped hoarding our gratitude in our private journals? What stops us from activating our gratitude? This is a life changing conversation.

This experience

On July 16, 2009 my son’s father, my former husband, died unexpectedly in a
motorcycle accident. This experience, this loss, highlighted for me the many reasons to
express gratitude with urgency and with a whole heart. Despite the intense grief, fear,
sadness and many other emotions we experience when someone’s life story ends without our permission, I was incredibly grateful that I had continuously shared my gratitude with him for his presence in my life. Many of us know someone, if not you yourself, who has deep regret for not acting on the gratitude in their hearts.

The pain of a lost opportunity to express love and appreciation has completely altered the path of many people’s lives. I will venture to guess that you could easily name a dozen people that if they died tomorrow, you would...

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