Gratitude lives within silence
Gratitude is a common concept we strive to achieve on a daily basis, and if your not chances are your chasing something else and can lose sight of where you are. Sometimes even who you are.
Why do we need to be greatful?
Simple,it allows you to let go of past failures and lets you revel in your success. You can re-evaluate your perspective on yourself and give yourself the gift of patience, self love and build up our love that we so often give away.
It doesnt even need to be huge success, litterally surviving another day is a reason to be greatful for some. Completing a trivial task is success. Its all one step further than where you were before.
We sometimes feel that if we are not achieving huge things every day , then we are not successful. Living within that state of mind encourages failure.
Our expectations of what success is needs to be altered to suit our capabilities at that exact instance in life. Now it`s not to say that we are not all capapble of massive achievements, or not to strive to be something bigger and better than what we are, but to basically cut yourself a break.
If we constantly live at a high level of success every single day and only huge achievements will do, then you will burnout and reach a point of consistantly feeling like a failure.
Perfection is an impossible concept. If you are perfect every second of every damn day then when you faulter you immediately are on a downer and if you survive at being perfect for a length of time, then where do your expectations of your self and other sit.
No choice? and yet sometimes there is.
Now I know this idea is not always completly achieveable, sometimes medically its hard to step away from perfectionism. This I dont know enough about to delve deep into to help with. Appologies.
For those of us who naturally put that unnecesary pressure on ourselves then here you have an oppertunity.
Strive for big things and greatness on a larger scale (long term) and have smaller expectations for each day. Choose one thing a day that you want to achieve, infact even have a small list with the intention of completing one thing from your list.
If you pass your day and get nothing ticked off, then allow yourself to find the things you did achieve. For example: getting out of bed, putting a smile on your childs face, preparing a meal that you enjoyed, feeling relaxed for 5 minutes of your day.
For example:
My big goal is to save enough money to buy my own house outright (I know, its a biggy and I have faith in myself) Timeline would ideally be a year, considering i`m starting almost from scratch im optimistic.
My ridiculously long term goal is to be there for my kids and not damage them mentally. This one requires daily tasks and forgiveness.
My daily goals consist of: reaching the kids football games on time, hanging out the washing, watering the plants and having 5 minutes of peace to myself.
All of these goals are achieveable within reason and given decent planning as long as I truly believe I can and am worthy of such things.
I am worthy. You are worthy. We all are, it does require some effort in our parts.
Now this doesnt require perfection and at my best I dont atain close to it, however if my expectations are managed to achieve one thing from my list then im getting there and if I dont then chances are I have something new to add to my list to check off.
Whatever your goals are and what your list contains you also need to have the time to revel in where you are. Not in what you used to be or what you used to be able to do, but where you are.
If you have kids and have a horrid day of where you feel like all you have done is shout, complain and give them in to trouble then its hard to find gratitude when they are grinding on every last nerve. However when they fall asleep, you cant help but love them and feel gratitude that they are there.
In silence you can find gratitude.
If your struggling to see it, imagine the one thing you want to feel greatful for wasnt there or hadnt been done. For example: you washed the dishes before you went to bed, imagine you didnt.
You showered and felt fresh, imagine you didnt.
You got out of bed…imagine you didnt.
and so on. Find gratitude in big things and small. Dont include outside factors, and dont compare yourself to someone else. They have not seen the world through your eyes. They are also worthy to feel greatful for themselves, they dont need yours and you dont need to give it away.
No two journeys are the same and even if they were, the perspective would not be.
Now if this completly went over your head I dont blame you, also dont feel bad. Its late at night and today I am greatful to be alive, hense the rambling.
Also, my list of things I wanted to achieve today, remained untouched, but thats ok, I got to add, smiley faces and family time to my list. I was encouraged to socialise, even when I just wanted to hide in a corner and it was an achievement.
Whatever your achievements or forgiveness were for today, feel proud of yourself, I dont need to feel proud of you, enjoy the self validation and go to sleep.
