Tonight I want to express gratitude to a man who made me laugh. To a man who danced with me to Woo Hoo (from the soundtrack of Kill Bill) and played along and allowed me to be freely silly around him. To the man who fell in love with my cooking. I say thank you for the love of salsa dancing that got us together, through common friends.
I thank him for not rocking with me (to ease my back pain) as we hug standing at the beach in Cuba under the moonlight, and as I wept silently right under his nose feeling invisible. I’m grateful for how he stopped the dance and the music after we got married. I thank him for not supporting me with my dreams and passions once I discovered them. And I can’t thank him enough for making it tough for me and so difficult that the pain of staying was incredibly worse than the pain of walking out…until that point when I did walk out. And it was the hardest darn thing I have ever done. I am stronger for it now.
How can I not express gratitude to him?!
It was a day in June last year when I got a text message from the local traffic authority saying that I’d committed a traffic offense. The funny part is that I woke up that morning and realizing the date, was thinking about an offense I have actually committed that day. Oh, how insignificant the traffic offense is in comparison. The one I was thinking of was an offense against myself. In June, 7 years ago, I got married.
The fine was hefty, I paid it with years of my life. Years that I can never have back or undo or reverse. The beautiful part though is that I wouldn’t want to undo any of it. It happened for a reason. It happened so I would learn a lesson from that short-lived marriage, many lessons actually. It happened so I can grow. So I owe gratitude to him and to the marriage.
People often ask me the typical question, ‘do you regret it?’ and my answer is always the same. No. How else would I have gotten on the path I’m on now if I did not get into that relationship with its rocky path that was all designed to lead me to my current path?
Nothing is to be labeled a failure unless no lesson was learned. If you don’t learn from your past experiences, how can you move forward? How can you improve? How can you know to take a different path the second time around?
My coach at the time, sensing my hesitation told me something I’ll never forget because I knew in my heart that she was right, but I didn’t act on it. She said that I’ll never regret taking my time to decide and really make sure before I jump in. She said people regret rushing into marriage more than they’d regret taking it slow. That was the offense I committed. That I wasn’t true to myself and that I didn’t really listen to my heart and honor my gut feeling. The lesson learned: To trust my heart and Be Me!
So this June, I’m going out to the same restaurant where we went 7 years ago to celebrate getting married. This time I’m going to celebrate how far I’ve come on this journey called Life. To celebrate Being Me! What a difference 7 years can make!
It’s a great life. I am ever so grateful.
When the ego is set aside for a moment, you will have a chance to experience greater compassion and understanding for the people around you. You will also have gratitude show up for all sorts of things big and small in your life. Ego gets in the way, always.
Gratitude is the best gift you can give yourself. It changes your whole energy vibration and people around you start to feel it. Being thankful and grateful for every little thing sets the mood for your day, every day. What you focus on expands, so the more grateful you become, the more you have to be grateful for.
Whatever you may be going through, frustration, anger, money issues, family problems, just remember that you will be doing just that… going through it. No matter what, take a moment to say ‘Thank You to God, the universe, or whatever higher power you believe in.
Thank you, thank you, thank you…I can’t say it enough. I’m grateful for everything I’ve been served. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It is all working for me now, not against me.
I’m the person I am today because of the whole shebang of the full-on life that I’ve lived. For that I am grateful. I wouldn’t change a thing. I know what I’d want more of and what I’d want less of for my future. But for now, I’m just thankful and full of gratitude. I have nothing to complain about.
You may or may not have heard about the gratitude journal. Have you tried it though? If not, I invite you to a 21-day challenge. Every day, list 3 things you are grateful for. What that does, is get your brain working to search for the positive in your life and train it to see more and more positivity.
By the end of 21 days, you won’t need to list things anymore, because you will feel like gratitude is now a part of your life, a habit. I often ask my coaching clients to take this challenge and within a week, report back to base with how different they feel about their day. There’s so much that is good around us. Let’s work on seeing more of it. Try it and let me know how did it go.