On a quick break and that calls for some gratitude! Feel free to list what you’re grateful for today in the comments 🙂 Let’s make the rest of the day a good one!
1- I am grateful for my health. It is a blessing to be able to walk, eat, talk, use the restroom, and complete daily tasks without the need of assistance.
2- I am grateful for my boyfriend/our relationship. I’m blessed to have a life partner who is hard-working, respectful, caring, and overall an incredible person to be around. I feel so safe and loved, and I’m happy we have great communication skills and have continued to grow together throughout the years.
3- I am grateful for our home. I am blessed to have a roof over my head and have everything I could ever need within the walls. Clean running water, heat/AC, appliances, a bed… truly we are so lucky to have all of these things and they’re easy to take for granted.
4- I am grateful for my job. I am lucky to have a job that allows me to pay my bills and live life as I’d like. I am happy to have insurance and PTO, and I am also so grateful to not work weekends!
5- I am grateful for books and podcasts! It’s so amazing to me when people can take their ideas and thoughts and organize them in such a way that leaves an incredible impact. I love when I read something or hear something that just blows my mind and changes my whole perspective on things. Also the fact that people write/podcast to help others is truly beautiful!
I have to get back to work, but I just wanted to take a few minutes to check in and remind myself how great life is! Hope everyone has a great day!
As the year slowly comes to a close, I am looking forward to continue my healing into 2023. I have learned so much about myself over this year, and I am honestly very proud of my growth. I think back to when my mother had her stroke in February, and how instead of sitting and worrying about if or when she would have another one, I instead turned to gratitude. I was grateful that she is still here, and she can function normally and on her own; she is truly blessed, and I feel the same way. If this were to have happened a few years ago, I would have spiraled for probably months, just riddled with anxiety. I am proud of the fact that I find it easier to turn to gratitude during tough times.
I also am grateful that I am getting better at communicating when I am bothered by something. A few months ago, I was able to have a conversation with a close friend about something that I felt like could have been confrontational or maybe even hurtful. Although I was anxious about it, I was able to clearly communicate my intentions and thoughts, and because she is a good friend, I felt heard and understood during that conversation! I am proud that instead of just being quiet about it and building up resentment, I decided to speak up for myself and discuss my feelings. As someone who has avoided conflict and kept quiet her whole life, that one single act felt like it broke a huge barrier for me, and for that I am proud of myself.
Throughout the year I’ve struggled with judgment; truly it’s been me judging myself for judging others, and then realizing that those judgments I had towards others were actually the judgments I had towards myself. I had read about that in a book, and I’ve also heard it on podcasts before, but it really clicked this year. Although there have been a lot of hard truths to swallow, it has also been calming in a way to release that urge to control or “rescue” others. In reality, I only have the power to control or “rescue” myself, and that is what I will continue to focus on.
I am so grateful to have access to therapy and to have found such amazing podcasts that I enjoy listening to. I also am happy that I started reading more books again this year, and I plan to read even more in 2023. I plan to dedicate time to myself each day, even if only for one minute on some days, because I deserve that love and attention from myself. I plan to be authentic and honest and speak up for myself whenever needed, and I plan to be unapologetic about setting healthy boundaries. I am planning to be less busy and live calmer and slower; after living with a dysregulated nervous system for most of my life, I want to do my absolute best to try to regulate it.
2023: More connecting with nature, less connecting with technology. More reading books, less scrolling through Instagram. More time doing what I love, less wasting time doing things that don’t align with me. More pausing and slowing down, less rushing and stressing. More focusing on my values and goals, less judging and doubting myself. I am doing only what I feel is best for me, and I won’t feel guilty about it.
I am grateful for another year of growing and learning about myself. I am so blessed to have a loving, supportive life partner who lifts me up, and who makes me feel seen and understood. I am grateful for the genuine friends who cheer for me while I cheer for them. I am thankful for my family, whether near or far they always make me feel loved. There are so many people in my life who truly mean so much to me, and I am forever grateful for everyone.
When it comes to me and my current goals, I am focusing on growing and striving for happiness in my everyday life. As I’ve said before, practicing gratitude has been very helpful in keeping a more positive perspective and attitude. I am working hard to practice the art of letting go and realizing when I am worrying about things beyond my control. I am also focusing on trusting myself and my intuition, and not feeling guilty for setting boundaries or speaking my mind.
Everyone else in the world has no problem speaking their opinions, so why do I silence mine? Especially when I feel that those with good intentions and empathy should be speaking out more. In his podcasts, Jay Shetty often mentions a quote by Martin Luther King Jr: “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those wholove war.” I am taking this time for me to get organized in my own thoughts for my own inner peace, because I deserve to be at my best, just as my loved ones around me deserve me at my best.
As I sit at my kitchen table with my chamomile tea, and I listen to Taylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” for the first time, I am feeling both nostalgic, yet very present in this moment. I can think back listening to her album “Speak Now” and how I felt when listening to certain songs. The crush when listening to “Enchanted,” the new crush fantasizing about acting out her song “Speak now,” but now looking at my life in this present moment and it being better than I could have dreamt.
I live with the love of my life in the beautiful townhome that we bought together, we both have jobs that allow us to pay our bills, save, and still enjoy our lives. I have been able to get the help I needed for my mental health, and I am enjoying the healing journey every day. Although I still have rough days (I did just recently), I am much more confident, and I see myself so differently than I did before. It honestly breaks my heart to look back and think about how much I hated myself and my brain. I would constantly fight back against the anxiety and take out my frustrations on the one I loved the most. I had so much anxiety around money and my control issues were overtaking me, and instead of letting that be my life, I recognized that I didn’t have to feel like that for the rest of my life.
I feel so blessed that I have the ability to afford going to therapy, and I am also glad I was able to try different medications that helped to calm down my brain enough to allow me to do the work. Now don’t get me wrong, I am still doing the work every single day. We are human beings with emotions and outside events that can impact our personal worlds, and it is completely normal to have bad days; what I find important is that we try to remember how we strong we truly are in those moments. We have gotten to this very moment, which means all of those times where we thought our world was ending, or we were never going to get through that rough time, we were wrong- we can truly make it through everything.
I still have times where I struggle with stressing over to-do lists, and I still get overwhelmed when I have more than one event/large task in a day. I still have to work on communicating my thoughts and accepting the fact that not everything I say will always be received well by everybody. I still have to constantly check-in with myself and see if I am in alignment with what I want to be, and if I am honest, I still do things that I know I don’t want to be doing! I still eat unhealthy food, and I don’t have a consistent writing or workout schedule, but I am still getting up every day and working toward a healthier future for myself, and I know that I will develop these habits with time. I am just proud that I have been able to learn how to give myself grace along the way, and I am slowly getting better at not beating myself up. I catch myself in negative self-talk, and I remind myself that I am human.
I am blessed to have a life partner who has been so patient and supportive along the way. I have a love I have always dreamed of, and I am so happy that our future children will grow up in a home where they can see true love and respect. Considering the home environment I grew up in, I feel even more lucky to have the relationship I have today. We have mutual respect for one another, we support one another’s goals and always try to see where the other person is coming from. I love how well we communicate, and how our love has only grown stronger over the last eleven years. We make sure that we are growing together and still focused on our future together, because we both want this forever.
I am grateful to have good friends in my life who are supportive and always cheering me on. I am very lucky to have a few close friends who I know will always listen to me and not judge me. I also am grateful for the fact that they all understand that I won’t always want to hang out, but that it is nothing personal, I just love my alone time and often feel like I need it. I feel like I have many good people in my life and I do my best to make sure they know I love them. Life is short, and it is important to tell the people you love that you love them.
Overall, I am thankful for the life that I have today at 27. I feel like I am finally living my life for myself, and not for those around me. I feel like I have broken away from my people-pleasing habit, although I know I still have to work on speaking my mind even if it may cause a disagreement, but I am accepting of the fact that my healing is life-long, and that I get to choose how I view my life. I can choose to see all of the negative and go back to self-destructive patterns, or I can continue to focus on my goals and give myself grace along the way to them. I am proud of the woman I am today, and I am happy to be here writing this tonight as I enjoy this new Taylor Swift album. I appreciate all who read this far, and I hope you too are giving yourself grace in your journey of life.
I’d like to take this time to just write about a few things that I am grateful for in my life. I think that it’s important that we take time out to focus on what is going well in our lives. If we are constantly waiting for the next thing or thinking we won’t be happy until certain goals are reached, then we are delaying our own happiness. I prefer to be happy, and practicing gratitude helps me with this. If you can, take some time to write down at least three things you’re grateful for right now!
I’ll start:
• I am so very grateful for the relationship that I have with my boyfriend. I am blessed to be with a man who is respectful, intelligent, hard-working, and who makes me feel safe and loved. I have seen many unhealthy relationships in my life, and I feel so lucky to have such a happy, healthy relationship with him. We always make sure to appreciate one another and we have learned how to communicate well with one another over the past 11 years, and for that I am grateful.
• I am thankful for books/podcasts. I recently got into podcasts this year, and also started reading more books about self-care and healing. I honestly have learned so much from these brilliant authors/podcasters and in a way I almost feel like they have helped me more than therapy has. I think just because I don’t get to see my therapy as often as I’d like, but during times when I feel like I need her, I can throw on Jay Shetty or Dr. Nicole LePara (aka The Holistic Psychologist) and feel like they’re talking right to me! Unfortunately, not many people have access to therapy, but most people have access to books and podcasts, and for that I am grateful.
• I am thankful for the act of writing/journaling. I always enjoyed writing as a kid, and after a recent zoom interview with some members of the writing community I am in, I think I realized why. The founder of the community said there are studies showing how writing/journaling can be as beneficial as therapy! I can honestly say when I take time to write, I always feel better afterwards. As a child, it was my way to release and escape from the chaos inside my house and myself, and now I am planning on writing a book. I love writing in my blog, as well as writing poetry, and I would love to write a self-love book one day. I am grateful for right to write and for the skills I have and will continue to develop.
It’s a new week and I didn’t snooze my alarm this morning, even though I really wanted to. I was super and ready to sleep for another 25 minutes and just skip any journaling or stretching, but then I remembered that last night I was so excited to be starting my week off right, and I didn’t want to take that away from myself.
I am going to do a little yoga after this post, and I wanted to take time on here to express some gratitude this morning. Feel free to comment what you are grateful for today, or even post your own blog about it and share it with everyone!
I am grateful for my boyfriend and our relationship. I am blessed to have a healthy relationship where we can easily communicate our differences and we always make each other feel loved and respected.
I am blessed to have a home that we love and has everything we could ever need. We have clean water, heat/AC, working appliances, and we are blessed enough to be able to afford our home and utilities.
I am lucky to have a job that I don’t hate, and that allows me to pay my bills, have insurance and still be able to live a life I want. I’m off on weekends and I enjoy my schedule during the week!
I am grateful for my friends. I feel blessed to have so many different, yet close, friendships. My friends are all very different, yet all very supportive and loving in their own ways, and I am lucky to have so many good people by my side.
I am thankful for my physical and mental health. I’m blessed that I can walk, talk, eat and use the bathroom without any need for assistance, and I’m lucky that my recent physical and labs went well! I am also so grateful for access to therapy as well as books and podcasts that are helping me improve my mental health.
There are so many other things I am grateful for, but those are just to name a few. For now, I am going stretch and get ready for the rest of my day! I hope everyone has a great Monday and great week ahead!
Every day I feel so blessed with the life that I have. I have a happy, healthy relationship with the love of my life, we have our beautiful home together with our cats, and we both have jobs that we don’t hate that allow us to live the lives we do. If you asked me ten years ago what I wanted in life, I would have said “To still be living happily with my boyfriend and be financially stable;” seventeen-year-old me would be so proud!
As I grow older I am learning more and more about myself. I am working on prioritizing what makes me happy and focusing on what I want and need in my life. I am blessed to have genuine friendships and still have good relationships with family members, and I am also lucky to be developing this healthier relationship with myself. I have definitely come a long way from where I used to be, but sometimes I feel like I struggle with trusting myself and my intuition.
In my house growing up, there were many times where I felt as if I was being accused of things that I had never done, and I also was often told that I had no voice because I was the child. I had a lot of rage and confusion building inside me throughout my younger years, but I also feel like in a way I did always have some sense of clarity: I knew what I didn’t want in my future relationships, and I knew that I would raise my children differently.
I know my parents did the best they could with what they knew, but at the time I didn’t think of it that way. I just knew that I didn’t want to be like them. In a way, I guess maybe I have been able to trust myself and intuition, but I often cloud my own judgment with overthinking and anxiety. When I think about why I am that way, I assume it would be because I grew up in a chaotic, unpredictable environment, therefore I try to prepare for all worst-case scenarios (which actually just makes my anxiety worse)! In reality, what I need to do is let go of what I cannot control.
I have seen my improvement throughout the years, and I am so proud of how far I’ve come. I find it easier to recognize when I’m worried about something beyond my control, and I remind myself of what I can control… my mindset! Worrying never helps the situation, it truly only worsens it, so why would I continue to do that? Instead I can recognize it and remind myself that everything happens for a reason, and I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
It’s easy to go into the horrific “what-ifs” about failure and chaos, but how about we switch that and ask “what if it all works out?” Instead of limiting ourselves with the belief that everything will be scary and horrible, what if we think about how we can learn and grow from any difficult situation? I know that there are so many things beyond my control, so what if I decided to just let it all go? I was so tired of stressing over everything in my life and feeling like the weight of the world was on top of me, so I decided to put it down!
I’m not going to lie, I still have rough days (I mean, I am human), but I find it easier to let go of my anxiety. I will be working on that re-wiring in my brain forever, and in addition to that I am currently working on listening to my gut instincts and learning to trust myself fully. I think my first big step in this journey was starting to say “no” to things that I didn’t want to do. I try to make it a habit to give myself time before I commit to any events, such as saying “Let me get back to you,” rather than blurting out “yes” as the seasoned people-pleaser I was. I’d say “yes” in an attempt to make others happy/not disappoint others, but sometimes it was at my own expense.
After realizing that the stress from those situations was hurting my physical health, I decided that my time is my time, and I knew I had to set that boundary. I want to spend my life doing the things that I love and that I feel aligned with. Your life isn’t truly yours if you are living it for everyone else. I think it’s important to check in with ourselves and reflect on what it is we truly need in life to be happy. I don’t think there are many (if any) people who would say they didn’t want to live a happy life, and I truly believe we all deserve happiness!
-I am grateful for the relationship I have with my boyfriend. I feel so blessed having such a loving, respectful, intelligent man as my life partner. To think that we met in high school and have managed to grow into the people we are now is absolutely incredible and more than I could have ever asked for; he makes me feel like the luckiest woman in the world. ♡
-I am grateful for my health. Although we are both under the weather currently, I am thankful that we are young and healthy and we will recover from our illnesses quickly. I’m grateful that we are able to take time for our bodies to rest so we can feel 100% soon! ♡
-I am grateful for our home. We are so lucky to have a home that has so much space for the two of us and that truly feels like ours. My home is my favorite place to be, and we have everything we could ever need. It’s truly a blessing to have a home and be able to afford our home. ♡
-I am grateful for technology; even though we are sick we can still order delivery from the tap of a finger. Whether it’s food or groceries, we’re able to get what we need without coming into contact with anyone else. As we rest we’re also able to watch Hulu, Netflix, Youtube… all things possible with technology! ♡
-I am grateful for books and podcasts. It’s truly amazing that we have a plethora of information always available to us. Listening to/reading from mental health advocates like Jay Shetty and Gabrielle Bernstein has really opened my eyes to new perspectives and has helped me with gaining a more positive mindset. I am forever grateful for both of them, as well as the many other authors I will come across. ♡
There are so many other reasons to be grateful, I just wanted to jot down a few this morning. I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!
finding light in the dark 