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Gratitude is a Super Power!

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I am grateful to be looking at gratitude yet again this blog!
Gratitude is an awesome superpower. I read recently that one of the most powerful statements you can make, feel or think is ‘thank you’. Thank you to others and yourself too.
 
It is so helpful to remember to be thankful to all those people in our lives who have been motherly, kind and caring toward us, including of course our own maternal mothers, to whom we owe so much, including our lives. Remembering to be thankful to friends, family and strangers too for the kindness they show us in all sorts of ways is powerful to promote our happiness and peace of mind. We'll talk more about gratitude for mothering kindness next blog, as it will be Mother's Day weekend. I'll be on board travelling from Canberra to Sydney!
 
It is also great to be thankful to others who give us the opportunity to be kind to them. This includes, friends, family, pets, strangers and of course our children or anyone we care for.

It's great to remember to tune into our wise selves to be kind and thankful to ourselves too. Seeing ourselves be a positive force in the world, being kind and grateful creates a happy perception. We can reinforce this goodness by being thankful to ourselves. We can be grateful to ourselves for doing our best to be a kind, positive force in the world. Remembering also to forgive ourselves and others for all those so called ‘mistakes’, more helpfully known as learning opportunities. 
 
The opportunities to extend kindness do not always come in the ways we expect and sometimes these kind acts are received without thanks. I find it helpful to thank myself, especially during those times like when I have spent a lot of time and effort doing something like making a family meal which is received with 'I don't like this!' Resting in my intention to have prepared a healthy meal and thanking myself helps to prevent resentment. A space I  have known very well. 

Sometimes extending kindness, especially as parents, can be in the form of a strong boundary like ‘please, don’t speak to me like that’, or ‘no, you can’t do that’. Such Kindness always has the intention to protect others from harm.

I can remember the need for such a strong kind boundary many years ago when I needed to enforce the ‘no sleeping with phone rule’ with my then thirteen-year-old. As I was saying goodnight to them, I discovered the phone under their bedclothes. I removed the phone and there was much subsequent protesting.  I needed to check in with my wise self to remember that my intention was to prevent harm and for them to get a good night’s sleep. I was then able to thank myself for being courageously kind, as the protests continued.  
 
More about gratitude and its awesome benefits next blog.
With love, appreciation and very best well wishes to us all 


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Up with Positivity ad Gratitude

4/4/2019

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We all know the power of gratitude and positivity on our state of mind and over the years I have written many blogs about these amazing tools. I am always grateful of a reminder to practice both gratitude and positivity, as I can slip into unhelpful habits! The timely reminder came from my friend Shadi, during the course I am taking with her. What I love about this reminder is it simple and practical with a powerful truth and meaning.

As I understand it, and believe is true - Gratitude leads to Optimism which leads to better choices with leads to better results (good things happen) which takes us back around to gratitude. An upward spiral! And the converse is true too - Being ungrateful leads us to be pessimism, which leads to bad choices which lead to bad results which brings us back around to pessimism. A downward spiral!

This for me draws that link between gratitude and optimism and how they work together so beautifully. It is not always easy to be grateful especially when things go wrong. If we can be grateful even when mishaps happen, by seeing them as opportunities to learn or grow then we can remain on that upward spiral and prevent unwise choices. 

I was going to present you wiht my diagrammatic representation of this timely reminder, but had a much better idea. I asked Sue to paint it for me and as you can see a picture tells a thousand words. I love the grateful optimistic surfer riding the ups and downs - I hope you can see the joyful face that Sue has captured in her amazing way.

There was for me, another beautiful reminder in the story of Sue's paintings. I noticed she had misspelled pessimism as pessimisom (I am gratitude for spell check on the computer, as I can't imagine what interesting words these blogs would have in them). Sue's response was initially to say she would re-do it. Then with a laugh she popped a 'oops' on the words. This was a lovely illustration of turning a 'so called problem' into an opportunity for gratitude and optimism.  How easy it is to give ourselves a hard time over a mistake. When we do this we miss an opportunity to learn and be authentic, grateful and optimistic! So, up with optimism and authenticity and o course up with gratitude too. I am back onto keeping my gratitude journal, maybe you would like to join me! 

Whilst preparing for my trip to Sri Lanka I found lots of amazing things hidden in the back of my website! I found there a course I had developed on what I like to think of as the 3 Foundational Practices (Gratitude, Meditation or Contemplation and Kindness) and another one on Kindness to Self. I am enthused to get these up and running over the next little while and will keep you posted. 

I feel like I am taking you all with me to Sri Lanka and am looking forward to sharing a fun adventure with you all.  
If you'd like to connect further, please get in touch to ...
Find out more about us and pom-melbourne  ​
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