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Blessings and Lessons
What if every single thing you experienced today was either a blessing or a lesson? Counteracting the Complaints We’ve talked a lot about complaints and how easy it is to complain and spot things that are less than ideal. This week has been such a reminder about my own tendencies to complain. I have been…
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Don’t Be a Gratitude Pusher
Gratitude is something you feel. Not something you tell others to feel. Feel It or Don't. It's up to You Alone. Today I saw this quote from Paul Ryan: This is one of those moments where we just need to step back and count our blessings. We need to think less about taking sides and…
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Heart of Gratitude in Service
How can I be of service to you? How can you be of service to others? Being of Service in a Transactional World This Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr Day and more specifically it was the Martin Luther King, Jr Day of Service. But what if we use our gratitude practice to inspire us…
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Was He Really Grateful for Doo Doo Head?
The boy scrawled those words on the gratitude board “doo doo head”. His family jumped to criticize but no one asked him what he meant. We Are So Damn Quick To Judge Others Yesterday I had the giant gratitude board at a community event celebrating love. It was beautiful with hundreds of people sharing…
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A Practice to Bring You Closer Together
Is There Someone You’d Like to Connect With? You know I’m always talking about how important noticing is as a first step to being grateful. That can be true for nature, our work or home, and also for the people we care about. Is there someone you would like to have a deeper connection…
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Seeing the World with Curious Eyes
A Deep Open-Minded Noticing Right now I am sitting in a hospital room with my girlfriend. She has an undiagnosed terribly painful condition which is a cycle of nausea and extreme pain that comes in waves of abdominal spasms. She yells out in pain her face pale and red, her eyes pleading for…
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She said, “The things that are happening to me are a function of my view of them.”
Freedom in Uncertainty I am preparing for the Dealing with Negativity webinar this Thursday and came across the work of Ellen Langer, Ph.D. She is a Harvard professor who has been studying mindfulness for forty years. She is quick to point out that she is not talking about mindfulness mediation and in fact instead of using…
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This Story Has Taught Me for Nine Years
Thank It and Release It Nine years ago I learned something profound about acceptance, gratitude and letting go that has never ceased to teach me. A Curandera was doing a limpia, an energetic cleansing that helps facilitate release, on a woman who was determined to let go of something that was negatively affecting her life.…
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Will you be jinxed if you do this?
Release the Jinx Some people say that they don’t want to say how good things are going for them out of fear of jinxing it. This superstition directly stands in the way of practicing gratitude because that’s what this practice is, drawing attention to the good things we are experiencing. Feeling fearful that good things…
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One Fact Took Me from Appalled and Judgmental to Humbled
When you see a person, see the good I once worked at a middle school and was part of a team of people from vastly different backgrounds. There were middle school administrators and teachers, University directors and staff, college students who led after school activities, medical providers and me as the health educator. This was…
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Giving with a Grateful Heart
Teaching Ourselves to Give with Gratitude We are taught to always say thank you when we receive a gift, a generous gesture or anything else. But very few of us are taught to say thank you for the opportunity to give. This realization came to me when I read the online rant of someone I…
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Today We Practice Self-Love
Love Love and more Love We are on our fourth of six weeks of focusing on our inner selves to be the change we wish to see in the world. This week is all about self-love. So here we are at self-love though it seems this should have been the place to start. Can…
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Today We Practice Self-Compassion
You Are Your Own Best Friend We are on our third of six weeks of focusing on our inner selves to be the change we wish to see in the world. This week is all about self-compassion. Last week we talked about accepting and respecting ourselves no matter what. But we can take that one…