Are you satisfied with what you have?

I have been filled with gratitude this week. I am so fortunate to have the best friends and family who love and support me AND I get to do work that I love. It fills me up so much. I'm not gonna lie, it has been a long road to get here. Sometimes it feels like I've lived several completely different lives in this one lifetime. I look back at the Kathy from 20 years ago and barely recognize her. But it has taken all the twists and turns to get me where I am today.

I know this isn't the case for everyone and I certainly don't take it for granted. While parts of my life have not been easy, the one thing that has remained a constant in my life is gratitude. As a kid, my dad talked to me about how I could choose to look at the glass as half full or half empty. While I may not have fully understood the lesson he was teaching me at the time, I realized later that what he was saying is I always have a choice about how I look at my life. I can focus on the good things surrounding me or choose to spend my time ruminating on the negative.

Gratitude is not something we are necessarily born with, although some people may be more prone to it than others. It's a practice. And like any practice, the more you do it the more proficient you become. The coolest thing about gratitude is that once you start practicing it you can find more and more things to be grateful for.

Aesop says, "Gratitude turns what we have into enough."

When you start practicing gratitude, you can look at what you have and feel content with your life. You don't feel like you need x, y, or z to feel satisfied, you can feel satisfied with what is right in front of you. You can find gratitude in the smallest of things. And simply because you do this practice you will be so much happier. It changes the way you see the world.

People can often confuse gratitude with toxic positivity. They say that you are trying to dismiss your negative emotions and cover them up with something positive. While this is a problem, practicing gratitude doesn't mean you have to fake what you are feeling or try to cover it up and act like you are happy. You can be upset about life, feel all your feelings, AND be grateful for what you have at the same time.

I have been completely down in the dumps about various things in life and have fully felt those feelings but I could still see other things that I was grateful for. It often helps me find presence and clarity in moments when I tend to get lost in my emotions. Being able to find gratitude in those moments has actually helped me to see even more things to be grateful for. Gratitude is contagious.

If you don't currently have a gratitude practice there is no reason you can't start right now. If it's not a practice you are familiar with it can seem challenging to start. Begin with small things. It can start with things like your watch working or your morning coffee. Pick three things and write them down on a piece of paper. Each day add three more and try not to repeat the same ones. If you are having trouble getting started, here are a few more examples; a bed to sleep in, the clothes on your back, your pet, the roof over your head, or a person in your life who is kind to you. These are just a few ideas. Once you start writing you may surprise yourself with how many things you come up with.

I'd love to hear some of the examples you came up with. If you feel like it, just leave a comment below with whatever came to you today. As always, if you feel stuck or need any help I am literally an email away.