Reposted from July 28, 2011: In retrospect I clearly see a much different past view of myself than the one visible to me today. Now when glancing in my mental “rear-view mirror” my old behavior is much easier to explain and understand. Back then were the days when my feelings were frequently about not measuring up. No matter what I accomplished it was rarely good enough. Achievement usually felt flawed. I frequently nitpicked what was good until there were defects in them I created.
In the past I spent so much time wanting to be loved and hoping love would find me. My yearning was engulfing. I did not see the special love I sought even when it was before me. I searched past it for something else. I felt empty and lost. The reason that love I so desperately sought eluded me was because I wanted someone to fill me up with love, which is not how life works. What I needed had to happen from the “inside out”.
Those were the days when being alone for more than a few days made me crazy. I was like some battery that needed to be recharged, but could not charge itself. The shortage was because I did not love myself. The energy… the feeling… the charge… I wanted so much-needed to come from within myself. But I did not know how.
Today I know that loving my self is mainly about self-respect. It’s the only dependable way I have control over creating love for myself. In the past when expecting love from an external source, and what I got did not fill my void I felt even worse. No one could love me until I loved myself. I am able to receive no more love than the amount of love I have for me.
Attending church in my youth was just something I was made to do. Thought I got little from it. Turns out though, there was a bit retained. Once thing I remember comes from the Bible and the book of Corinthians:
Love is patient,
Love is kind.
It does not envy,
It does not boast,
It is not proud.
It is not rude,
It is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered,
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil
But rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
Always trusts,
Always hopes,
Always perseveres.
Love does not fail.
In secular expression, similar thinking is found in the poem “I Must Love Myself” by J. Earl Evans:
Before I can begin
to love anyone else,
I have to find a way
to first love myself.
Loving myself should be
an easy thing to do.
If I can pat you
on the back, I can do
the same for me too.
I have to learn to love myself
this is true.
Because no one can love me
as much as I do.
I must find a way
to give myself a break,
and be able to love myself
no matter what it takes.
I’m not alone
feeling the way I do.
I hope to one day love myself,
just as much as I love you.
I imagine if I thought for a while I could create a fairly long list of the ingredients I used to fall in love with myself (most days anyway). Highest on the list would be: forgiving my self! Only by letting go of wrongs done, failings and mistakes could the blemishes I placed on myself begin to fade. It took saying “I’m sorry” to a lot of people. Too, I learned in some cases there is no good to come of trying to express regret to those wronged. For some it only makes things worse (a difficult lesson).
As I think of what I am grateful for this morning, what is on the top of my mind is how I feel about myself today. It has been a rough and painful path to get here, but I am grateful to have found the route. I feel the best about myself I ever have. There is a good measure of peace inside me I never knew before. My life has been blessed in many ways, but none more so that learning how to love myself. Many helped me get here. To all those who have and do love me… thank you for kindness and support that kept me on this path of learning to love myself.
The most terrifying thing
is to accept oneself completely.
Carl Gustav Jung
Update: This morning I was blessed to spend a half hour with the sister of the woman I wrote about below two years ago. Dawn’s sister, the little girl she gave birth to (Kellie) and I had a meaningful FaceTime conversation about two hours ago. The sister had somehow found this blog and made contact to set up the call, here the day after Thanksgiving (how very appropriate). Through some misty eyes reliving old times, I got to tell Kellie about her Mother in ways no one ever had. My life is enriched because of this experience beyond my ability to accurately describe it. I won’t ever forget Dawn or the talk with her “baby” today. My, my how Kellie looks like her Mom!
This was originally posted on August 16, 2011: Her name was Dawn. Right out of college she began her first full-time job as a fledgling account rep where I worked. Although she was “green” as grass, two of the senior account executives took her under their wing and brought her along. She had talent, was well liked and was succeeding at her work when I took another job two thousand miles away. While we were friendly, we were never really close so it was no surprise we did not keep in touch after I moved away.
Fast forward ten years. Working one’s way up in my profession required a lot of moving around to advance. After three positions in three different states covering a decade I had advanced to a V.P./G.M. position I’d taken back in the same city where I had met Dawn originally. During the ten years I was away from Ohio she had married and moved away. Out of the blue one day I got a call from her telling me she was moving back to town, was looking for a job and wanted to know if we had anything open. We did and were glad to have her join our staff. My second association with Dawn lasted for around three years.
Never will I forget how joyful Dawn was when she learned she was going to have a child. She and her husband had encountered problems conceiving so Dawn, now in her mid 30’s, was elated to finally be expecting. No happier Mom-to-be have I ever encountered. About half way through the pregnancy she began having some health problems and testing began to find the source.
Clear in my memory is the optimism she maintained that somehow everything would be OK as she explained to me privately she had cancer. She told me her doctors said if she began chemotherapy very soon she had a good chance of recovery but would lose her baby. If she chose to go full term with the baby, treatment after birth might save her, but it was very risky and the odds were against her. I remember vividly her rubbing her several-month pregnant belly as she told me she was going to have her baby, no matter what.
Dawn gave birth to a healthy baby and worked up until a few weeks before delivery. She began chemotherapy treatment soon after. Although she came by the office to show off her baby a few times, she never returned to work. Each time we saw her she looked more ill than the time before. Well before the baby’s first birthday Dawn was gone.
Writing here now about something that happened 20 years ago still chokes me up. Plain and simple, she knew what she was doing and knew her chances were slim. She chose life for her child instead of life for herself. No greater sacrifice do I know of a Mother making. Clearly I recall hearing what a good father Dawn’s husband was to the child and then heard some years later he remarried. That’s all I know of the story except Dawn’s baby would be around 20 years old now. No child was ever more wanted or loved by a Mother.
Some of the greatest stories of courage and sacrifice are lived out quietly by ordinary, every day people. Books are not written about them nor movies made, but I am very thankful to know firsthand this account of Dawn Perry Gustin, one of the bravest people I have ever known.
SACRIFICE
©1996 Allison Chambers Coxsey
The sacrifice of love we give,
Takes less and yet gives more;
An everlasting hand of love,
The heart an open door.
The willingness to give of self,
To lay down your own life;
To touch another person’s heart,
In loving sacrifice.
A chance that God has given you,
To reach another soul;
Forever changed by kindness,
A life your love made whole.
For life is but a circle,
Each life part of the chain;
Each link is joined by sacrifice,
That causes man to change.
To turn and reach a hand of love,
To touch another’s life;
Will cause the circle to be whole,
In loving sacrifice.
It is not now much we do, but how much love we put into the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into the giving. Mother Teresa
much we give, but how much love we put into the giving. Mother Teresa
Post Addition: Near the end of this old post from April 2012, I reference a decades old wisteria vine above my back patio that I spoke to this morning. Silly to some but meaningful to me. We just got our first freeze a couple of nights ago and today the leaves are withered and falling (see inset photo above). Each spring and summer the wisteria vine is beautiful and it flowers radiantly (see large photo). I am proud of ‘her’ and show off ‘her’ beauty eagerly to visitors. This morning I said while looking at the vine, “rest well old girl. You bring me such joy and I am grateful to you for it”. I smiled and felt really good and grateful then. Still do.
Original Post: For the first time since my twenties not long ago I went through a period as a renter instead of a home owner. This was a part of the chaos created by a very difficult divorce which took a long time to work through mentally, emotionally and financially. After over 5 years things settled to where I was able to purchase a house and I happily moved in where I live now just about this time last year.
The period of change, heartache and growth turned out to be the greatest bringer of gratitude so far in my life. If one is paying attention, lack has a tendency to bring appreciation when times of plenty arrive again. And so it is with my new home. There is much determination within not to ever lose this ‘attitude of gratitude’ within me now!
There is a saying by an unknown author that states enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. Being blessed to own my home in the past for over 25 years I had begun to take the ability to be the owner of one for granted. In the lack, the not being able to have one, I learned a whole new way of appreciating. A few weeks short of a year ago, soon after I moved into my new place, I began this blog: goodmorninggratitude.com. In 21 days I will have written here EVERY day for one full year.
What I have discovered is gratitude can be cultivated. With a bit of focus and a little practice results can be brought about that are mind-blowing. Studies have shown growing a sense of gratitude helps one maintain a more positive mood in daily life and contribute to greater emotional well-being. Over and over research has shown cultivating gratitude is one of the simpler routes to a greater sense of emotional well-being, higher overall life satisfaction, and a greater sense of happiness in life. I know for an absolute fact this is true.
Spiritual activist Marianne Williamson said Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
That quote by Ms. Williamson causes me to read it two or three times on every occasion I come across it. Her words are so deeply meaningful on a personal level. At one point I printed them out and hung the page on my fridge where it stayed for two years. There were many “down” days as I worked through the painful divorce, emotional recovery and becoming financially stable again. For a long while so much was moving away from me it took a long time to reverse the direction so what I needed was moving in my direction. My discovery most of all is my state of mind had all to do with what I was attracting and in what quantity.
Henry Ward Beecher described the way of being I had to arrive at before my life began to move forward. He wrote the unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
So here I am years later after being served divorce papers in the airport as I arrived then finding I had been locked out (OK, thrown out) of the home I owned and lived in. I hope never to feel the panic, loss of direction and pain I experienced that day and those that followed. In spite of it all, I will be always grateful for what the agony and strife taught me.
The photo at the top is of a huge wisteria vine that is on a large pergola over my back patio. I learned from a neighbor the plant is almost 40 years old. The main two trunks from the ground are almost five inches around! For many years emotionally and mentally I was inside like the wisteria vine in winter: alive with little to show for it. Today I am more like the photo at the top taken a week ago of the wisteria vine in the full glory of spring-flowering. To look at it is to get a sense of what is blooming inside me. To have come from where I was to be where I am is nothing short of a miracle. I am deeply thankful.
The world has enough beautiful mountains and meadows,
spectacular skies and serene lakes.
It has enough lush forests, flowered fields and sandy beaches.
It has plenty of stars
and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day.
What the world needs more of is people to appreciate and enjoy it.
Michael Josephson
Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that,
and living alone won’t either,
for solitude will also break you with its yearning.
You have to love.
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.
And when it happens that you are broken,
or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near,
let yourself sit by an apple tree
and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
Louise Edrich “The Painted Drum”
Dear Human:
You’ve got it all wrong.
You didn’t come here to master unconditional love.
That is where you came from and where you’ll return.
You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty love.
Crazy love. Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up.
Often.
You didn’t come here to be perfect.
You already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human.
Flawed and fabulous.
And then to rise again into remembering.
But unconditional love?
Stop telling that story.
Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives.
It doesn’t require modifiers.
It doesn’t require the condition of perfection.
It only asks that you show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt
and heal and fall and get back up and play
and work and live and die as YOU.
It’s enough.
It’s Plenty.
found on-line credited to no source in specific
Mondays often begin unevenly and filled with whirling quandaries. Where am I? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? What’s my purpose? Who am I? Why? What is going to happen?
All good questions and it’s in living such questions, and not always expecting answers, that life is best found. Life is its own answer. It’s wonderful. It’s damn difficult. Life can make you fly high. Sometimes it will break you. Inside out and from top to bottom, living is a wonderful thing, even when it’s not easy… even when it’s another Monday. I am grateful to be here.
You’ve gotta dance
like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
William W. Purkey
1. The average human life is relatively short.
We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off-balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is. LIVE your life TODAY.
2. You will only ever live the life you create for yourself.
Your life is yours alone. Others can try to persuade you, but they can’t decide for you. They can walk with you, but not in your shoes. So make sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires, and don’t be scared to switch paths or pave a new one when it makes sense. Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than the top of the one you don’t.
3. Being busy does NOT mean being productive.
Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect. Though we all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to be busy ALL the time. We simply don’t know how to live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should. Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long-term.
4. Some kind of failure always occurs before success.
Most mistakes are unavoidable. Learn to forgive yourself. It’s not a problem to make them. It’s only a problem if you never learn from them. If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful. The solution to this problem is making friends with failure. Behind every great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us.
5. Thinking and doing are two very different things.
Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking about it. You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. Knowledge is basically useless without action. Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals. And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.
6. You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive.
Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies you never got. The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or negative. It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.” It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent free in your head.
7. Some people are simply the wrong match for you.
You will only ever be as great as the people you surround yourself with, so be brave enough to let go of those who keep bringing you down. You shouldn’t force connections with people who constantly make you feel less than amazing. There are so many “right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self. It makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.
8. It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours.
It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of those who don’t value you. Know your worth, even if they don’t. Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you think you are. Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU.
9. What you own is not who YOU are.
Stuff really is just stuff, and it has absolutely no bearing on who you are as a person. Most of us can make do with much less than we think we need. That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a hugely consumer-driven culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and experiences. Too often we’re told that we’re not important, we’re just peripheral to what is.
10. Everything changes, every second.
Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it. What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. However good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. So when life is good, enjoy it. Don’t go looking for something better every second. Happiness never comes to those who don’t appreciate what they have while they have it.
Excerpt from a post on one of my favorite blogs “Marc and Angel Hack Life”
http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/01/29/10-painfully-obvious-truths-everyone-forgets-too-soon/
Life is simple.
It’s just not easy.
Unknown
Circumstances change. We change. And we’re not supposed to spend forever with people who don’t help us to enjoy life or teach us things about the world or ourselves or who generally don’t serve a purpose other than to frustrate us. Sometimes it’s just better to acknowledge that a friendship has run it’s course and that not every friendship, much like relationships in general, is meant to be a life-long thing.
1. Sometimes the cardinal rules are broken. Maybe it’s even more important to consider whether or not we choose our own interest over the feelings of a “friend.” Because when the former takes precedence to an unhealthy degree, we should be taught something about that relationship, it’s indicative of how we really feel about that person.
2. Sometimes… the time between your phone calls increases and sometimes you let that happen and appreciate the contact you still have, no matter what it looks like in comparison to what it used to be. At that point, it’s usually better that you let yourselves go different ways, because you’ve already put something petty before your friendship. You’ve begun to drift…
3. And sometimes you just do. You drift. You don’t suit each other anymore. You don’t have anything in common, and you don’t have anything more than small talk over drinks. They’re not someone you think to call immediately when something happens. And sometimes that’s just fine for people: that’s how they want their relationships to function. But more often, that’s not the case at all.
4. Sometimes you let too much frustration or irritation fall to the wayside, for fear of starting an unnecessary argument over something that you can self-modulate to deal with without having to involve the other person. This, however, is a temporary fix that leads to catastrophic consequences. Because it’s when you fall into this habit of not expressing your needs and expectations so that you can both adapt and adjust to your relationship that you end up in a monumental fight that you never get over– one that continues on because you’ve finally opened the floodgates to everything you’ve been withholding. It’s unfortunate, but friendships are usually never the same after that. These are usually easier to let go of, because you can fill that space with anger and resentment, but that will pass eventually, and if you’re lucky, the most you’ll get out of the ordeal is a first-hand lesson in one of the most important relationship rules ever (speak now, you can’t forever hold your peace).
5. Sometimes priorities shift, and sometimes, things replace what used to be your time together. Things that serve one or both people better. Things that don’t have to be other people or friendships, but anything that we subconsciously deem as more worthy of our energy. When this happens, it’s usually time to just let it happen. It doesn’t always have to mean you don’t care about the person, and it’s not always a symptom of just needing to try harder. From a post by Brianna Wiest http://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2013/09/5-things-that-end-friendships-and-why-that-just-might-be-okay/
Maybe some people just aren’t meant to be in our lives forever.
Maybe some people are just passing through.
It’s like some people just come through our lives
to bring us something: a gift, a blessing,
a lesson we need to learn.
And that’s why they’re here.
You’ll have that gift forever.
From “The Gift” by Danielle Steel
If I had my life to live over again,
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax.
I’d limber up.
I’d be sillier than I’ve been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances,
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would, perhaps, have more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones.
you see, I’m one of those people who was sensible and sane,
hour after hour,
day after day.
Oh, I’ve had my moments.
If I had to do it over again,
I’d have more of them.
In fact, I’d try to have nothing else – just moments,
one after another, instead of living so many yeas ahead of each day.
I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute.
If I could do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.
If I had to live my life over,
I would start barefoot earlier in the spring
and stay that way later in the fall.
I would go to more dances,
I would ride more merry-go-rounds,
I would pick more daisies.
By Nadine Stair, an amazing 85-year-old woman, from Louisville, Kentucky, who provided the words above after someone asked her how she would have lived her life differently if she had a chance.
Gratefulness adds richer color and a gentle texture to everything.
Never let the things you want
make you forget the things you have.
Anonymous
If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the ‘good’ living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching television – and more while watching life.
I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren’t there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I’d have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, “Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.”
There would have been more “I love you’s”.. More “I’m sorrys” …
But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute… look at it and really see it … live it…and never give it back.
“If I Had My Life To Live Over” written by the late Erma Bombeck after she found out she had a fatal disease.
Life shrinks or expands
in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin
Good Morning Gratitude 