If Not Now, Then When?

There’s a story one of my wonderful clients reminded me of recently.  I’ve been so inspired (and often humbled, truth be told) as I’ve reflected on it lately. I shared it with my Flourish class a few weeks ago and have been thinking about it ever since.  Brene Brown, in her heartful and humorous style, was speaking about a research discovery in which she found that every person she interviewed who described themselves as happy or joyful attributed it to their practice of gratitude. Here she underlines the word practice. She goes on to say in humorous self-effacing style, “You know, you could say I have a yoga attitude. I like yoga, it makes sense to me, I even wear yoga pants and have a mat. But you couldn’t say I have a yoga practice. Just that I have a yoga attitude.” She goes on to emphasize the importance of having a gratitude practice, not just an attitude of gratitude. For me, when I do an active gratitude practice, it transforms me.

It’s so easy to get busy and neglect my practice. The attitude of gratitude is more helpful than the attitude of a crotchety complainer, (fo sho!) but the practice is what actually changes our neurochemistry, our bodies, our brains, our relationships, our experience of ourselves and our world in such amazing ways. When I’m feeling stressed out about something, without negating or “fixing” my feelings, if I do a little embodied gratitude practice? Everything changes. It’s truly like magic.

A few years ago I heard a reframe of that famous saying, “You teach best what you most need to learn.”  Instead, I like looking at it like this: “We teach best what we most long to experience and long to be filled with.”

That’s true for me. (Is it for you too?)

Among other things, I long to be filled with gratefulness equal to the beauty of my life. (And that means I need to take the time to actively appreciate and FEEL my gratitude. Regularly.)

I long to not be so busy that I miss my life or skimp on the deep appreciation of the beautiful blue Santa Fe sky with wispy clouds that I woke to this morning, the thrill of hearing midnightcoyotes yipping like a bunch of wild witches outside my window, the fact that my car didn’t break down and got me all the way here. Right now I’m appreciating fully this sip of peppermint tea, this feeling of loving how much I’m missing my guys back home, and appreciating the fact that there’s a lovely group of people who came all the way to Santa Fe to join me in exploringDreaming ourselves Awake.

There are so many things to be grateful for and appreciate, even on the days when one of my son’s little playmates is pushing my buttons like a pro, when I’m worried about money, when my back hurts and the house is a mess.  The good and the bad don’t cancel each other out. But actively growing my gratitude has helped a lot in changing my brain’s negativity bias. I’m so grateful for that!

 I would regret the hell out of it if on my deathbed, I hadn’t taken time to appreciate wholeheartedly and actively the many countless blessings in my life.Those many countless blessings that it’s easy to ignore if I’m distracted and looking in the wrong direction. (For me “the wrong direction” means striving, worrying, rushing, spending too much time in my email inbox or phone, or thinking the fact that the dishes aren’t done or the laundry isn’t put away is VERY SERIOUS. Haha. I do that sometimes.)

There’s a gravestone in the cemetery near my house that a dear friend and I both love.
It’s a giant natural heart rock and along with the deceased’s name and dates (Abbie was about my age when she died) – it reads, “Grateful for a life worth missing.”
Doesn’t that crack your heart right open?
What in your life will you miss when you die?
Are you appreciating the hell out of it now while you’re alive? 

If you’d like some support for growing your gratitude in easy and powerful ways, I’d love to have you join me and a wonderful community of people for 6 weeks this fall. Truly, I would SO love to have you join me.
Many of the people who have already signed up did the Embody Gratitude Project with me last year and, like me, they appreciate the value of having a structure and a support to grow or deepen a practice like this.
The basic gratitude practice we do is even more supercharged because we engage it as fully embodied practice.
Add to that having a community of others we’re doing it with can really help us to stay engaged and accountable. It’s so easy to let it go into that long list of “that’d be a good idea but not now.” :)

As the Zen saying goes, If not now, then when?

This year I’ll be offering all new video/audio lessons (as well as the gorgeous poems and photos I love to sprinkle in) in a super easy-to use online format. And I think the synchronicity is so cool that we’re starting on World Gratitude Day.

Want to read more about the Embody Gratitude Project or sign up to join in?
Click here. 

p.s. In the spirit of “If not now, then when?” would you care to join me in taking a few minutes to do it NOW? :)

p.s. I just have to tell you – a guy just came up to me in the coffee shop with a big smile and said, “Wow, you are so smiley!” I nodded and said, “I’m really enjoying what I’m writing.” He laughed and said, “Don’t you just wish you could share it with everybody?” I truly do. I’m so grateful to share it with you. :)