Today marks day 146 on #theYearofThankYou challenge where I write 5 Thank You cards per day, every day for 365 days. Many breakthroughs have been showing up, and I wanted to share with you the most recent.
Our 2nd child Rohn Zephyr Israel was born in late October just before our move to Dallas TX. Itâs been an extraordinary journey and Iâm grateful to have spent 3 months out of the field to be with the family, get our house set up, find a church, and establish our house hold systems with now 2 children rather than just 1.
In January I started back meeting with clients, speaking at sales meetings, and reengaging with my favorite clients from back home in CA. All of these things while ensuring to fit in my 5 Thank you cards per day (which again takes approx. 1.5 hours to complete every day).
A few days ago, in the midst of a long work day, minimal sleep, and coming home to take care of âall that is lifeâ, I started to work on my Thank you cards for the people I had met that day. And something happened.
About half way through I just started paying attention to my emotions. What emotions? Well in that moment, NONE.
I didnât want to feel anything. It was a long day, I still had emails to send, orders to process, and a laundry list of to doâs still undone.
Thatâs when I realized writing my Thank You cards had become something TO DO.
The intention and purpose of this project is to:
#1 Live each day with a grateful heart (for itâs affect on me)
#2 To elevate the level of gratitude OTHERS experience in their daily lives (its affect on others).
And it really does need to go in that order.
That night I really didnât want to write. I didnât want to be grateful.
Why? Frankly, I had too much shit to do and I was tired.
Story of my life. Story of a lot of our lives in the culture we live.
The purpose of a challenges is to âchallenge us.â To push past the resistence for some VALUE we see on the other side. The value is ALWAYS worth more than the short term pain. And really pain in most cases is just âannoyanceâ.
-The 3 year old chimes in âI donât wannaâ, then the adult kicks in with logic, âmaybe this has run itâs course. There are a lot of other things of greater priority than doing this thing right now.â
Really the only priority we should have in our lives is âtransformation and changeâ.
-Is what Iâm doing keeping me on the path to be the same as I was yesterday, or to become a better version of myself so that I can be a greater contribution to my clients, my family, and the world?
The latter requires breakdowns, breakthrough, and frankly itâs uncomfortable a lot of the time. This is not a âmaybe sometimesâ, this is a âguaranteed have toâ if you are committed to something significant.
The hardest thing to do when you are running a million miles an hour: I stopped and closed my eyes. I allowed myself to process the day and experience whatever I needed to experience. It took about 10-15 minutes.
When I was done, I opened my eyes, wrote some notes in my journal of what was on my mind. You know, the things that were keeping me from being present in that moment. Then I wrote a list of all the things I was truly grateful for until I felt a shift. Then I began writing my Thank You cards.
The funny thing is those final cards didnât take very long because I was truly present to gratitude. WhichâŠis the point isnât it? We want challenges in our lives that recalibrate us to the higher self we all know we have inside.
The lesson that showed up for me is one I heard years past by Mark Lovas, âOff self, on purpose.â
The ego IS the enemy. Itâs only goal is itâs own survival. As human beings one of our greatest gifts is the ability to choose our attitude in any given set circumstances and to change the direction of our life.
It’s been a while since you heard me share about The Year of Thank You, so here are some exciting updates:
