Daily Gratitude: “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.”

A lot of people own their story but not necessarily in a productive way. They use it as an excuse. Like “you can’t blame me because this is what happened to me.” That’s not what this quote is about.

It’s so helpful to know what happened and maybe even why it happened but only if you do something with it.

As the quote says, love yourself no matter what your experience has been. This isn’t always easy but it is always the most important thing you can do. Self love starts with self care and acceptance.

What’s most useful is taking what happened, your story, and extracting the lesson(s) from it. Once you have the lessons outlined, it’s so much easier to take action to prevent the same story from repeating itself. We all know that that happens and I believe it occurs when we just stay in the “I was in this yucky situation” mode and don’t examine all aspects. That makes it easy and probable that the same thing will happen again.

Move forward with your life. Love yourself and learn about yourself. Don’t be afraid to examine your inner being.

Daily Gratitude: “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

This says it all. The key is that you need to define what success is for yourself. It doesn’t have to be something major. It’s usually doing what makes you happy.

And once you define that for yourself, it doesn’t matter what other people think. You don’t even have to tell them if you’re worried about what they may say. Just do it.

The most important part of this quote, though, is that you Have to like yourself. I think that once you like yourself, truly like yourself, then you’ll be happy doing almost anything that gives some pleasure and also serves others. It’s hard not to be happy when serving others.

Would you want to spend your whole life doing something you don’t like? I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I could have made a ton more money as a doctor in the civilian world but what I was able to give through my service in the Navy enriched me more than I ever dreamed anything would.

Experiment and find what it is you like. Then set about doing it!!

Daily Gratitude: “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

Yes this is another hope message but I think we be all the hope we can muster at this time in our lives.

Others have said the same thing using metaphors such as “there’s a light at the end of the tunnel”.

There is light up ahead despite the darkness (as this quote says) but the biggest and darkest obstacle we face is the one that comes from keeping our eyes closed. You can’t see any light if your eyelids are slammed shut. I think this is what limits people more than anything.

Whenever adversity hits, open your eyes as wide as possible. This will increase your peripheral vision as well. So what? It’s often in that peripheral vision that the answers lie. That’s part of being open minded. Look at everything around you and see what you can make of it. Is there a solution lurking under the grass by the side of the tree? Maybe. But you have to spot it and then go check it out. It may not be the solution but you’d be surprised at how often there might be another path through the forest lying just past that tree. A path you couldn’t possibly discern until you got closer and investigated.

That happened to me last weekend on my training walks. I was trying to add miles and was walking along perfunctorily and just happened to look to my left. There was a path. What is that? I wondered. So I decided to follow it. It was a lovely path through the woods and eventually led back to a road I needed to get to anyway. AND, it was quiet as well as filled with beauty. I had to open my eyes.

You’d be surprised how bright the light might be if you were to open them up a big as possible.