Daily Gratitude: “You can’t get to courage without walking through vulnerability.”

This makes so much sense. It takes a whole lot of courage to be vulnerable. You know how children make fun of each other. We learn quickly that being open with others can be “dangerous”. Our “courage” disappears almost as much and as quickly as our creativity.

Then it takes us a very long time to regain that courage and desire to be vulnerable again.

Once you can endure opening yourself up again, there’s not much else that can frighten you away.

Have you become vulnerable again? Has it taken courage? I don’t have that much courage yet but I’m working on it.

Daily Gratitude: “What is remembered is not the event, but the meaning.”

Isn’t this so true? And before you do the “naysayer” thing, I feel the event is important because it stimulates the deeper memory- the meaning.

Think back to all the memories you have, good or bad. If you saw the event on a tv show involving other people, what would that event mean to you then? Would you have the same feelings and emotional response in you? I doubt it.

It’s all about emotions. If you were playing a softball game and you won would you respond in the same way on a day when your life is going well compared to a day when a loved one is sick and in the hospital? I doubt it.

But what’s different. On both days your team won the game. But your response is different because the meaning is different. When someone you love is sick, your attention and your emotions are focused on your loved one, not the game. Does that make sense?

The point of the quote is to help you understand why similar events may not elicit similarly meaningful memories.

Daily Gratitude: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself.”

It’s so important to recognize the barriers you have deep inside. What is keeping you from doing all you desire? What are your limiting beliefs? If you feel there are limitations to what you can do, then you’ll be frustrated.

What this quote is really saying is something I’ve learned in the past 6 years. There is nothing external to you that can make you happy. You have to go within and find out what you need. This is not easy at all. I had a lot of external things abs successes. I was never happy. I don’t think I realized that though….until I began to know what happiness felt like.

You might think it’s sad that it took me 70 years to experience happiness and maybe it is but I also know it makes me appreciate it even more than if it were a given all my life.

Along with that happiness came truly feeling love. That’s probably even more sad that I never knew love for decades but it’s all ok. Some people never feel it. I consider myself so fortunate to have finally figured all this out. How? You know. It was IFS (Internal Family Systems). It is miraculous.