Obsessed with Gratitude

Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.

-Rumi

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!  This is by far my favorite Thursday of the year as well as one of my absolute favorite holidays.  I savor the vibrant smells and tastes of seasonal comfort foods, the cozy roaring fire that cracks  and burns in the fireplace, and I adore the fact that in this beautiful country of ours, we’ve managed to preserve the fourth Thursday of every November to remember, cherish, and give thanks.

Feast

Many of you are sitting down around a dinner table of some kind with loved ones about to enter into a food coma at it’s finest right about now. Perhaps you’re already there.  I sincerely hope you enjoy every bite and minute of your day.  Some of you are in places of painful or lonely transition and this Thursday looks much different then you’d hoped.  That Norman Rockwell ideal has once again vaporized into a wishful mist.  My heart knows the pain of similar loneliness and I pray you will find some light in the cracks of that thin space today.

Shift

Wherever you are on your journey, I want to give you something to take with you right now, whatever your situation may be.  It can turn the darkest skies a paler grey, shift toxic, negative energy into grounded presence, and it’s available always in every blink, without fail.  It’s completely free of cost.  It is the most powerful force of breakthrough from emotional bleakness into hopeful wonder.  I’m sure you know where I’m going with this—Gratitude.

Why

You’re smart.  I know this because you seek out truth beyond yourself and you invest time and resources into personal development and progress.  Here’s the catch though: smart people ask “why?”  This is not all bad, mind you.  It’s often crucial to know the why’s of our experience.  However, we get stuck when we marinate in our analytical mind, bowing down to the perceived deity of certainty.

Mario Batali

I’m not going to tell you to stop asking “why?”  That’s like asking Mario Batali to retire his orange crocks and go vegan.  Not gonna happen.  Intsead, I’m inviting you to become obsessed with gratitude.  Buy a tiny journal and keep a running list each day of everything you are grateful for from clean water, to another day to explore, to the sound of a child’s innocent laughter off in the distance.  Be specific.  Be relentless.  Be consistent.  Go gangster with it.  Set a timer on your phone several times a day and keep writing them down, the obvious ones and the more obscure ones.  I’m a big fan of the physical act of writing as it sends a message not only to our brains but also our bodies that gratitude is indeed a holy moment, a sacred act of wholehearted living.

Wide open spaces

You are also self aware, thus will soon catch on to the remarkable shift this obsession with gratitude provides, away from the lack of scarcity and into the wide open spaces of graceful possibility.  Your inner dialog will soften, your tired bones relax, and your heart will most definitely open up.

Remember

God did not bring you here to leave you.  Love is much far more clever than that.  God brought you here to lead you steadily, still,  into a powerful redemption story.  This, my lovely friends, is not the end of that story.  Today as we look back and see how far we’ve come, a thankful heart will surely usher us into the forward momentum of that continued provision.

You

So I will start us off right here and now with my deep and stirring gratitude that wells up in my soul and overflows in my heart daily:  I am grateful for you.  I’m grateful for your courage on the journey that’s brought you, in all of your beautiful brokenness, exactly where you are today.   I’m inspired by your uniqueness and blown away that you show up and meet the world’s deep need for gifts and talents that only you can bring.  Thank you for being you, day after day.  Thank you, thank you thank you…

Love,

katie

xoxo

Recovering Simplicity: The Art of Enough

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

-Leonardo Da Vinci

The holidays are upon us.  Between the unseasonably warm weather and the loud, distracting force of our recent election, I haven’t thought much of it yet.  Sure, Kroger and Home Depot immediately threw up Christmas decorations the Tuesday after Halloween and quicker than you can say, “turkey and dressing” and honestly, I’ve come to accept that over the years. What’s tricky is when I still work up a sweat mid-November while rummaging around the car to find my favorite lip balm that went missing somewhere back in September. My body and brain register pure confusion in this suspended time frame hovering right between summer and fall.  I call it “fummer”… (“sall” works, too).

Great Expectations

For many, myself included, the holidays can be a real bear.  I notice a heavier client load in my practice seeking out extra support and space to prepare for extended (often distressing) family time, along with the unrealistic and unwarranted expectations we put on ourselves.  There are also those who battle intense and palpable loneliness as family time and connection in general isn’t even an option.

Shift

I tend to have this extra special need to seek out more grounding than usual and constantly remind myself of what is truly important during this buzzy, disjointed time. That or else I find myself glued to emotional porn of the season’s finest Rom Coms (The Holiday, Love Actually, what have you), with one too many glasses of wine and a shiny headache the next morning to prove it.   Over the years, a welcomed shift from numb consumerism to creativity, simply making things, has happened.  As a result, I’ve noticed the hazy fog of some of my own deep loneliness has lifted.

Reject Scarcity

In last week’s blog post, we talked about the slippery slope of scarcity mindset.  You know the one: it whispers insidiously sexy sweet ( literal) nothings to us in the name of certainty and staying stuck precisely in the seat of disconnection we’ve gotten cozy in.  I call it “rear view mirror“ living— we have one eye on the road ahead and one eye glued to the dusty view of our past.  Besides developing some bizarre version of strabismus (the medical term for crossed eyes—thank’s Google), we are at best a divided passenger in our own life while some ridiculous imposter drives us around all day in the driver seat.

I can’t insist enough: we must ruthlessly interrogate those dangerous, infiltrating voices of scarcity like we’re Jack Bauer thwarting a terrorist attack in season three of 24.  Not your style?  Ok, well then at least firmly defend yourself! Identity is on the line here and the holidays can be a war zone.

Willy Wonka

One of my life long scarcity dialogs has been: “you are unworthy of the creative journey and will never be taken seriously as a writer and creative.”  For some reason, I grew up thinking you had to be handed a golden permission slip by Willy Wonka himself in order to pass go and gain entrance into the umpa lumpa inhabited twizzler- bursting land of creativity.  I had no such permission slip.  As a result, I skated through most of my early life avoiding that magical existence all together while settling for life as a control freak/consumer.

Bliss and Calling

I tried to control everything and everyone around me, ignoring all the resources and possibilities bubbling up under the surface while lushly consuming and cheering on the harvests of other’s efforts whether they be  music, ideas, achievements, fun, art, stuff, travel, you name it. I was living on the sidelines, cheering on the players in the game.  Eventually, I woke up one scared, vacant little puppy seriously underestimating all that patiently subsided  somewhere deep inside. The diamond of truth I came to treasure through all of this is that there is a vast difference between our calling and our bliss.  My consumeristic bliss wasn’t satisfying my heart’s longings and the resistance of my calling felt too big and scary to embrace.

Making things

I’m a bonafide late bloomer.   For years this felt extremely self conscious; now I think its pretty cool.  I got real tired of dishonesty: the pursuit of people pleasing and placing so much weight on everyone else’s vision for my life. Finally I started digging deeper into those dormant soul-longings I mentioned earlier and it’s been healing and scary as hell to say the least.  Writing is hands down the most powerful and healing agent for change along my search for worthiness and presence.  This first took shape in the form of songwriting and has morphed into a different versions throughout the last decade.  The physical act of writing, making something out of nothing, proves powerfully life-giving as it bumps me out of my constant state of analysis and consumption and into a new role of creator.  

You’re creative

We are made to make things, all of us.  I hear it time and time again and it gets my goat every time, this notion that , “Oh I’m not a creative person…I didn’t get that gene.”  Hog wash.  We are all creatives.  Want proof?  Of course you do.  I am re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest, Big Magic(game changer).  She speaks to this point, drawing a hard line in the sand:

“Look at your ancestors.  Look at the ones who were immigrants, or slaves, or soldiers, or farmers, or sailors, or the original people who watched the ships arrive with the strangers onboard.  Go back far enough and you will find people who were not consumers, people who were not sitting around passively waiting for stuff to happen to them.  You will find people who spent their lives making things.  This is where you come from.” 

Big Deal

She goes on to say that for most of history, people inherently just made stuff, yet the difference was they didn’t make such a big deal of it…it’s just what they did.  We put impossible expectations and parameters around our creativity.  We think it has to look a certain way, all wrapped up with a bow, or a record deal, or a website or, God forbid, a job title.

Timing

There is a distinct reason I bring this up on the heels of the “most wonderful time of the year”.   I heartily subscribe to this idea that healing power flows when we let go of the things we don’t have control over (i.e. how Aunt Lois will react to the new sleeve of tattoos you’re rocking these days) and focusing energy on that which we do have control over (i.e. the story we make up in our heads about her passive aggressive comments all week).

Revolt

This season, I’d like to start a bit of a Holiday Stress Revolt by proactively choosing something different— and talking about it along the way.  It’s an art form that lends this soft, insanely gorgeous glow to our uniqueness rather than literally, buying into rat race around us.  Here it is: we must create and cultivate simplicity, a quiet safe place where we dial down the expectations, stop comparing ourselves to others, remember what’s important, give voice to our desires, and create the moments we will cherish without harsh judgement.  It’s beckoning the wisdom, creativity, and resourcefulness of our ancestors who were makers, NOT passive consumers.   It’s tapping deeper into calling as opposed to gorging on the pumpkin pie of our bliss, and in doing so, unlocking a lion share of peace and contentment…even stillness.

Reminders

Throughout the next several weeks, I am going to be amping up this conversation a bit both on the blog and social media fronts.  If there is one thing I need in this life, it’s constant reminders of truth, especially during stressful seasons.  Reminders that I am worthy of love and connection and that I’m not alone.  If you’re like me, I invite you to come along on this month-or-so long journey.  I would really enjoy your company and I think it’ll be good fun.  We have some incredible guest bloggers lined up as well.  I can’t wait to share them with you.

Finish Strong

As we near the home stretch of 2016, I am inspired to refocus in on those beautiful, life-giving desires that burned brightly in my heart back in January.  I want to honor them, listening closely to the litter of ideas they birthed along the way.  Let’s finish strong my friends; we are all in this thing together.

Love,

katie

xoxo

Strong Series Part I: Victim Pie

I am not what has happened to me.  I am what I choose to become.

-Carl Jung

I am excited to introduce a three-part series this week called the Strong Series.  I snaked the title from my web designer, developer, and good friend Josh Rogers, I wish I had thought of it but I didn’t.  Last week before launching my post Thursday, we were texting and he asked if the Strong Series was going to kick off that week?  Hmmm…I hesitantly answered no, fearing I had forgotten about a brilliant blog series I couldn’t recall.  Well, no was right because I didn’t have a brilliant series, however, the name was just too good so I thought I’d go with it and give Josh credit on the back end.  Josh, this one’s for you.

For the next several weeks,  let’s explore three dangerous roles we fall into in relationships: victim, rescuer, and persecutor.  They are familiar roles for us all, so hang in and don’t blow me off quite yet!  Chances are, you have played all three of them, even when relating to yourself.

If it’s not one thing it’s your mother

Everything in life is relational; that’s why we must explore the trappings and toxicity we fall prey to when we inhabit these three roles.  They are insidiously subtle, making it nearly impossible to detect when we move into and through them.  Why?  Well, chances are we observed others modeling this behavior around us growing up; building them somewhat into our structural, relational DNA.  Look, I’m not blaming it on your mother, I’m merely saying she may not have had the best teacher either and was doing the best she could at the time.   When we understand the cold hard facts behind victim, rescuer, and persecutor, we can easily recognize the payoff involved and bust their chops, making it easy to access a way out of those childlike corners and into our true, brave selves.

Tasty Goodness

So what’s with the “pie” situation?  I thought you’d never ask.  Honestly, victim is perhaps the most easily delicious of them all.  Like pie, playing the victim has a wholesome veneer.  I mean, it’s not straight up Death by Chocolate cake porn or anything.  No way; pie is soft and fruit-filled and we comatose on it at Thanksgiving making it… virtuous.  V is for Victim Pie Virtue…until you simply can’t look at food anymore and feel like you might just vomit.  Wow.  Okay, No more v’s.

The Payoff

It’s tricky and downright painful to sit in the victim seat.  After all, legitimate hurt and/or harm have landed us squarely into this role and it feels horrible, powerless.  Yet oftentimes we stay in victim far longer than necessary.  When I sit in the victim chair, it feels throne-like initially but only leads to isolation, loneliness, and fear.  There is always a payoff to this destructive spiraling behavior, otherwise our wise adult-governed self would remain in the driver’s seat, NOT our reactive monkey brain.  Here are a few payoffs of the victim role:

• Avoiding responsibility (“it’s not my fault” or “look what they did to me”)
• Getting attention
• Collecting sympathy (Poor, pitiful me…)
• Getting to be “right” (in order to justify a resentment)
• Proving myself to be “wrong” (in order to justify low self worth)

The Way Out

The minute that comfy victim Lazy Boy starts to feel dusty and dirty, smelling like one or more of those old payoffs, I invite you to ask yourself one simple question: What is my part in this?  At the core of that victim mentality is a need attached to a wound, a need that I must tend to.  If I’ve had a misunderstanding with someone and feel betrayal or judgement, my need is self-compassion and perhaps an honest conversation for clarification and resolve.  I must own my part in making that happen instead of having a pity party in the fetal position on my bedroom floor like a petulant child.  When we own our part, we create a new, powerful way forward.  We now assume the role of creator in our experience, cashing in the small but familiar payoff we grew accustomed to receiving.  This shift of responsibility is incredibly simple, yet super attractive and life-giving in relationships. That is, unless you forward them this post instructing them to read it because it might be “helpful”.  Oh boy, then you may need to stay tuned for Part III: The Persecutor… 

Love,

katie

xoxo

p.s. In honor of today’s tasty topic, I leave you with Ms. Patty Griffin’s Making Pies.  Enjoy!