Do You Practice ‘Grit Your Teeth’ Gratitude?

Do You Surrender to the Divine Flow?

This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving. While the weather was kinda rainy and grey, our home was filled with the smells of baking and cooking.

My big, yummy man made some of my favourite meals this weekend. It started with turkey and pumpkin pie on Friday and finished with roast beef and Yorkshire puddings last night.

I was speaking with one of my dearest friends last night and she just looked at me and said, ‘you’re so spoiled’. And I said, ‘yup, and I’m totally worth it’… and I believed it. 😉

Believing that I am worthy of lavish love and abundance is definitely a change from where I was a few years ago. Until recently, I wasn’t quite there yet. I wanted to believe I was worth it, but I believed more that I wasn’t good enough. Not quite good enough.

A lot has shifted in me as I’ve grown and learned. Having peace in my body about where I belong and what I bring to the ‘party’ (this whole life thing, as it were) is something I’m deeply grateful for.

Which is something else that has shifted.

Gratitude Has Made Me New

When I first started practicing gratitude back in the early 2000s, I was keeping a gratitude journal. 5 things every day that I was grateful for. (I wrote about how to keep a gratitude journal here.)

It was – and still is – a powerful practice. It forces us to slow down, breathe, and really look and feel into the world around us. What have we created? What is going well? Where are we nourished? Where is there light and beauty?

When I was caring for my mother, and after her death, my gratitude practice was a lifeline to the light. It was a way to end each day remembering that there was light and that the bleak grey I was dealing with every day was not the whole story. 

And there were so many, many days that all I could find to be grateful for was that I had a soft bed where I could shut out the world and slip into unconsciousness and away from the pain. That, and a purring cat. 

I’ve learned a lot about gratitude over the years. Thinking about it recently, I realized that gratitude has changed me a lot over the years.

Slipping Into the Flow of Gratitude

Whereas, when I first started, gratitude was a ‘thing’ I did, now it is a vibration I slip into. It has become as comfortable as my favourite pyjamas, as warm as my favourite sweatshirt, and a cherished companion that I am never far from.

In the early days, there were times I had to force myself to find something to be grateful for. There were days I had to grit my teeth and say, ‘yeah, I’m grateful for this and this and this…’ but I didn’t feel it. It was a surface gratitude that couldn’t penetrate very deeply.

I knew I was supposed to be grateful and that it was a thing I should do, but there were many, many days that I was just going through the motions.

As I’ve cleaned up my inner world, gratitude has moved more deeply into and through me. As I’ve moved into a deeper divine alignment – and become good friends with my Unconscious Mind and the Divine – gratitude has become a well that overflows from within me, not just something I force down there into the darkness and chaos and rage.

Living in Divine Alignment

It has been a process. A long process.

One that continues to unfold as I surrender more and more to simply being in the world without fretting that I have to control and micro-manage every part of it.

I’ve learned that gratitude meets us where we are (just like money). And that it reflects back to us how we’re doing with our vibration – our energetics. If someone is vibrating in shame, then that is where their gratitude practice will work to illuminate their world.

As we move out of shame and up the energetic scale, gratitude continues to meet and gently challenge and uplift us. It shows us what is good and what is light and what is possible.

Gratitude Whispers to Our Soul

It whispers, ‘this too, butterfly, don’t forget about this…’

Maybe I’d forget about the beauty of the sunset, or the scent of that rose, or the swoop and dive of the gannet, but gratitude whispers and draws me close.

Gratitude brings me back into my body and back into the beauty of my life.

It meets me where I am and then lifts my eyes to love. It reminds me that I’m not alone and that there is good – deep, profound good – in the world.

As I sit and contemplate my life this Thanksgiving, what I’m most deeply grateful for is that I am here. That I’m in the game. That I’m able to learn and fall and get up and go at it again and that this incredible creation has been put here for my soul to experience all of life as a human.

And I’m grateful that you’re here with me. Learning and growing and falling and getting back up again. And that we’re both part of this transformation that is changing the very nature of the culture we live in.

These are tumultuous times. It’s so easy to get caught up in the stress and believe the busy-ness. But they’re just a natural part of change. Real change requires the old to decay so that the new can be built. Real change, changes everything.

Thank you for being here with me – together we’re building a new world.

And that’s a very good thing.

We’re here to help you bring your dreams into reality.

You don’t have to do it alone.

What questions do you have? How can I support you?

Vanessa Long

Vanessa Long is creator of the Seasons of Success and author of Discovering Your Passionate Purpose. Focused on providing straight-forward, no b.s. solutions, strategies, and support to move you from where you are to where you yearn to be. It’s time to tap into your purpose and build a life that expresses all of who you were designed to be.