The Daily G.I.F.T. from The GratiDude

Get comfortable with the uncomfortable and trust the process. You got this.

When you are saving money

You feel broke.  

This is why it’s so hard for young people, especially to save money because when their friends are asking them to go out at night usually the only excuse for young person did not go out is that they’re broke or that they have to work. Other than that, it’s always a greenlight for going out for those young people in their early 20s right?

So when one of them steps out of the pack to start saving money, perhaps for a personal goal or to maybe go to Europe the next year they can face a lot of resistance and a lot of questioning.

And when they’re home alone, and their friends are out, they feel like they’re broke when really they’re getting richer and accumulating wealth by not spending money.

What’s more? When they do spend that money, they’re investing on themselves and they’re gonna be even richer as a human being through their personal experiences of travel, cultural exchange, and perhaps even language acquisition.

Working out is the same way. 

The easiest example of that is when you’re lifting weights after a little while, and you’ve burnt so much energy in your muscles are firing so hard that you can barely even lift up your bottle of water to take a sip. So it feels like and it looks like you’re getting weaker while you’re working out, but really you’re breaking those muscles down and they get built back up and they’re much stronger the next day.

For me personally, one example that I can relate to is the feeling of isolating myself socially, and spending a great deal of time alone.  For example last summer I went up to Northern Michigan for over a month for a mental health break from my family. We communicated regularly and I visited with my kids, but I spent weeks at a time alone processing some experiences and realizations as well as making some determination, going forward, some major life moves and changes that I would need to be in order to improve the quality of my life and that of my family.

These times you isolate and feel alone however what happens you recalibrate.  in those times of reflection, you realize that there are so many answers inside you and when you’re ready to become Social again the crew that comes around you is healthier stronger and more in line with where you wanna go in your life and your future.

It is literally a one step backwards to take two steps forward approach.

The same goes with healing your past trauma and getting into your own personal emotional junk drawer, so to speak.  When you start to explore some of those memories that you have and experiences and emotions, it feels like you’re turning your life upside down and then all of a sudden you’re invoking or bringing drama into your life. That’s furthest from the truth.

What you doing is dumping out the junk drawer and sorting through what you want to keep and what you want to throw away. Whether you look in the drawer or dump it out has nothing to do with the fact that all that junk is still in there whether you deal with it or not.

Processing and digging into your personal issues and challenges may feel like a step backwards, but it’s the only way you can move forward to a life where you can appreciate stillness be comfortable in the present moment. When you do the work you can reduce the unwanted subconscious thoughts of anxiety constantly racing through your head.

Understanding that you can use your breath as the vehicle to bring you back to the present moment of now is a really important aspect of developing and improved state of mind.

Having someone explain to you, the benefits of nose breathing versus mouth breathing is a really big deal.

Knowing that we have a parasympathetic and a sympathetic nervous system, and that much of our fight or flight instincts are antiquated and not relevant in a modern society however, they induce fear and limit our ability to pursue our dreams and take chances.

Understanding that the only real moment is now and then all future thoughts, bring anxiety, and past thoughts often create energy of regret.

These are fundamentals when it comes time to work on your personal development, and just like America’s Pastime(or really

The Dominican Republic’s pastime

), there are fundamentals of the sport.

The basics like how to use a baseball glove in the portend of your throwing hand.  You will need practice catching the ball in the glove, and you need to know which foot to step with when you throw the ball.   Hitting the baseball

requires some basic instruction too, where your hands are positioned on the bat when you swing it and how to stand in the batters box. 

We are doing the same in our Happiness Sherpa coaching programs, teaching first how your brain is ready and waiting to be molded and shaped in the fashion that serves you TODAY.  

You are not stuck with the mind that you were born with.

With self-talk and affirmations, you can shift the patterns of your thoughts, which completely changes your moods and your conscious reality.

Breathing is the foundation of your practice and the only moment that truly exist is right now.  

After six weeks, you will be much more comfortable with right now and you will also understand this is where the action is and this is where we want to be.

If you walk away with those simple understandings the life that you will live and a relationship she will have for the rest of your life will be significantly improved in a fundamental way.

That’s the power of gratitude.

The opposite conversation comes into play here because the thought of getting into your subconscious, and addressing some of your past experiences can induce anxiety on the path to producing more calm.  

However, all of those anxious thoughts are inside you and we need to understand their origin if they’re not a benefit to you so you can release those those thoughts and no longer give them life through your own mental energy.

Practicing simple gratitude also requires a little bit of faith to trust in the process however, it is all backed by science as well as the anecdotal testimonials of millions of people that have both process their own traumas and grief and moved onto building a life around appreciation and the neuroscience magic of gratitude.