The droplets on the window still fresh from last nights storm. I hear a trickle of thunder ambience in my mind and I half wish for a storm this Monday. We are cleansing today.
Contrasting from yesterday’s beaming sun, today’s lingering fog is transporting me. There’s something about fog that feels like a movie set. The gentle shrill of melancholy. She is luring me. The fog is a metaphor of the great unknown.
Yet, I am soothed. It feels like renewal.
I am grateful that after 13 days of the gratitude challenge one of the many things I’m noticing is how much easier it is to access that floaty bliss state of gratitude. It’s nearly as simple as a flick of a thought now. As opposed to before it was preceded by a stubbornness and inner resistance to prove a point that livelihood cannot be that easy as focusing on gratitude...
I find that some people DON’T want the gratitude challenge to work. It’s too easy. And it is insulting to their ego who has been bending backward trying to protect them all these years. It is insulting to present such a simple solution as “gratitude” to solve a perpetual life problem.
So they disregard it. They deny the science. And deny their own potential of happiness in the process. To accept this challenge works for them is to accept that they’ve been doing it the hard way all along. It is to collapse their entire self-concept. And build a new structure in its place. And expect that to be a simple process...
It’s like if you bought a new coffee table and spent days assembling it manually and then someone tells you assembled it all wrong. And that there is actually someone that comes to assemble it FOR you... There is a part of you that doesn’t want to accept that and just makes do with what you’ve got now with the wrongly assembled, but still functional table.
The sheer frustration and stress you’ve unnecessarily endured all this time assembling this table was all for waste. The last thing you want to hear is someone passing invalidate your hard work. You worked hard to get to that point! There is so much pride attached to what we build in life, it often takes A LOT to disassemble it and build a newer, easier way.
It’s more than accepting being wrong. It’s about swallowing the fact that not only could it have been way easier to access happiness, but the influential figures who taught you along the way may have been slightly misguided, as well. The ego has to learn to accept and release that its identity is falling away. And that is too triggering of a feeling space for many people to feel.
So they’d rather AVOID the scary feelings the gratitude challenge might evoke. And choose to continue being sad because being sad at least justifies your hard work and pain. Or choose to try shadow work. Which CAN also be a function of avoidance if you are avoiding another shadow in order to do it, lol😉😉. If you MUST do shadow work, how about doing shadow work on the thing that fuels your resistance toward gratitude. Your RESISTANCE toward FEELING GOOD. There’s a red flag there!
That’s just a glimpse into what I’ve had to navigate over the years.
After 2 weeks, the gratitude challenge has become my favorite part of my day. And I often incorporate this practice 2-3 more times throughout my day now because I am finding it invaluably useful in my anxiety regulation, productivity, inspiration, and motivation levels. It also positions me to better approach my shadow work with more clarity and focus. My rate of integration in shadow work has nearly doubled due to this challenge. It’s also fun, guys... Feeling bliss is an enjoyable experience! And I look forward to it as any other fun activity in my day now. Sort of a healthy addiction developing I am very excited about. I find myself more grounded in the “present moment” as they say. Which translates to me feeling more able to surrender to joy when joyful things surround me. Have you ever been on vacation and you still can’t seem to relax? You look around at paradise around you yet you still can’t feel carefree. This challenge has helped me recognize and enjoy bliss when bliss is here.
I’ve often found myself in the past feeling very stagnant at times. That feeling has been more foreign to me since this challenge has gone on. Gratitude has given me a pace. And at times helps me keep going when my instinct in the past has sometimes been to give up.
Instincts. Gratitude has shifted my instincts. My perceptively levels. I instinctually lean toward gratitude now, which results in having better days more consistently. I more-so involuntarily fall back on gratitude now instead of despair in those tough moments.
For those interested, my psychic perception has refined more. I think it’s due to the organization of my brain and thoughts through incorporating gratitude. It just pulls everything into alignment and regulation is what I’ve realized.
And much much more to share. I have been posting blogs of this challenge everyday since day 1 and I still feel I haven’t scratched the surface on conveying the depth of these shifts happening.
Stay tuned in!
With Love,
Cody
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