Thankful Thursday

When I was in my early twenties I challenged my self to not eat meat for an entire day.

Well obviously that's not much of a challenge, but one day turned into two.

Then two turned into a week.

Then a week turned into a month, which quickly became lots of months

that all put together was a year.

Before you know it a year had come and gone.

Today, I am challenging myself to exude the positivity that I keep inside my mind and my heart.

For one day, one full day everything that oozes out of me will be laced with positivity.

And, if I am lucky my days will blend together and become months and years and an eternity.

I challenge you to look inside,

find your positive spirit and share it in all actions in your life.

Live it, Breath it, Share it.

Be Grateful & Inspire

p.s. if you would like to find out why I am no longer a 

vegetarian hop over here for a funny little read!

Random Acts of Gratitude

I have been talking about this project for some time now.  Trying to get feed back from those near and dear to me.  Sometimes I think that there is a fine line between creativity and insanity.  So I must pause to thanks those that talk me off the crazy person ledge sometimes and give me the feed back I need to be creative and inspirational.

Over the past few months I have come to notice just how inconsiderate people can be sometimes.  I gets my blood boiling thinking about how little regard people really have for one and other these days.  I think about my great grandmother who would talk to anyone.  In line and the store she would strike up conversations, she made friends with waitresses at restaurants, and she would often remind passers by to smile.  These days I am seeing the beauty of interaction with strangers in a whole new light.  Through my child, the chatter box.  This kid.  My boy says "Hello!" to everyone he passes.  Almost completely without exception.  He's a good kid.  A kind hearted boy.  He's silly too.  

All of these things combined with his love of putting stickers in creative places made me think of an idea.  He and I would create little "Acts of Gratitude".  Notes, do dads, found objects with a message, simple notes.  Then like ninja's we would randomly place them where every we went.

Today we launched our first two.  

The first one we left tucked on a shelf at Wal-Mart.

The epicenter of where people need to be reminded of how to treat each other.

This little wedge of rubber lemon reads:

"Hey You! Pick Me!

Put a Smile on your face, and pass it on!"

The second one we left on the window sill at Howley's.

It seemed like the perfect little spot, 

camouflaged among all the magazines and fliers.

It reads:

"A gift for you! yes...you!

Life is too sweet to let the sour stuff get in the way."

I have left the Turquoise Violets 

web address on the back to see if anyone responds.

I really think that it would amazing 

(and restore a little of my hope for humanity)

if someone contacted the blog saying that they found one of these

Random Acts of Gratitude.

Be on the look out!

Be Grateful

& 

Inspire

Thankful Thursday

Praying before meals in something that rarely happens in this house.  It's pretty much limited to Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinners.  It's not that we don't know how, or not that we don't care to, it is really just not our practice.  Grace before every meal was something that I grew up with, and frankly grew out of.  I feel kinda terrible actually admitting that.

Upon recently enrolling the boy in a religious based VPK (because they don't offer VPK at military schools), I decided that I had better start prepping him for praying before his lunch.  His school that he will be attending come fall says a prayer before eating, does a small bible study daily, and they go to chapel once a week.  You can imagine the sudden feeling of indigestion the hubs is feeling about all of this. ha. 

But, if I was going to teach my child to "pray" before meals...it was going to be my way.  No thanking God for the food that's on the table, rather just giving "thanks" for the meal.  In short just a series of "I am thankful for...", a few from me, and a few from the boy.

So we sat to eat, and I said:

"Tonight we are going to say grace."

the boy: "Grace."

me: "No, we are going to say grace."

the boy: "Grace."

me: "Seriously, let's say grace."

the boy (now much louder and a bit  frustrated): "GRACE!!!!!"

That was when I realized that this had turned into a fun little game of "who's on first".

The point being that we did it.

I eventually realized that he had no idea what I meant by "saying grace", so I went first, and told him what I was thankful for that day.  He followed with some silly almost 4 year old ramblings about being thankful for "butts, and dogs, and poopoo caacaa", he then got THE LOOK and scraped together some appropriate things to be grateful for.

After doing this for a few days in a row it is starting to become obvious that the boy is gaining and understanding of what it actually means to be thankful as opposed to just saying "thank you".  I am teaching him young the importance of living a gracious lifestyle.  Showing him that the more gratitude that you display the happier you will be.

Teach your children to be grateful through your actions and words.  Let them follow you in expressing their thanks, and maybe the future generations will learn to live humbly instead of living with entitlement. 

For now, Happy Thankful Thursday!

Be Grateful & Inspire

Thankful Thursday

I do believe that since we have all spent the week glued to CNN, 

that the above quote is really truly enough said.

Be Grateful & Inspire

Thankful Thursday

What would happen if tomorrow you woke up,

and all you had were the things that you were thankful for today?

What would be left?

 Would you be left with nothing?

Or would there be an overwhelming amount of things?

Would those 'things' be material possession?

Or would you be so full of gratitude and thanks that your insides would burst?

As I sit here and reflect on this thought, I am left to wonder what I would have.

I consider my self to be a pretty thankful person,

but I am not a "prayer".

Which begs the question....

If I am not taking the devoted time to bundle all my "thanks" into a 

quick synapsis for someone to hear,

does anyone know that I am thankful for the gifts in my life?

I remember the nights of my childhood, knelt down beside my bed.

Every night before climbing in between my sheets I would do the run down:

"Dear God,

Thank you for my Mom and Dad.

Thank you for my Grandparents.

Thank you for my Sibling.

Thank you for my awesome toys.

ect..."

So, since I don't take the 10 minutes before bed to hit my "Thank You" quota...

What would I have left in the morning if all that was left was the acknowledged?

Honestly, I am not sure that anything would change.

And do I believe that you have to say those "Thank You's" out loud to mean it? 

NO.

Being grateful is a way of life,

and if you are....everyone will know.

Would I have enough?

Would my life still be full of joy?

I can answer these two with certainty.

YES.

Just because I don't kneel down and rattle off a list of things and people that I am thankful for,

doesn't mean that I am not oozing with gratitude.

So think about it.

What would be left for you?

Where would you be?

And who would you be there with?

Would anything change? 

Or are you living a life of gratitude to ensure that everything that you have is enough?

Don't focus on the negative.

What has happened has happened.

It's the past.

Nobody knows what tomorrow has in store for us.

We can only go into it with a positive attitude, ready to be thankful.

Today is all we can control.

Today is a gift.

Be thankful TODAY, right now, right this very instant, 

for tomorrow it could all be gone!

Be Grateful & Inspire

Thankful Thursday...er Friday

(source)

After coming off of my funk from missing my best friend and NYC combined with the punch in the gut news that I received in the middle of the week, I am starting today with a new foot forward.  This week I have spent a lot of time reflecting and my mind keeps wandering back to one simple notion.

 Ego vs Gratitude vs Society.

If there was ever a microcosm of todays society that lived and breathed and sustained it would be New York City.  The amount of 'daily lives' that buzz around that city are unreal, yet there was an underwhelming sense of gratitude and human connection being shown.  As a matter of fact I was laughed at by my best friend and her husband about how kind and happy I was towards the locals.  Truly, it's just second nature to me now.  You treat people kind and fair.  You give that stranger an extra second to say hello.  An excuse me on the subway can prevent ruining someones train ride.  A gentle touch and warm glance can provide that much needed human connection.  Celebrating someone for just being can be one of the most rewarding gestures.  Now I must side note here....I don't want you guys to think that I am some sort of freak who went around the city with a cheesy smile pasted on my face, touching every stranger, and making small talk with every passer by...they have a special name for people like that...it's called crazy.  Instead I just continued my daily practice of showing people that 'I cared' in a place where no shits are given about the person next to you.

All of this thinking about a lack of human connection and perception of down right anger makes me think.  What causes people who are by nature supposed to be happy, to be so unhappy?  I have gone back and forth on this weighing out the possibilities of 'why', and it really boils down to one thing.  Ego.  We are trapped in a reality where people have a tendency to believe that their problem are the most important. Their shit stinks more than your shit.  They have had a harder day. And here's where the Ego really kicks in.....NONE of this is their fault.  The professional Ego centric maniac has no problem passing all of that blame of their own hardships right onto someone else's plate.  Anyone else's to be frank.  Where does all of this lead us?  In my opinion, downfall.  I truly believe that living an Ego centric life is the downfall of society.  And you can scale that 'society' on many different levels, it could be a family society, work, community, city, country, ect. In short if you live on the top of your ivory tower thinking that the reason that you shit stinks is due to everyone around you, at some point everyone is going to get tired of smelling your shit and move on.

The moral of this increasingly long winded story is this.  If you choose to be Ego centric that is your prerogative but know this, you are choosing a life of solitude and your microcosm of society will crumble around your shity smelling pedestal.  If you decide that that life stinks then you must remove your head out of your own ass and choose to live a life of gratitude.  I choose that life. 

Reconnect with the human connection.  Be grateful and Inspire.