The Cycle of Gratitude

grat·i·tude      ˈɡradəˌt(y)o͞od/      noun

1. the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

A friend compliments your new recipe. A colleague thanks you for your expertise. A love acknowledges all the things you do around the house. A stranger thanks you for helping them. A long lost high school classmate reaches out to you tell you how grateful they were for your kindness during a really tough time. Your kid-o smiles when you are taking care of them. Your women crush from Instagram comments on your post! Mmm doesn’t it feel good? It feels amazing to feel that warm wonderful gratitude coming your way. To know that the things you do really mean something.

Once I really started getting into yoga I kept hearing my wonderful yoga instructor, Misty, talk about being grateful among many other wonderful lessons. Being grateful for where you are in that moment. Being grateful for those that show you kindness. I remember Misty helping us learn to mediate and had us focus on a color. The color that come to mind is yellow. She had us think of the sand on the beach, the sun, sunflowers. I would release the stresses in my life as I thought of warm sand in between my toes, the soft yellow petals, and feeling the sun warm my skin. As I mediated I was learning how to truly be grateful for the world around me. Not to just take our world for granted but to truly appreciate everything it does for me.

The feeling of gratitude is overpoweringly positive. Feeling that way towards nature and towards life is wonderful and I began to think how powerful it would be to apply this to the people in my life that I am truly grateful and have not expressed it.

I turned 28 last September and continued a newly formed tradition of writing out goals for myself in the upcoming year. This is what I wrote:

Last year I came up with a list 15 goals I had for being 27. So to continue the new tradition of empowerment, goal-setting, positive energy, reflection and need to live and be–here is the list for working towards my 29th year of life:

1. Be thankful. There are so many people that go through life not knowing how they have impacted another’s life. I will thank someone different every month for everything I have appreciated about them.
2. Be responsible for my own happiness, to like myself for all that I am, and to make myself my best self because that is the one person I will always have.
3. To protect myself, I will take more self-defense classes.
4. To have more moments that include deep wonderful belly laughing. I want to laugh in away I can’t stop if I wanted to.
5. To continue becoming stronger. To break more PRs, 5k, 10k, maybe even if I dare say a marathon.
6. Travel to places I have never seen before and to be in a state of awe from this Earth and life.
7. Travel to places I know well and love with all my heart.
8. To attend the  second annual Kathy and Angie’s Fitness Adventure Camp.
9. To practice yoga 2-3 times a week. I feel like I can now practice and get what I need by myself but I want to find my yoga studio in California that I love. To return to my yoga home in Michigan.
10. To make my living space the safest and most welcoming place in this world to me. I will always feel warm, safe, and relaxed in my space.
11. To start really thinking about how to plan for the far out retirement years #RealLife #IamNearly30
12. To dance, to dance in front of the bathroom mirror, to dance with friends, to dance with friends, to dance with my man.
13. To be someone’s role model.
14. To keep with tradition to embrace where I am in life and finding inner peace with it.

Number one on my list pushed me to start stepping out of my comfort zone of silently appreciating people and drove me to tell the people that have truly made a huge impact on my life. I really have started the first part of this year with expressing my gratitude towards former colleagues, bosses, my current boss, and the teacher that inspired me to want to teach. Telling my former 7th grade English teacher what a life changing impression she left on me was powerful for me. So many times as a teacher you don’t feel appreciated for the amount of work you put into it and to be able to truly express to an excellent teacher and role model all they did made me feel good all over.

It might sound a bite far out there. However, in the last book I am currently reading, The Book of Joy, it talks about the pillars of joy. The 6th pillar is gratitude. The quote I really connected with is,

“Gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing. Thanksgiving is a natural response to life and may be the only way to savor it…it allows us to shift our perspective, as the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop counseled, toward all we have been given and all that we have. It moves us away from the narrow-minded focus on fault and lack and to the wider perspective of benefit and abundance.”

As we express our gratitude towards others it opens the door for gratitude to return to us. It allows people to see you as more open and your true self to be exposed. So you want your life to change for the better? You have the power to start express gratitude. Begin the cycle that will bring positive vibes and gratitude back to you. Start with writing down one thing you are grateful for each day, then practice day dreaming or meditating on something you often take for granted and truly appreciate all that it does for you in detail, then tell that person in your life that has changed your life what they have done for you. Once you begin to be grateful for all the things and people in your life you will start seeing life through a different perspective.

I have mentioned this before but Kathy and I will often have a phone date once to twice a week. This week we talked about the cycle of gratitude. How we want to spread thankfulness to the people that have really inspired us. We want to never forget the people that inspire us, change us, and drive us towards our own dreams. So with that said I am going to end this post with expressing my gratitude towards some of the people that have changed my holistic health self. I want to put a disclaimer on this…this does not even cover half of all the people that have inspired me.

1. Rebie, Dallas, and Johnny. In 4th and 5th grade these three people taught me how competitive I was and drove me to always want to improve my running. P.S. Rebie is still running and kicking major butt, most likely including mine 🙂

2. Katrina and Karena from Tone it Up. I loosely followed their program for a year or so before diving fully into both the workouts and nutrition plan. I am forever thankful for them having built such a positive and body loving fitness community. They are my only true celebrity crush. I would love to meet them someday so that I can thank them in person.

3. My Aunt Sandy. The older I get the more I see myself becoming a bit
more like her and the more she inspires me. I was able to visit her and my Uncle Ed this last spring and seeing her in her element is truly inspiring. There are many Americans that are on
medications for high blood pressure or anxiety. However, Sandy finds a natural and more holistic way to take care of herself. She consumes food that will nurture her and she has made yoga a part of her daily routine. Side note, her women/yoga cave is my dream!

4. Randi my lovely fitness check-in partner. I meet Randi in an education class in college and have been good friends ever since. She is someone that did not always have fitness in her life but after a chat with her doctor made a life decision to take better care of herself. Her drive is awe-inspiring. She went from someone that was nervous about running a 5k to someone telling me casually that she is going to run a half marathon in a month.

5. Of course my partner in blogging, Miss Kathy! In this last year she has made the decision to go after her dreams and I am lucky enough to be invited into her vision. About 5 years ago we were training and running together everyday around a local lake in our home town. As we ran we would talk about owning the lake and turning it into a fitness camp, we talked about owning our own gym, talked about always staying fit as we aged, and now instead of just talk we are slowly or quickly trying to take some of our dreams and turning them into goals and reality.

Ahh now that I started I can’t stop! My boyfriend just asked if I was writing a novel. Gratitude feels amazing, isn’t this proof! Other shout outs to people that I am sure will appear more in coming blogs: Andrea Bray, my dad Coach Flecher, Raquelle, Kayla Itsines, Amanda Foland, Misty (although mention a little here :-)), cycling Katie, my mom, Amanda McCraken, Chelsea Wagner, Coach Jackie, Coach Gunn…. so many. Grateful for them.

So here is the challenge if you made it to the end of this blog. Tell 1 person this week how grateful you are for something they have done.

Namaste,

Cali A