We talked about changing directions in January. How do we change directions? What do we need in order to make a change… the right change?

I think it starts with the fact that we are thinking…enough! I can’t keep going down the same road expecting to not arrive at the same place I’ve been driving down each and every single time. The fact is I need to change the direction and that starts with knowing where I’ve been.

What brings me to the same place each time? Hope, fear or maybe an unwillingness to really look myself square in the eye and ask what the heck am I thinking? Perhaps the job isn’t fulfilling what once was, perhaps that relationship I’ve been in isn’t really providing me with the safety and honesty I’ve been needing. Perhaps my diet and exercise just aren’t cutting it anymore. So where again, am I supposed to start with changing directions? What if I told you “It’s not that you have to find the answer, that indeed, you ARE the answer’. What would you say to that?

The answer is I’m grateful to have known the roads I’ve travelled thus far. The answer is I am happy and grateful to have ridden the wave of what I perceived as being in the perfect job or known the perfect partner or working out consistently and eating all the right things. I am happy and grateful for all the things that went right and allowed me to grow and learn more about myself. I am happy for all the things that went wrong so I could learn how to be resilient, how to incorporate patience and tolerance and even for finding a voice I didn’t think I had. I am also happy and grateful to be able to discern that the job no longer makes my heart pump or the relationship suddenly doesn’t satisfy the safety I require. What that does is allows me to see the magic in what greatness was in my life and see that I now am aspiring to be, to have and do more.

Each step we take in this life creates magic, it is a step and a step and another step. We don’t jump the steps or take the full staircase at a time, we take steps to where we want to go. The old job, relationship and health routine was a step to where we needed those things, those situations and those people. A step forward means we couldn’t have had or been there without making those steps first. For those first steps, I’m extremely grateful. The more deliberately I think and say these magic words ‘ Thank you”, the more gratitude I feel. The truer the feeling, the more sincerely grateful I am, the faster the directions will change in my life.

What are you happy and grateful for in your life?

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them’. – John F. Kennedy