I am the luckiest person I know.
I am my own best friend. I love myself and my life. I am happy to be alive. It is a fabulous feeling especially since this wasn’t always true. I have fantastic friends and family, a job I absolutely adore and four dogs who keep me busy and love to cuddle. Most importantly I love me. Exactly who I am. I have come to understand and believe that I am perfectly imperfect – and so are you.
I will often ask people to make a list of all of their good qualities, or all the things they are grateful for in their life. Typically, this is a pretty short list. (Alternatively, I may ask someone to develop a list of 10 good things about themselves. It’s often a real struggle for people to come up with 5 or 6 items). But when I ask people to make a list of all that is difficult, challenging or just not “right” in their life – the list is enormous!!
We tend to get caught up in the drama of the moment (NOT the same as “living in the moment”). Instead of celebrating our life and the joy of being able to experience living, we create mental lists of everything that isn’t going well. And at times, that list can be pretty overwhelming.
This doesn’t mean that the list is incorrect – but it does mean that our focus is off. We are in charge of our own perspective. For every item on the “crappy” list, we actually have at least twice as many positives, but we have learned to take those for granted and skip right over them. We have developed a perspective of seeing the good only when it’s out of the ordinary, and lost sight of the ordinary good throughout our day and throughout our lives.
The cool breeze that wafts over you just when you think you will turn into a puddle from the heat. The rain that nourishes the flowers. Eating a bagel (or better, a gluten-free bagel!) Seeing the stars. Paying a bill. The thousands of little actions that make up each day are all opportunities for gratitude, and opportunities for awareness.
When we start to pay attention to what is “right”, to moments of appreciation, we are able to move closer to loving and living in the moment, instead of reacting to the moment. And when we start to live our lives in the moment, we begin to notice how very lucky we are.
We start to smile more, notice the world around us, and begin to give precedence (perspective) to all those little moments of success. We don’t lose our knowledge of what’s difficult, but we don’t give it so much weight. We start to see each moment, rather than the quick, negative overview. And that’s when we come to the most important realization of all – we are perfect in our imperfection. We step fully into seeing ourselves as the luckiest person we know – because we have the opportunity and the privilege of truly living our lives. How awesome is that!?!
Dr. Kristina Hallett is a psychologist and shaman at Wisdom Healing. For more information on altering your perspective, living lucky and the life you’ve been waiting for, contact Kristina by clicking here.
