(Notes From A FB Live Sept 23 2018 ~ Click to Watch)

This morning I was thinking of the miracle that is my current default setting for life. Gratitude. It has never been my automatic before!

Almost all of my life my default setting was Fear. I “masked” up confidence as a safety mechanism so “you” wouldn’t challenge me and find out I was a fraud. I lived in “not yet dangerous” and my world was one of suspicion always waiting for the good things in life to be ripped away from me.

Then when I broke with delayed onset PTSD my default setting was Bewildered. I had no idea what was going on and frenetically flitted around trying to make sense of my world. After trauma treatment I had information that made sense to me and more importantly I knew people who were experiencing the same therefore I was “normal” in my brokeness.

Bewilderment gave way to Confusion. I struggled and survived in this state for many years while desperately seeking healing and it paid off!

Today my default setting is Gratitude! Still shadowy and somewhat fleeting but there is NO denying that it’s there. It is now the place I come back to as habit.

To me Gratitude is like a bridge to feeling better about myself. I can slip into a bad space where I am too busy focusing on what’s not right in my life. What’s not fair or what I think I am entitled to and not getting. Or my special little demon – comparing myself to others or even worse, comparing myself to the way I was before my brain injury!

Tony Robbins said to turn my expectations into appreciation and appreciation is a form of gratitude. Being able to see both sides of something or a situation is one thing, but also seeing the bridge between the two gives me power and control of what I do with it.

I love that today I can notice that I am not feeling good about myself and examine what is going on in the moment and then make an intentional decision to walk across the bridge into gratefulness or appreciation. Today I am one step closer to living on the side of bright sunny gratitude!

#gratitude #grateful #bridge #changeyourlife #attitude #choices #defaultsetting #bewildered #confused #ptsd #love