Let’s talk about gratitude, appreciation, and making room to feel good in your life…
Did you know that optimism is a learned neurological function? That’s right you can train your brain to focus towards optimistic thoughts. When your brain is functioning from the place of optimism it makes so much for room for life to feel good.
It’s the difference between your prefrontal cortex or your amygdala driving your thoughts. I always talk about how your thoughts come from one of two places, love or fear. Well those two choices are linked to parts of your brain. I know I don’t usually talk about the anatomy of the brain, but knowing how your brain works is powerful. And just like knowing how your emotional heart works, knowing how your mind works, gifts you options and choices.
Gratitude and appreciation are the perfect tools to help your prefrontal cortex take the lead. Creating a gratitude practice helps you create a positive filter for how you see the world around you. It allows you to focus on what is already good in your life and that opens the door for even more of that good stuff to flow right on in.
Let’s look at 3 practices to help foster optimism & make room for you to feel good.
Practice 1: Gratitude
There are endless ways to create a gratitude practice. You can do it on your own. Maybe you write what you are grateful for every day in a journal or say it out loud in the shower. Whether out loud or with pen to paper you are making a commitment to yourself to reach for what you are grateful for on a daily basis. You can do it with a friend or loved one. Maybe you text or send voice memos to each other everyday. Gratitude and appreciation are contagious so it is a delight to get to share these kinds of things in a practice with a loved one. There really aren’t any wrong ways to do it so just start and see where you end up. Leave the judgment at the door and just play with it as much as you can.
I highly recommend that when you are write, say, or think about what you are grateful for that you take it deeper or to the next level of feeling.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say that I write down that I am grateful I got to sleep in this morning. That’s great, it sets a tone for what is good in my life and it helps me focus on the positive.
But what if I write down. I am so grateful that I got to sleep in the morning because it’s a joy to let my body wake up when it wants to wake up. It feels so decadent to feel cozy in my covers longer then normal. Snuggled up with all my pillows around me felt like a slice of heaven and I love that I got to start my day feeling so rested and comfy.
When I go deeper into why I am grateful for sleeping in I get to take myself back there. It shifts from just being a statement to being an experience. As an added perk going deeper like this release dopamine that wash over my brain, helping me to naturally feel good.
Practice 2: Positive Cellular Memories
Another great practice is collecting appreciation for your moments of happiness. I call moments like these Positive Cellular Memories. Again you can write these down, keep a log of them in your phone, or even just add them to whatever gratitude practice you have created. I have a positive cellular memory book. In addition to writing about the moment, I find that because I am a visual learner, if I add in photos it help me evoke the positive memory even more deeply.
When you recall these moments they too release dopamine in your brain helping save it to your long-term memory, so that you can mindfully savor these moments over and over again.
If you have taken any of my classes you know how much I love keeping these positive cellular moments in my “back pocket” and turn to them on a regular basis. Just like taking it deeper in the gratitude practice it helps to do that with your positive cellular memories too. Write about why it’s such a happy moment and how that happiness weaves into your heart. Try focusing on where the joy and enthusiasm of the moment sits for you.
One of my favorite Positive Cellular Memories is when I held my niece for the first time. She was so small and perfect but she evoked suck vast love. She made me an aunty, a role that is still one of my most favorites. It was if looking at her I could see into a portal of overwhelming love. The joy came from the deepest place within my heart and just overflowed. I would love her without condition forever. I would cheer her on and be her biggest fan no matter what. Looking into her sweet face it all made so much sense to me, life, the lineage of love, pain, joy it all fit together perfectly somehow.
If my heart feels heavy for whatever reason, that is one of so many positive cellular memories that I can turn to. I have it written down with our first photo together and I can pull it out and mindfully savor the joy and love of that moment in time. It eases up on any resistance that I might be experiencing and gets me right back to my heart. Or it quiets my amygdala and allows my prefrontal cortex to take over. No mater how you look at it, Positive Cellular Memories are a powerful tool, and creating a practice around them can make so much room for you to feel good.
Practice 3: Divine Winks of Love
Anther powerful practice is to plug into your connection to source, higher consciousness, and sprit. Now the language around that looks very different depending on your belief system. Having a practice where you are connected to that divine source energy opens the door for the divine to speak to you in tangible ways, like through sings and symbols. I like to call them Divine Winks of Love
In the weeks before my grandfather passed he was going in and out of consciousness. I was able to be with him and my grandmother but my heart was so heavy at the thought of loosing him. The strangest thing was happening through the heaviness, I kept seeing hearts everywhere. I had been noticing hearts showing up over the past few years, but this was a whole new level. Whether I was making food, on my jogs, sitting on the couch with my grandmother or doing yard work, there they were.
Each time I saw one I could hear a whisper saying things like; Alicia I am with you, you are not alone, don’t worry, don’t shrink down in this pain allow your heart to expand into what is possible, I am here. It was undeniable to me that it was my grandfather.
As he was shedding his humanity, his spirit was still very much alive and speaking to me. He was part of the higher consciousness and he was holding me in such a deep place of love. With each heart that my eye caught, he gifted me with the understanding that I was connected to him, to love, to source, and to all that is divine.
The heart was such an appropriate symbol for him to gift me…. I had been working on my book and brand about navigating the emotional heart. I had been mapping out people’s heart so they could understand just how much it was all working in their favor. My last name his HARTzell and my grandfather was just an obvious and funny man like that. It was a year of having conversations with him through those winks of love.
When my grandmother passed a year later, it once again rained hearts in my world. With each one now I could hear here voice too. I love that I have this magic filled symbol. Each sighting gifted to me from love. I see them when I am feeling supper connected and I see them when I am in a place of need. Sometimes I hear the whisper before I see the heart and some times I see the heart and wait for the whisper.
For me it the winks of love unfolded through my grandparents, but no matter where you are in your life you can, right now ask for symbols and signs. You have a lineage of ancestors, guides, angels, and source to help you feel that connection.
Once after visiting my uncle with my sister, we were driving and she said she was jealous that I was able to feel so connected to gramma and grampa. I told her that she too could be connected, she just had to ask and then be open. So we decided to pick an animal and them together stay open for them to show up. My sister decided that dogs, cat, turtles or birds were too obvious so we picked the giraffe. It was an animal that was out of the everyday realm of experience.
We just stayed open as we drive to our Aunts house. We talked about the connection to the divine and to our ancestors. Obviously driving through the open roads of California we didn’t see a giraffe wondering around. But sure enough we walked into my aunt’s house and when she offered us a drink, there it was right on the refrigerator…. a giraffe magnate holding up a family photo. It was the first of many giraffes we would see on that trip.
Ask and then stay open. You are so much more connected then you allow yourself to think about on a moment-to-moment basis. You can create a practice simply by picking a symbol then asking and staying open. Whether you have something specific you want help with or you just want to feel connected just ask and keep your mind and heart open. Help me know, help me see, gift me a moment of undeniable connection… Let your heart speak and then take a breath and stay open.
Now I would never tell you to not feel all your feelings or suppress anything. But I will remind you that you don’t have to take orders from the negative feelings or thoughts that show up. You don’t have to let them take over. You can acknowledge them, use them to help clean up things that might not be working for you, or feel them for as long as you need to, but always know you have a choice to create thoughts that feel a little better.
Ok, if you are reading this I am sending you so much love. I have such a deep appreciation for you. I am so grateful that we get to create together and that my heart gets to dance with your heart. I love that you can take the words I share and find a way to make them your own. The light in my heart shines even brighter knowing that you are with me at the table of humanity. Thank you for being you and for being here with me.
