I truly believe there is a gift in everything. This positive attitude is not just “rose colored glasses,” sometimes finding the silver lining is a lot of work. I am grateful to share this message with you and to hear your stories in return.
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Transcript:
Hi, I’m organizing and lifestyle expert Lorie Marrero and people comment frequently on my tagline at the end of my video where I talk about being grateful. I want to talk about the practice of gratitude and I practice that diligently and it can be a challenge to not only be grateful for the good things that happen but to find the gratitude in the not so good things. It’s easy to be grateful for a sunny day but what about a rainy day? I challenge myself this way and I look for what can be positive about something or what’s the silver lining. I believe firmly that everything contains a gift. Now it may take a while to see what that gift is and you may have to create that gift and you may have to spin something positive out of what’s happened, but you know we can be a victim of things sometimes and we can be a victim of society.
We can be a victim of culture. We can be a victim of an active aggression or violence and I was a victim of abuse by an extended family member when I was a child and it lasted for several years and it was a horrific thing and this happens to many people. It is shameful how many people this happens to. We can stay stuck there. We can be victimized and we can identify ourselves that way. We can lead with that. We can talk about that a lot or we can take an appropriate time to heal and mourn and reflect on this incident that happened or this circumstance and then we can move forward through a process which I think is really important. First you can move from being victimized to surviving. That’s an improvement and you take back some of your power. Surviving is just saying, I lived. I lived through it. That’s better than being a victim but I would like to suggest that there is a third state of being that’s beyond survival.
That is thriving in spite of what happened to you. What I would like to say is there is a key word here and a key question that can get you through that process a little faster. The key word is forward and the key question is, what now? This thing happened, whatever that is. What matters is what we learn from it and our response to it. Don’t let your struggle become your identity. Don’t lead with it. Tony Robbins always talks about this question, what story are you telling? When you meet somebody what story do you tell about who you are and what’s on your mind? It tells somebody a lot of information, what story you’re telling, what you’re leading with. If you’re leading with, I’m a victim of X, that’s a very dis-empowering place to be. Where I’d like to see everybody be is in a place of thriving, in a place of gratitude, where they’re looking actively for the gift or they’re making that gift happen.
What happened to me as a child was a terrible thing but I’ve been able to help a lot of people because that happened to me. It made me the person that I am today. It’s caused me to have a lot of empathy and understanding for certain people that I would never have understood before and there have been definite gifts of insight and contribution that I’ve been able to create out of that incident. I would like you to think about that and share in the comments what you’re grateful for that isn’t so apparent that is something that may seem counter intuitive to be grateful for. I want you to share with me what gifts you have found and as always I’ll see you next time. May you always be helpful and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been looking for the power of positive thinking or thankfulness.
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