Yey!! It's gratitude day!!!

So today's step in my 365 day challenge is to shower everyone and everything with gratitude. It is such a simple but powerful lesson.

Here is today's entry into the course journal:

I love gratitude. It is something that is free to give and can have such a powerful and profound effect on my life as well as the lives of those I express gratitude to.

365 days of growth! I'm so loving this program. Shout if you'd like me to invite you to join so we can see each other's progress. It isn't compulsory to share your journal on the site or on a blog either by the way!!!

I've had such an awesome day today and I'm pretty sure the extra focus on gratitude has helped. 😍❤️

I am passionate about learning new things. I often learn things quickly which is a useful skill. What I am not always so good at doing is mastering those skills!

I learnt about meditation a long while ago. I have dabbled repeatedly in it but never stuck with it. In an attempt to encourage myself to do more meditation a few years ago I made 'practice' my word of the year. I did meditate but it didn't really stick and I still wasn't committed.

A gorgeous friend of mine had an incredible experience with the word 'thrive' last year. Thrive is a word I have toyed with as my word of the year for a few years now but when it has come down to the final decision in December/January time I have shied away from it for various reasons.

This year I sat down and asked myself why I wanted to choose thrive and why I kept not choosing it. I journaled around a lot of things but one thing that stood out for me was the fact that I couldn't thrive because I was so empty inside.

When this year started I felt like my spirit was broken. I was shrinking away from challenges and felt isolated and lonely even in a big crowd of people. I desperately wanted to thrive. I desperately needed to feel better and I wanted my word to guide me towards thriving, hence I thought thrive would be my word. But it felt like pressure, like I "should" thrive. So I asked myself what I needed to thrive and the answer came back that I needed to nourish myself and my family and my marriage in order to even begin to thrive. I could see I had a lot of work ahead of me to get to where I wanted to be but decided to trust my inner voice that comes out when I journal.

I chose nourish.

And what a guide it has been. I feel whole again. I designed my year around nourishing myself, my children, my husband and marriage and my community. I thrive on hosting people, even though I'm exhausted afterwards I love being around people. So I am hosting home ed meet ups and fire circles every month to create a sense of continuity and community in my life. I am focussing on using hand in hand parenting tools to help nourish my relationship with my children and Andy and I are committed to date nights as close to weekly as we can manage.

Giving myself permission to nourish myself has been more challenging. In my learning journey I have discovered meditation, massage, affirmations, gratitude and morning pages. I have learnt to recognise my own passions and now know that I am creative and love painting and learning and zebras and reading and swimming, especially outdoors.

And every day this year I have meditated (I think I've missed two days since I started on 2nd January). It has nourished my mind, body and spirit in ways I could never have imagined. I have added other nourishing self care practices including a gratitude journal but it is the meditation that I find the hardest to fit in and the meditation that gives me most instant results. It is the powerful results that have given me the motivation to continue meditating and to find time to fit it in even when it is hard. I have used lots of different programmes but I repeated the free 10 day headspace meditation series for a long while if you are looking for somewhere to start your own practice. Good luck!

Wishing you incredible health, wealth and happiness with all my love

Vicki xx

I have just started a 365 day programme to help me grow as a person. I am beyond excited about this as it is totally free and already, on day 2 I can see the power of this course. An optional part of the exercise is to do a short journal type entry on what you think about that day's activity. I shared yesterday's on the site and have had an influx of comments so I thought perhaps I would share some of my journaling here for you guys too. I will just share it as I have written and only do a wee intro if it needs explanation as to what the activity was! If you fancy playing along send me your email address, it's totally free and if I invite you we can see each other's progress and comments easily. 😍

So today's activity was to notice where your thoughts have a lot of emotion attached to them because it is the emotionally charged thoughts that your unconscious mind uses to create habits. Now yesterday I got to spend some time with two of my beautiful friends without children!!! That was a treat! On the way back to my party we were discussing Zig Ziggler and how I can change my thoughts around my financial situation. And so today's exercise gave be a bit more clarity about what I am doing unconsciously when I am FRUSTRATED about our money situation...

Here is the journaling piece I did in response to the activity...

I've believed that thoughts create your reality for a while now but I have still continued to have issues with money. I have been FED UP with the lack of money despite doing every affirmation under the sun around plenty, abundance, enough. It just hasn't worked for me. Today's nugget has shown me that it is because of the emotion I am investing in our lack of money, those capital letters are the more powerful emotion than the "I have everything I need" type affirmations. It's time to put some powerful emotions into the gratitude I have for what I've got and let the anger and frustration that goes with my usual thoughts about money go. Ok. Bring it on.

I always like to assess where I am when I reach my birthday. It's a great time for me to reflect on the past year and coming year without the hype of new year celebrations to distract me. I thought I would share my thought process here with you all this year!

This last year has improved immensely for me and for my gorgeous wee family of creation. Last year I turned 35 and I was so unhappy about it. It felt like a big deal, leaving behind any closeness to my twenties by no longer being in my "early thirties". The main problem was that I had post natal depression but I was focused on the sense of stagnation I felt. I felt stuck and like nothing would ever change or improve. I started counselling soon after my birthday and by September we handed in our notice on our home. It is incredible how different life can look in a year.

Moving into this house I felt the hand of somebody bigger than me steering it. I fell in love with the house through a property search on the Internet and I still can't believe how smoothly the process went from finding it, to viewing it, to moving in 6 weeks later. We had the most wonderful housewarming party with boxes still stacked to the roof in the library. We had a beautiful, relaxed Christmas Day hosting all my family of origin during the day with a total of 15 for dinner!

I feel like since starting my journey with 'nourish' at my word of the year workshop at the end of December things have improved immensely for me. Our house is now our home, all the boxes except one are unpacked (that reminds me I need to do that!), we host monthly fire ceremonies and home ed activities. We've had parties for every excuse under the sun. We have good relations with our neighbours and class some as good friends which is something that never happened in the 5 years of living in our last house.

I have shifted most the weight I put on while in the pit of grief and then post natal depression. I feel so much happier in my body now and it is only getting better and better.

I have a new career ahead of me which is so exciting, to be able to help other people towards their own positive health and wealth stories.

Things are improving at home all the time as I implement tools to create closer connections with my beautiful husband and children.

So all in all being 35 turned out to be a great year!

And now I'm another year older. I have so much momentum I am so excited to see where I am a year from now!!!! I'm ready to get back in the water and train for some long distance swims...maybe get into the triathlons again as that was so much fun...I'm excited to see how much more I can improve my health and my families income and how many people I can help to create incredible health and wealth in their lives too...

I've worked hard this year to create this positive momentum and I've got a few blog post ideas percolating to share with you some of the things I have been doing to kickstart my life back into the direction I want it to go.

In the mean time I am so grateful that you are a part of my life and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.

With love and wishes of good health, wealth and happiness for you and your family

Vicki xxx