Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast. This is episode 20. Let’s get it going.

Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast, a podcast for highly successful visionary women who want more out of life. If you feel that ache of unfulfillment in your soul, you’re in the right place sis. Join life mastery consultant Lori A. Harris as she teaches you how to stop living for others and finally put yourself first. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Arigato gozaimasu, shukran, spasiba, gracias, grazie, danke Schoen, thanks. I absolutely love to travel. One of the first things I do when I know that I’m going to be going to a foreign land where their primary language is not English, I learn a few phrases of my host country’s language so that I can be as polite and hospitable as I can. It actually goes a very long way. People love it when you can just make a little bit of effort.

So the first things that I usually learn how to say are hello, goodbye, thank you, and please. You talk about opening doors. Your willingness to be polite in your home or your host country’s language will go a very, very long way.

So it is November. November 2021. We’re sliding into home base. We’re getting into the end of the year. It’s the holidays. Many people will be looking forward to Hanukkah or winter solstice, Christmas, or Kwanzaa. For me, this time of year is about Thanksgiving. It is my very favorite holiday. I’ve talked to you about gratitude before, but this is the time of year where it’s really on my mind. I love to stop and reflect and express my gratitude. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about this month. I hope you love it.

According to Wallace Wattles, when we practice gratitude, we avoid falling into the trap of feeling like there’s limited supply. Feeling as if the world is full of black. It keeps us in touch with the abundance of life that is.

I have a gift that I often give to my clients. I call it the gratitude currency. I have a quote on there that says, “gratitude is the most important currency, and the energy of gratitude works hand in glove with the energy of celebrating one’s accomplishments.” Gratitude is the most important currency, and the energy of gratitude works hand in glove with the energy of celebrating one’s accomplishments.

So I encourage my clients, as I’ve told you before, to celebrate what they’re grateful for and to celebrate the wins. To develop the capacity to say, “I am proud that,” because that is definitely the sign and the symbol of a grown ass woman. A woman who can accept a compliment with grace and gratitude, and a woman who can say, “I’m proud that I did that,” and celebrate the accomplishments of the day.

As we celebrate gratitude, I want to always give you opportunities and tips and tools that you can use to enhance your life. Because when you practice gratitude as we indicated last week in episode number 19, it actually does improve our health.

It has the capacity to regulate your immune system and your blood pressure. When you build the capacity to remember to notice what’s good, you’re able to see the good. It keeps your spirits lifted. So it’s something that I want to encourage all my listeners to do and to just start an experiment with it.

Now there’s a writer, an online writer named Alexandra Franzen. She has a book called 50 Ways to Say You’re Awesome. She has a format for sending a letter of gratitude that she shares with us in her book. In the book, she has a template.

She says, “Dear blank, you make my life awesome in so many ways that I can count. I’m not one to brag, but I can count really high. Here’s five for starters.” One, two, three, four, five. Then she suggests that you list them out one through five. Then close this cute little note with, “I bow to your awesomeness now and forever. Thank you.” Then you sign it with your say.  This is something that she shares with us in her book 50 Ways to Say You’re Awesome.

Now I believe that gratitude is the order of the day. It’s the one thing that you can always do to lift your spirits. One thing that I think is really important is to have the capacity to celebrate your own wins. To recognize the places in your life when you have done well, or you can merely recognize and celebrate the places where you stood. You’ve stood tall. You got through. You were resilient.

So I want to recommend to you that you pause and reflect and think about a time in your life where you made a decision. In making that decision, you change the course of your life. Doing something that in the moment that you did it, it was hard. It was difficult. You worried about your capacity to be successful in the task.

These are moments that I think it’s important for us to celebrate our own awesomeness. So I invite you to stop, pause, and reflect and think about a decision that changed the course of your life.

For me, I do this periodically. I often go back to the day I decided that it’s time for me to go to graduate school. It’s time for me to go back and leave this job that I love so much and pursue the next thing, the next expression, my next opportunity for service. I went to law school. That decision really changed the course of my life.

Was I scared? Yes. Did I know if it was going to all work out? No. Was it inconvenient? Quite frankly it was. But it was the next right thing for me to do. I’m so grateful to the young woman that lived inside of me that said yes to the thing that lit me up, that said yes even though it seemed scary. I went towards the thing that I suspected and I hoped would bring me joy even though I wasn’t certain, even though the path wasn’t completely clear to me and all laid out.

So at this moment if you had to think about a time in your life that you made a decision that changed the course of everything, what moment would you go back to in your life? What moment in your life can you look back at a younger version of yourself and appreciate the moves that you made? And know that the person that you are right as you listen to this podcast, you wouldn’t be that person but for that prior person who lived inside of you that said yes. Yes to more life. That said yes to curiosity. That said yes, I’m going to try. In doing that, they changed your life. Changed your history.

I encourage you to stop, reflect, pause, and just notice. You are the person you are today because you’ve gone through some things, and you’ve come to the other side. You are the person you are today because you’ve made certain choices. You can thank the person that came before you that lives within you that made it possible for you to be her now.

So congratulations and keep reflecting, keep accelerating, keep expressing your things. Not only to the other people in your life, but look in the mirror and say thanks to her, thanks to that person. Because they got it going in. They’re the ones that make it possible for you to sit where you are right now at this moment.

Finally I want to invite you to pause, reflect, and consider what would it take for you to be grateful in all things? In all things, give thanks. Even the things that are not your preference. Even the things that you wish hadn’t happened. Even the things that you would have loved to avoid. Be the person right here, right now who can say thanks for all of it because I know that it’s not happening to me. Everything is happening for me. It is the curriculum of my life for my growth and development.

For a bonus treat of gratitude, I invite you to consider getting a jar. We’re talking about the awesome this week. How can we bring and celebrate more awesome in our life? Awesome. What leaves you in a state of awe? Wow, just oh wow.

Now if we want to celebrate awesome, that requires us to go looking for it. Go looking for awe. Something to notice, to celebrate, and recognize the grandeur of life in and of itself. So we’re going to write it down on a piece of paper, and we’re going to put it in a jar. We can call it even a jar of awesome or a jar of awesomeness.

This is an exercise that’s recommended not only by Alexandra Franzen but also by author and podcast host Tim Ferriss. He says yeah it seems kind of goofy and kind of juvenile, but it’s something that he and I have both found to be very, very helpful. All you do is at the end of the day, you pause, reflect, and you actually look for the awesome that was your life today. You write that down. You can take a little slip of paper, write it down, fold it up, and drop it into your jar of awesomeness.

Then later you can review it. You can have a practice of when you want to review it. Maybe you want to do it weekly or monthly. You won’t remember the little, tiny things that happened that made life so good, but if you record it and then you reflect back on what you recorded and dropped into your jar of awesomeness, you extend the life of that one awesome event.

I suggest you do it before you go to sleep. It can be a modified version of your gratitude journal. What happened today that was awesome? Write it down and express your thanks. Watch what happens. You will be in a position to learn just how good it can get.

Well, thank you for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, I invite you to go back and listen to others. This is episode 20. Can you believe it? I started at the end of July, and we’re already up to episode 20. I hope that you find this podcast to be helpful and that you’re really enjoying it.

Go to Apple podcasts. Leave a review. I’m hoping for a five star review, but I want your honest feedback so I can make this an awesome podcast and give you great value. Remember, it’s your life. Make it a great one.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you want more information on how you can transform your life and do it quickly, visit loriaharris.com. See it on the next episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast.