What You Appreciate Lavishly Expands Your Growth

Growth can be defined as changing for the better. And since the only constant in life is change, it's important to embrace it. But , what happens if you are not growing, learning or expanding?  The opposite of growth is stagnation, decline or destruction.

And you may even feel like you are dying inside. I've felt that way, and it's not fun. Incredibly painful actually.

A few years ago, I was SO stuck and stagnant that my life started to fall apart around me. I knew something had to change and shift but I was beside myself as to how.

Thankfully, I got help from several coaches and healers and was able to pull myself out AND stay out for good. Instead, I began to see my life shift and I began to grow.

It took a lot of mindset shifts for me and still to this day I am re-learning things from being so religiously conditioned. One of the shifts was to focus on possibility versus the circumstances in my life that I did not like. Instead of seeing the lack, I decided to choose to see the abundance and what was going well in my life.

I chose to focus on gratitude for things in my life that already happened. But I learned that made me have to wait for something to happen - past tense - instead of feeling appreciative in the present moment. Not to mention appreciate what was POSSIBLE. This shift took me out of stuck mode, waiting mode into a flowing and growing mode.

A gratitude journal is a good start. I hosted a gratitude challenge a few years back and found it quite exciting to pour out my gratitude for my many life's blessings. It was rather fun considering I had come out of a lot of shitty circumstances, but the difference was my focus. I chose to see the beauty, the lessons, instead of the ugliness and hardships.



So you see, what you focus on expands.  If you develop a daily practice of gratitude and appreciation, your life WILL appreciate. By focusing on what you appreciate, you will automatically begin to attract more of what you want into your life.

What you focus on DOES matter. It becomes the filter in which you experience life.

Here are some thoughts and ways you can start to embody this habit to help you on your own personal growth journey, so you can EXPAND, evolve, mature and flourish!

How To Appreciate Your Life, So You Can Grow & Flourish

1. Shift your intention and awareness!

As a woman on a mission for personal growth you must acknowledge your own role in how you choose to see life. So, when you find yourself focused on what it is you don't want in life, you get to shift. You can choose to take your thoughts off autopilot and focus on what you want as if it's already on it's way to you.

One way to do this is,  to stop for a moment to appreciate everything that you have accomplished and be incredibly grateful for the blessings that fill your life right now.

This helps to transform the present moment. Make sure to allow yourself to feel the energy and momentum building, as you do this. 

This is how you can begin to stand on entirely new ground and operate from an active appreciate versus a 'victim' of your circumstance.  Just remember whatever you give your positive intention to increases in value.

I know this doesn't always feel logical at first, but logic isn't the entire story. Logic comes from our current internal operating system (how we think and what we believe based on what shaped us in life) and we can REWIRE our thinking by gratitude and appreciation. Pretty cool right?


2. Be OPEN to the lessons your life is teaching you!

Gratitude allows you to grow by opening up to the lesson in any given circumstance. Even when they suck or are hard, we can choose to see through the lens of 'how can I grow from this experience?'.

Finding the good and the lessons in things allows us to move through them and on to new experiences. Which in turn helps you GROW vs. stay stuck and feel like a victim. You'll find you are better capable to navigate the obstacles in your life, and see that as a sign that you are on your way instead of in your way.

Appreciating all life's lessons allows you to rock your life my friends.

3. Be grateful for your past and appreciate where it has brought you to today.

Your past can help you grow if you allow it to. All your collective experiences in life, good, bad or indifferent have the power to transform you. You get to choose how though - for your highest good, or your destruction.

This one is a biggie for me. You see, I've spent a lot of time judging my life and my past. Despising it even. However, when I can shift my mind and see that my past has taught me some powerful truths and lessons that have shaped me - I can be grateful and turn that into a deep appreciation for where I am in life right now. I can choose to let the lessons I've learned be powerful catalysts for the most amazing growth. Even better, I can share that with others so they too can benefit.

Take Action!

Now that you understand the WHY and the HOW, here's an action step  you can take to incorporate appreciation into your daily practice.

• At the end of the day write three things you're grateful for, and three moments of grace or beauty in the day, deliberately summoning those things that made you feel good.
  
  With your hand over your heart, let those moments of beauty, those things that you're truly grateful for and appreciate, wash completely over you and fill you up.  Breathe and drink deep, and really absorb the blessings.
  
  

There are incredible benefits of writing your appreciations down with a pen to paper in a journal. Writing by hand increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, similar to meditation. It also sharpens your brain and helps you learn.

However, you can do this as a sort of affirmation and speak out loud your appreciations. I sometimes do this on my walks when I can't write it down. And then write it later during my journaling time. I journal 1-2 times daily and love going back and reading my points of gratefulness and appreciation, it brings me incredible joy and fills me up so full I feel like I could burst.

Try this action step for as little as 1 week, really commit to it and you may find you enjoy it so much you want to keep at it. Then go back and READ what you wrote down. When you really connect to this process, you'll first FEEL it's benefits and then as you continue you'll see it manifest many amazing things in your life, best of all you as the amazing incredible human you already are will FLOURISH.

The more you actively appreciate, the more you embody a state of appreciation.  This impacts who you show up to BE in your daily life. You can either flourish or wither, it's up to you!

Now, I'd love to hear from you! In the comments below, let me know if this post sparked anything new for you OR if you have your own story of the practice of active appreciation.