Ep 11. Count the Good Stuff

I’m Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 11, Count the Good Stuff.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own well-being and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.

Hey guys, it’s thanksgiving today right now. This episode comes out on thanksgiving day. How fun is that? So obviously of course I’m going to offer you some ways you can live your life with gratitude and count up all the good stuff all year long wherever you are, whatever day it is. You can just see things through the lens of thankfulness and what a huge difference it will make in your entire living experience.

But to start I want to tell you what I’m especially thankful for today. All of you who have taken the time to follow, rate and review this podcast. I read through each one often and all your words and encouragement mean so much to me. So please keep them coming and stick around until the end of this episode because I’m going to announce all five winners of my launch contest. It might be you. I hope it’s you.

So today let’s talk about gratefulness. Did you know that it’s a scientific proven fact that being grateful on purpose as a daily practice actually relieves your stress levels and creates positive feelings in you? Did you know that your eyes see what your brain is looking for? We can either pay attention to what we have or pay attention to what we don’t have.

And for some reason our brain is wired automatically to go to what’s missing. It counts all the ways we’re lacking and the things we’re losing, and how everybody else seems to have more. But none of that is true and it never serves us to think like that. My coach calls our brains, unreliable narrators. We really shouldn’t believe them. My unmanaged brain exaggerates the negative and minimizes the positive and I bet your does too. We must manage our thoughts on purpose. We must mind our minds if we want to live a life we love.

Living a life of abundance, and gratitude, and more than enough-ness takes practice. This is why we have gratitude journals, and gratitude exercises, and gratitude practices. We’re training our brains to look for the good stuff instead of the bad stuff. We’re teaching our brains awareness and awareness is everything. We’re practicing perspective and literally naming out loud what we are thankful for every single day. The more we count the good stuff, the more we acknowledge the good stuff, the more good stuff we see and the more good stuff there is. That’s how it works.

There is only an upside to gratitude, there is no downside. Gratitude doesn’t come from our circumstance. Gratitude is a feeling created by our thoughts. Gratitude fuels generosity. Being a grateful person is a mindset of goodness. You have a way about you that affirms all the goodness in the world instead of what’s wrong with it. When you look at your life as a whole you can easily identify the goodness. You carry with you a deep abiding feeling of gratitude whilst still acknowledging the complexities and challenges of being a human in this world.

The simple decision you can make to become a more grateful wife, more grateful mom, sister, friend, neighbor, co-worker has the power to change your entire life experience. Your commitment to practice gratitude will give you nothing but benefit. It’s a proven fact. It’s science. So listen up, this is true, grateful people accept all of life good and bad as a gift. Grateful people have a more positive disposition, and are more generous, and are not easily offended.

Grateful people don’t complain, don’t blame, don’t gossip, or play the victim. Grateful people are physically, emotionally, and mentally healthier, and happier, and live longer. Grateful people are not resentful or envious nor do they live in regret. Grateful people have thriving relationships and daily celebrations. Grateful people have lower levels of stress, lower levels of anxiety, and are able to bounce back much quicker when they have suffered a loss. Grateful people are more productive and have a higher sense of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love. I could go on and on.

Practicing gratitude as a way of being will give you the exact life experience that you want. It is the way to your dreams. I am pretty good at gratitude. I’ve been practicing for a very long time. So here are a couple ways that I exercise gratitude. The first one is I stay in my own business. I really have no idea what most people are doing and that’s very helpful in keeping my head in an abundant space. I don’t scroll social media. I don’t watch the news or read the newspapers. I don’t gossip or talk about other people.

My brain isn’t busy comparing, judging, and spinning. I have zero opinions about how other people are living. It’s simply not my business and I really don’t care. I think it’s wasted energy, it’s kind of boring actually. I created this way of being and disciplined myself to stay wrapped up in my own life and stay out of everyone else’s. I had to, it was the only way I could figure out how to flourish, and thrive, and be grateful for my amazing life. It took a while to get here. It took some detachment and some suffering.

I had to give up the idea that I needed to know what was going on in other people’s lives to stay connected to them. I don’t. I only need to know what is going on with me. I need to pay attention to me. I need to know what I want so I can be busy creating it. Turns out when I live this way it helps not only me but lots of other people too. It’s appreciating what I have, appreciating what I’m doing and appreciating what’s available and possible for me. Staying in my own business is an act of gratitude.

You can start practicing the same thing, get really honest with yourself, notice how often you’re thinking about what other people are thinking. Notice how often you’re worrying about what other people are doing. Come back to you, focus on what you’re thinking, focus on what you are doing without judgment. Think thoughts that create gratitude and let that gratitude be your fuel to create a life you love. Gratitude is a feeling created by our thoughts. Gratitude doesn’t come from our circumstances. Staying in your own business is in fact an act of gratitude.

Another habit I have that keeps me in the space of abundance and appreciation is that I do what I want to do. I used to do what other people wanted me to do but that didn’t work. Now I do what I want to do and it’s working. It’s an act of abundance and gratitude because I create goodness and value with my time and my energy. It’s the opposite of selfish, it’s the opposite of what we were taught, following the rules is boring.

Be more exciting than that, be amazing, create a life that’s amazing, create something that feels a bit impossible and unique. It feels a bit crazy, and people won’t support you and don’t believe you can do it. And maybe you don’t even believe you can do it, but you’re wrong, you’re all wrong. Maybe you’re a little like I used to be. I used to think that I should think like everyone else, I should be doing what was expected of me. I should go along with the norm. I should be small, and safe, and approved of but I was wrong. I was never supposed to be any of those things.

I was supposed to be exactly what I wanted to be. I was supposed to use my imagination and think anything I wanted to think and believe anything I wanted to believe. I was supposed to be unique, and big, and inquisitive, and brave. I was supposed to trust myself and you are too because the way everyone else is living their life has nothing to do with you. We don’t have to be or do anything we don’t want to simply because we’re afraid of being kicked out of the tribe, if we are kicked out, they are not our tribe.

We can use our inspired imaginations and set big goals and create an impossible dreamy life for ourselves. It starts with a thought, it starts with an idea or a belief. It starts with being willing to let things and people go to make space for something better. Stop rooting for everyone else at your own expense. Stop doing what you think you should do instead of what you really want to do. Let people be wrong about you. Let people think what they think and know it has nothing to do with you. And the truth is you guys, they’re probably never thinking about you anyways.

So go ahead and do exactly what you want. Do what lights you up. Do what you get excited about. Do what you’re good at. Do what you’ve always wanted to be good at. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I love, love, love being me. I have so much fun in my own life. I am grateful for every bit of it and look forward each day to what I can create. I do exactly what I want to and get the exact life experience that feels like a dream to me.

I really want you to do the same thing. I want you to experience the freedom and abundance that comes from doing exactly what you want. Doing what you want is in fact an act of gratitude.

So to wrap it up I want you to practice looking for the good stuff. Count your wins, three wins a day, how are you winning at life, because you are always winning, you just have to notice. When you lay your head on the pillow every night think on three things that you’re thankful for and what you’re grateful for, what you appreciate. Your eyes find what your brain thinks so start looking. Get in the habit of gratitude and open up to the abundance that is already inside of you and already all around you.

The more you find the more you’ll have, your life is full and amazing, practice noticing it and celebrating it. And I promise you, you will be changed by it in the most magical way. So yay for gratitude.

And now last but not least, I have our five winners of my podcast launch context. Are you ready? Hope you’re listening, Laurie Lucas, Tammy Peluga, Stacey Party of Five, Bonnie Vonetzer and Margo Fordonski. Congratulations my friends and thank you so, so, so much for taking the time to rate, review and enter the contest. I’ll be sending you a few of my favorite things in the mail so keep an eye out.

And I’m extra thankful to all of you who have been listening, and reading, and following along with me on this incredible journey. Happy, happy thanksgiving and I’ll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.