start monday with gratitude

What’s been your greatest achievement to date?

What are you most proud of?

What have you done or been that, when you look back through the eyes of gratitude, you can say “Wow! That was me!”?

Remember this achievement in as much detail as you can and express gratitude for the ability and the opportunity that enabled you to achieve it.

We’re going to continue the rest of this week focusing on something you have achieved.

Today I invite you to think of and focus on something you achieved, against the odds. Through grit, determination, hard work, digging deep - whatever it may have taken – you kept moving forward until you achieved this.

What was it?

Remember the path you had to walk, the obstacles you had to overcome, recall as much as you can of your journey from the moment you first decided to achieve this to the moment you did achieve it.

Express gratitude for all you learned along the way, for the obstacles that stood on your path and helped you to grow stronger.

It’s always easier to think back to a big accomplishment and achievement in your life, to view the path you walked, the obstacles you had to overcome to achieve that you did.

But what about the seemingly small things you achieved in your life? The things that seemed to come easily and quickly? Do we discount them because they were easy to achieve? Of course not.

What was easy for you to achieve, would have been a challenge for someone else.

The challenging part for you is to, now, recall one of the smallest achievements in your life, give gratitude for how easy it was for you to achieve that, and how little effort it took.

You’ve considered your greatest achievement to date and also recalled one of the seemingly smallest achievements in your life.

What about everything you accomplished in between?

What accomplishments and achievements have you forgotten about simply because they weren’t your biggest achievements or because you haven’t taken time to remember the seemingly small and possibly deemed insignificant achievements?

Now’s your opportunity to recall one.

What achievement or goal have you accomplished in your life by putting in some effort; an achievement or goal which you deemed to be mediocre, nothing big enough to celebrate?

Now’s your chance to recall it in as much detail as possible and celebrate and give thanks for your ability to achieve it.

What have you achieved already today?

Have you completed a project you’ve been working on for a long time? Have you finished a small task that you’ve been putting off because there were ‘more important’ things crying out for your attention? Have you done something that came easily and naturally to you that, normally, you would gloss over and not celebrate?

What have you achieved today that you can express gratitude towards?

It can be a difficult road to walk when you want to achieve something when people around you either don’t think you’re capable, don’t support you, or don’t understand why you’d want to achieve it. Often, it’s so much easier to achieve something when you have support and people who believe in you as they will come forward and buoy you up when the road becomes challenging.

Think of an achievement you accomplished when others didn’t think you would, or you didn’t have the support you needed, or people didn’t know why you would want to pursue that goal.

Celebrate the journey you walked, alone, and express gratitude for your strength, resilience and abilities to achieve what you did.

It’s great and it lifts us up when we look back to our past and uncover accomplishments and achievements that we forgot to celebrate, both large and small.

But what about the present and very recent past? There’s always something to celebrate each and every day.

Look back through this week and celebrate and express gratitude for everything you achieved and accomplished.