Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Daily Gratitude Challenge and Free Printable | Clutterbug Podcast # 55

Episode Date: June 16, 2018

Today I call a call with my coach and we discussed gratitude and how it can impact my happiness. I wanted to share my story with you and ask you to do the Daily Gratitude Challenge with me! You can find a the free printable on my wesbite www.clutterbug.com     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're talking about gratitude. So again, thanks for joining me. You guys know that I recently signed up for some coaching, some life coaching. And today was one of the calls. And I have to tell you, it was really. it just really resonated with me. It definitely hit home. So I wanted to share it with you in case this type of stuff, maybe something you're struggling with too. So one of my biggest struggles is,

it's really strange to say, but I'm just going to say it. The more success that I have, the more guilty I feel, the more gross I feel. And Jessica, who is this coach that I'm working with really hit the nail on the head. She said a lot of people, no matter what success they're having in life, whether they, you know, did a great craft and it looks cool, or they painted a bathroom and they really like the way it looks, or they're having financial success or whatever it looks like in their life. Sometimes, especially women, can feel bad, I guess sharing about that, talking about that. And it comes down to these two things that she said. We tell ourselves, who do you think you are and you're not good enough. So I definitely feel that way. I feel like

who am I to tell other people how to organize their home? You know, I've struggled for years and I'm still don't have everything completely under control. And so every time I achieve new goals and new success and even though my house is, I'm looking around, it's spotless and it's staying that way and I'm not using a lot of effort to keep it that way, I still tell myself, who do you think you are? And there's so many more people out there who are more organized and who are better at doing this. And so where gratitude comes in is what we talked about today was, why is it so hard for me to not only tell other people about accomplishments or feel great about accomplishments, but even when telling myself, why do I feel those icky, I'm not good enough, I don't really

deserve this feelings. And what it comes down to is I'm not really feeling grateful for what I have. I'm looking at, you know, what more I need to accomplish. The next, like I'll be successful when I achieve this next goal that's in my mind. And the truth is as soon as I achieve that goal, there's going to be another goal. There's going to be something else that I want to achieve. So happiness definitely is not coming from success. It isn't coming from money. What it really can come from is gratitude. And how this came about and how it really, how it hit me like a punch in the face is I've been going to a lot of these women's events. And there's women who are speaking in our community and they're just so proud of themselves and they're talking about their accomplishments and

the success that they've achieved and they're inspiring other people and when I step back and take a look I realize that success looks different for everyone and I was feeling really envious that they were feeling so proud of themselves and just able to be like a badass boss about their life, even though in my mind they hadn't reached the level of success that I'm telling myself I need to achieve in order to feel the way that they're feeling. But success looks different to everyone. And I want that. I want to feel like a badass boss and just proud of myself and feel, yeah, great because I feel like then I'll be happy. And it's not that I'm unhappy, but I always feel like my happiness has to be tired.

to something. So I'm going to be happy when I get a hot tub. I'm going to be happy when we go on vacation. I'm going to be happy one day when we get a bigger house. And instead what I need to realize is I'm so, so lucky right where I am today. So I need to practice being grateful for what I have today. That's where real happiness is going to come from. And that is where I'm going to get to a place where I'm going to feel confident in myself and really be able to help other people. Nobody wants organizing advice for somebody or life advice or anything from someone who is like, oh, I'm such a disaster. I don't have my life together. Here, I can help you. I mean, who wants advice from someone like that? And that's exactly what I'm doing. I mean, yes,

I looks like I have my life together. My business is thriving. I'm making a great income. I get to help other people doing things that I love that I'm super passionate about. And the whole time, I'm like, but what's next? But I'm not really doing a great job until I get to this level. It's just so crazy. And maybe you can relate.

And I think a lot of us feel this way too about our homes. We're looking at Instagram and we're looking at Pinterest or we're looking at friends and family and we're like, why is their home so beautiful? And I can't be happy with my house until it looks like that. Or I'm not going to, you know, feel organized or appreciate my house until it's to this level. You know, I'm not going to love my bedroom until I can afford all new bedroom furniture. I'm not going to ever get on top of things until I can buy the perfect planner. So it doesn't matter what the situation. I think we're all sort of looking to tomorrow.

We're looking for external things for happiness. What we really need to do is practice gratitude every single day. And this is going to be really hard for me. It's not that I'm an ungrateful person. It's that I feel like I'm not good enough and I tell myself who do you think you are. And I think the way to overcome this, she's so right, is to practice gratitude, to practice being just appreciative for what I have. And slowly everything else is going to fall into place.

All the other things I'm struggling with, I think when I'm really feeling grounded and grateful and just happy with what I have and not striving for something, else, that's when, yeah, true joy is going to find me. So I made, you know, I'm all with the printables, like I have an issue with the printables, but I made a daily gratitude printable. And I typed it out and I made it for myself. I printed seven copies and every morning this week I'm going to fill it out. And because I made it for myself, I thought I would share it with you guys. So it's going to be on my website. It's under my printables as a free daily gratitude printable. and it's also going to be under where you can find this podcast.

So right underneath, you can click the link and you can download this as a PDF, print it off and fill it out. If you don't even have a printer, you can just read it every day. Set a timer in your phone every morning when your alarm goes off to open it up and do the daily gratitude. So I wanted to share with what mine looks like. So every single morning, I'm going to list five things that I'm grateful for. and I'm going to share those five things with you now. I'm just thinking off the top of my head. I'm really grateful for you who's actually listening to this. I'm so grateful to the people who just

come and support me and listen to my podcasts or watch my videos or, you know, read my Facebook post or a part of my group because you're the whole reason that I get to do what I love. And you give me purpose to my day. You give me a really. reason for, yeah, just a reason for what I do. It's totally you. So I am grateful for you. Number two, I'm grateful for being debt free. We worked really hard to save and to live below our means and we didn't use credit and we don't use credit. We never bought anything unless we had the cash to pay for it and it was hard and now we're debt free and we're well in our way to retirement and I'm really grateful for that. I'm grateful for my kids because they're, I mean, they're awesome for so many

reasons, but they're also like mirrors to myself. You know, when I'm starting to feel crappy, I notice that they're starting to get sort of grumpy. And when I'm feeling elated, they're feeling elated. And when they're happy, I feel happy. We're just so tied together as this amazing little family. I'm just so, so grateful for it. is I'm grateful for my health. I mean, I'm a big girl. I'm overweight. I'm making small steps to lose weight and I've lost a couple pounds, but I'm healthy. I have Hashimoto's. I should, I mean, I do have an autoimmune disease, but I'm healthy. My blood pressure is great. I have low cholesterol. I don't have any major illnesses. I have a lot of energy. I just, I'm, I feel good. I feel good and

I'm grateful for my health because there's so many people out there struggling with serious illnesses. And five, you know what? I'm going to say it. I'm grateful for my home. I complain about it all the time and I wish and I hope for something else. But I have a great house and it suits our needs perfectly and it fills all the things that we need it to do and more. And we live on the water and I get to see. the ducks and the geese even though they wake me up with their honking, I sit in the backyard

and I feel joy. And I'm so grateful for my home. So the other part of this principle has daily self-care. So it's listing things that you're going to do just for you. So self-care looks different for everyone. For me, I'm going to sit outside for a half an hour every day without any distractions. Half an hour is a long freaking time when you have ADHD, man. I'm going to outside for half an hour and just like look at birds or some crap i don't know i've been doing it for the last few days and i find some people meditate i just can't i can't sit and like um and like light candles or whatever i don't know it feels ridiculous to me and i know it works for a lot of people but i feel like i'm getting the same thing from doing this i am like jonesing for my phone or my tablet while i'm out

there i want to be distracted i want to start like doing yard work or something but i force myself to sit and just look around and like look at stuff that's beautiful that I take for granted. So that's part of my daily self-care. I'm also going to start moisturizing my feet because my feet are nasty. There, I said it. And I just, I don't know why, but I take them for granted. So I'm going to write it down on my list. So I know that night tonight, I'm going to moisturize my feet.

And my last self-care is I'm going to take the dog for a walk every night. And I'm writing this on my list because, well, it's relaxing. It's good for the dog, but I need the exercise and I feel good when I do it and I make excuses for why I'm not. I'm busy or I have to do this or that. I have to mop the floor. No. My self-care list, just three things. That's going to be my top priority. And then I have a spot here on my principal for the person I'm grateful for today. And every day I'm going to change this and put a different person. but today I have to say that I'm really grateful for this coach Jessica. Yeah, just because she inspired me to do this daily gratitude because she pointed out some things to me that actually just made me like cry

when she said like who do you think you are. That just hit me. I don't know why, but it just it hit me because that's a huge thing that I'm dealing with every single day. It's when it comes to my job, my being a person. parent, just any time I'm doing anything in my life. If I'm having any type of success or I'm trying to give advice, I constantly am telling myself in the back of my head, who do you think you are? So I'm really grateful for Jessica to pointing that out to me because that's something I have to work

on. And the best part of my day, well, what made me happy today? Again, that coaching call, it really, it was a great part of my day is not over, you know, it's mid-afternoons. So, but that was awesome. That was really, really great. And I'm so happy that I put myself out there. And, you know, she was talking about life coach. I always rolled my eyes in the past and never thought about doing it before. But I took a chance.

And I'm so, so grateful that I did. I can definitely see this having a huge impact on my life. And I'm going to share every part of it with you on this podcast as I go through the learning and the growing. because it's giving me an opportunity maybe to help you as well, which is even better than, you know, learning myself. So, yeah, that was definitely the best part of my day. So I'm encouraging you. Maybe you don't have an issue with this,

but even if you don't feel like you do, I really want you to take a challenge for the next seven days and do a daily gratitude. I know we've heard this before. People have said it, but have you tried it? I know I haven't. I mean, I had a journal once where I was writing occasionally a couple things that I'm grateful for, but I didn't make it a regular practice.

And I think that's what you have to do to really have it sink in, to really start being actually grateful for what we have. So again, the printable is down below. If you're listening to this on iTunes or Google Play, you can just go to my website at clutterbug.com. and you're going to you're going to see it there with daily gratitude or you can search gratitude and this post will come up with this free printable so again thank you guys so much i i appreciate it and i'm going to keep posting i know it has nothing to do with clutter and organizing and

and i apologize for that but i still think it's really relevant to our lives and our home when we practice daily gratitude so thanks so much and i'll see you guys next time