September 25, 2025 • 32 mins
I'm gabbing about why I think I have such a hard time expressing gratitude and shifting my mindset around I do have vs. what I don't have. I also fangirl over the new season of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of a solitary Creature.
I'm Steph and I'm starting this week off with my recommendation corner.
I'm gonna throw a little bit of a curve ball because I think a lot of my recommendations up to this point have been very self helpy and all that stuff.
But I am throwing in a bit of a random one this week, and that is the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
(00:25):
A new season kicked off this week.
It was a juicy first episode.
These gals.
These gals never disappoint.
Now, some of you may be thinking, isn't this a podcast about healing and self-reflection and growth? Yes, which is why I am talking about Housewives.
Any real fan of the show knows that these women, while very superficial.
(00:47):
Often very manipulative and they generally act scummy.
But for all the backstabbing, there are genuine, beautiful moments, especially in Salt Lake City and deserves a shout out.
For instance, Mary who is problematic don't get me wrong, all these women are problematic.
But I do feel like they are whole people where they are problematic, but they also have some redeeming qualities.
(01:11):
That's what keeps us watching, honestly.
But anyways, for instance, Mary is dealing with pill addiction in her family, and both she and her son have been very open and honest about those struggles and some of the most emotional, honest.
Vulnerable moments I've ever seen in reality television.
There's another woman, Whitney, who has dealt with addiction issues in her family as well, her father to whom she is now estranged again and had to basically go no contact with.
(01:39):
There's a lot in this franchise about spirituality and moving away from the Mormon faith or struggling to be a good Mormon in a mor in a modern world.
Whitney has also dealt with a lot of childhood trauma and sexual abuse, there's a lot that they're going through.
There's a lot that they talk about.
Very open and honestly, and it's really refreshing.
I think they talk about a lot of things that most people who aren't on TV don't even talk about amongst their own family.
(02:06):
And to be someone who's like putting it out into the universe, knowing fully well that you're gonna be judged for it, I think it's very brave and I think it not only makes for good television, I think it makes for compelling television.
And I think there seems to be in every franchise, someone like someone's story you can always relate to.
But Salt Lake City is, for me in particular, they talk about a lot of very a lot of really serious things.
(02:30):
For all the nonsense that these women create.
They are still human and they still bring storylines with hope and courage and openness, which I love.
So that's a big recommendation for me.
If you've never watched Housewives I, I recommend Salt Lake City and give it a try and go in with an open mind.
And also it's sometimes it's just mindless and fun.
Like they're not talking about this stuff every episode.
(02:51):
So sometimes it's like we just need a dumb show to watch sometimes.
And I think that's a great one.
Another thing I wanna recommend is paint by numbers.
So I got into paint by numbers because I am in my granny era getting ready for a long winter hibernation.
(03:12):
And I'm actually loving it.
Like I live in a house that I my great grandmother.
Lived in and her mother was really into paint by numbers.
And so I have all of these old vintage paint by numbers all over my house.
And I thought I would pick one up and try it just because I can't paint, I can't draw, I can't do any of that.
(03:34):
Like I'm the type person who draws something and go, oh, did your kid draw that? And it's Nope, I don't have kids.
I drew that.
It looks like a 5-year-old did it, but I'm 38 years old, painting and all that was definitely out of my wheelhouse.
So I thought I'll try to paint my numbers.
That would be a cute tradition to the other women in my family have done it, like I can give it a try.
So I found one it was very overwhelming.
(03:56):
I was expecting there to be like five or six colors.
There's 32.
It was wild to me.
It's taken me forever to do it, but.
I on the weekends when I watch TV or something, instead of feeling bad because it's 1:00 PM on a Saturday and I just wanna watch, somewhere I turned pretty, I can pull out my paint by numbers and watch TV and feel like I am having like a fun Saturday and also like doing something a little productive and not just wasting a whole day watching tv.
(04:24):
So it's been really fun and it's a nice kind of creative outlet, especially for someone who likes painting but isn't good at it and is constantly embarrassed by it.
This feels very doable.
Pick up a paint by numbers and try a new hobby.
On a more serious note, I wanna recommend a book called Addict in the Family by Beverly Conyers.
Honestly, I recommend it for everyone.
(04:45):
I think everyone should read a book on addiction in their lifetime, regardless of whether or not they have a loved one struggling with addiction.
I think the more people educate themselves on the disease of addiction and how it impacts the person and their decision making, I think the better equipped we'd all be able as a society to effectively treat addiction.
(05:07):
But more importantly, not more importantly, but also be able to see addicts as human beings again.
I love this book so much.
I'm reading it for personal reasons obviously, but it is so informative.
I love the anecdotes of the different people that they use as like case studies that they talk about.
It's so relatable, but I also love that they talk a lot about the science of the disease and how it works and.
(05:31):
Not just how the disease impacts the addicted person, but also how they talk a lot about the addiction of the loved ones, being addicted to the person that has an addiction.
What you can do altogether to Better understand boundaries and take care of yourself.
And also kind of like let the addict be and, and, and figure their own stuff out.
(05:54):
And I don't know, it's just it has been very eye-opening.
Like I'm someone who I've always thought I already knew I knew addiction was a disease that wasn't new to me.
But a lot of the science that they talk about and the neuropathy, was eyeopening.
I feel like I heard addiction is a disease so much of my life just through like health class and growing up and just being a person out in the world, that that wasn't, it was almost like I had become desensitized to what that phrase actually meant and what was actually meant by disease and how that actually impacts the person's.
(06:31):
Brain function and, and their critical thinking skills and how cravings work and stuff like that.
It's like you feel like you know it, but then when you actually really read about it, it was like, oh, I, was close, but I wasn't on the mark.
And the nuances are very important.
So I recommend all of that.
So my word of the week for this week was gratitude.
(06:55):
And it's been a very, it's been a very interesting, I feel like I'm gonna say eyeopening about 5,000 times.
'cause I think I've already said it about four, but it has been a very eyeopening week for me.
The first thing I realized, and it was more of a question because I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try to like practice gratitude more.
So I've been listening to other podcasts and.
(07:17):
Reading articles about gratitude and all this stuff, and the first thing that I encountered was why is gratitude such a difficult thing for me personally? Why do I have such a wall up around gratitude? I like to think of myself as someone who is appreciative and thankful, both of which I think lay a foundation for gratitude.
(07:41):
I think gratitude is something a little bit more deeper and almost spiritual and thankfulness and appreciation is a little bit more superficial, and reactive and gratitude is more, I feel like gratitude is maybe somehow leans more like proactive.
I dunno, it, it, they're just like not the same thing, one is just deeper than the other.
But so why is this such a difficult thing for me? Why do I have this wall up? And what I think I've come up with is that for the longest time, I've always associated gratitude.
(08:12):
Maybe not gratitude the word specifically, but like the feelings that gratitude and like the principles that gratitude are sort of like based on.
I've always associated that with settling, like with complacency.
I'm grateful for what I have, so that means like I'm not gonna strive for more.
I'm not really sure where this came from.
(08:32):
I may, I have some ideas.
I think in part.
It's just that hardened new Englander attitude that is very pervasive in the area where I live, but also just really deeply rooted in my family.
I just have a very pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kind of new Englanders.
There's no time.
I always talk about how when I do.
(08:52):
Projects, like house projects and DIY projects or whatever with my family, it, they're like drill sergeants.
And that's what it feels like.
My parents are not Protestants, but it does make me think of like the Protestant ethic, if you've ever heard of that.
And I read about it in one of my classes and, it's just like this, I, it's basically that saying of idle hands is the devil's playground or whatever.
(09:13):
That's should be my family's motto that should be on a crest somewhere because it's just part of how I grew up.
No one in my family is particularly good at just being and being still.
It's always go, go, go.
I feel like we don't really celebrate.
Accomplishments, especially little accomplishments like, you'll get a pat on the back and then it's okay.
(09:34):
Now that thing's over with.
Let's get started on the next thing.
Like for instance, my parents spent all summer a few years ago, they spent all summer restoring a boat, and they've probably been on that boat only a handful of times since, not because they don't like being on that boat.
But because they can't bring themselves to prioritize joy over tasks, and they always tell themselves if we spend the summer taking care of, X, Y, Z, then we'll have more time next summer to be on the boat and go on vacation.
(10:02):
But there's always another project that's gonna pop up.
You're not gonna go a full year, and there's just.
Gonna be no other house project that you have to do.
Another example.
My parents spent all summer, this summer working on their backyard.
It's beautiful.
Now.
They built this really nice deck, this like new awning.
They created a play space for their dog.
They redid all the landscaping and I think they even like redid part of their fire pit.
(10:26):
And I bet they haven't set out there once.
I think if you can't sit still, if you can't bask in the hard work you just did, you're not really present.
And if you're not present, then I think it makes it really hard to make space for true gratitude.
I think gratitude requires a certain amount of you gotta stop.
(10:52):
Bask, so that, that was like the first eye-opening thing.
And then I started thinking okay, well what am I, what am I grateful for? Now that I've recognized that this wall up, let's like really look at gratitude.
So what am I grateful for? The world is chaotic.
I'm not where I wanna be in my life, physically, emotionally, financially, just across the board.
(11:14):
I do think I do myself a terrible disservice when I just focus on what's ahead versus what I have now.
When I compare myself to other people, it's so easy to lose sight of what I have which for me is actually like quite a lot, even though I float through most days thinking I have nothing and I am living the most desperate, destitute life imaginable.
(11:38):
And it feels like that for sure, because I think, everything is relative.
But when you really look at the nuts and bolts of my life, I have a good life.
It doesn't mean that it's easy.
It doesn't mean that there's not struggles.
It doesn't mean that there aren't a roller coaster of emotions that I cycle through every single day, but.
(11:59):
Net everything, like it's net positive.
Like I have a lot in my life to be grateful for, and I found it's really easy to be grateful for the big, obvious things in my life.
Life.
Things like my health, my freedom, even though that feels like it's dwindling by the day.
For my very idyllic childhood, even though it had its tumultuous moments and there are things that you always have to work through in therapy like that goes back to my childhood.
(12:28):
I grew up in a cute, small, new England town where I rode my bike around town.
I didn't have to worry about getting snatched up.
I can't believe I didn't get kidnapped, frankly, for all the shit I was doing as a kid and nobody watching me whatsoever.
But my childhood was pretty great because of all of that.
(12:48):
Like I got to ride my bike from sun up to sundown.
I had a pool.
I was one of the few people in town that had an actual pool.
I had a lot of freedom.
My parents gave me a lot of freedom.
There was a time of my life when I looked back on that childhood thinking, no one was paying attention to me.
All the attention was going to my brother and sister because, they needed to be disciplined all the time.
(13:10):
They had learning disabilities.
Like I felt like no one was ever paying attention to me.
All the attention went to my brother and sister, and that is true, but at the same time, it taught me to be.
So independent and so self-reliant, and I have good instincts for the most part, and I think a lot of that was developed in this childhood that I had.
I had to keep myself occupied.
(13:31):
I developed a lot of great.
A great love of books.
A large, I think largely because I had to keep myself occupied all the time.
No one was gonna be reading me a lot of books at night.
My parents were dealing with trying to get my brother and sister to go to sleep, so I read myself to sleep, but that helped me, and it sounds sad, but there's some really great things that came out of that.
(13:53):
So I had a really great childhood.
All in all, I had a great childhood.
I lived in the same.
Town as both sets of my grandparents.
So I've been incredibly close to my extended family most of my life.
I'm grateful for my friends and most of my family.
Sure.
Can.
They be really annoying.
Of course, everyone's family is really annoying, but I know that they're there for me and I know that they love me and I know that they care about me, and that's lot more than what a lot of other people have.
(14:23):
Do my parents handle when I'm talking to them about issues in my life? Do they handle it well? No.
Are they definitely people who like are trying to fix and solve and they can't let you ever just like vent? Absolutely.
That is so annoying.
Even when you tell them like, could I just vent and not have you give me a solution? The answer is always no.
I will always give you a solution.
That is very annoying, but.
(14:44):
I am still grateful that I have them because I know a lot of people don't have that at all, and I don't know what I would do without being able to know that if the worst thing ever happened to me.
I have someone there regardless, no matter what.
I am so grateful that I have that.
And frankly, I'm grateful to be alive because there have been a few really dark times in my life where I honestly didn't think that I would be.
(15:10):
So the point is, is that it's easy to be grateful for the big, big things in our lives.
Those are a little bit easier to grasp because they hold so much weight in the grand scheme of things, but it's.
More difficult for me to pinpoint the little things that I'm grateful for, but I think that's where most of the focus needs to be because it's the little things that get you through day to day.
(15:31):
Like I was listening to a podcast and I'm gonna try to remember who this person was.
The name alluded me and I wrote it down and now I can't find it.
So I will figure it out and.
Maybe mention her on the next podcast, but I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts.
And it's a Housewives podcast, but they also do bonus episodes that focus on various different things.
(15:53):
And one episode that they did, I wanna say a year ago, was about it was more about manifestation, but the person that they had on.
I think her name was Alicia Soul, and she is like a manifestation person, but she was, she had started this, the session talking about the importance of gratitude in her own story, and I basically long story short, she even due to a bunch of things, she had to move back home with her parents.
(16:16):
She didn't have a job.
She didn't know what she was doing.
She felt very lost and she just started to rebuild her life simply by starting with gratitude.
So she she said that she was so low that she basically.
Had the only thing she could be grateful for to start with was just a hot cup of coffee in the morning.
(16:36):
Like she loves coffee and she was grateful that she was able to make herself a cup of coffee.
If I have nothing else today, at least I got to enjoy this one moment of my day.
I got to do something I really truly like for myself today and today.
That might just have to be enough, and when I first heard it, I thought, that's so stupid.
That was so condescending.
(16:57):
And so dismissive.
But when I really thought about it, I was like, that's actually very powerful because I take so much stuff like that for granted all the time.
And it wasn't until I was really thinking about gratitude a little bit more this week that I went back and re-listened to that episode.
It was really profound because I was like, you know what I, I should be grateful that I got to have a cup of coffee today.
(17:23):
There are people starving around the world.
And I am, I can't even just appreciate the small things.
I have so much.
I have so much.
My life is actually very full.
I have friends, family, cats.
I have food.
I have more food than I need every week.
I have electricity.
I have a job.
I have money.
(17:44):
I am slowly building my savings.
I have a retirement account.
I have.
A library of books in my house.
I have access to healthcare.
I have access to dental.
I have a car.
I have more material possessions than I know what to do with.
Like I, I'm not saying like all those things are like good, but I'm just saying like my life is full.
(18:04):
My friend reminded me, over the summer, my friend reminded me that when.
I might have mentioned this on the podcast, like the first episode, but I didn't really, it was just like a fleeting thought.
But I was telling her I think just like how fed up I was with my whole life and how defeated I felt.
And she reminded me, and I don't remember saying this to her, but she, this is definitely something I would've said though.
(18:28):
anyway, she said when I first met you.
You said all you wanted was a house at the bottom of a mountain filled with cats, and she was like, and you have that now.
You have this little house in a ski town at the foot of the White Mountain National Forest with four cats like that.
It is sort of like, what more could you really want? At the end of the day, like at the end of the day, I love being in this house.
(18:54):
I love logging off of work and getting to hang out with these cats, and it's a simple, it's a simple love, but.
I, it really took someone else saying there's people that would die for that.
There's people that are wanting that and you have it and you're so lucky.
And I just thought, yeah and I need to be more appreciative of that.
I need to like, think about those things because it's so easy, especially in the culture that we live in, where it's like consume more, consume more, go, go, go.
(19:20):
To forget that.
It's what am I really like working for? Like I've spent years and years saving up, scraping by.
Making the smartest financial decisions that I can because I wanted to buy a house because I wanted to have some stability because I wanted that house at the base of a mountain filled with cats, and I have it.
And it might not be the thing that other people want for themselves, but it is something that I have wanted consistently for a very long time in my life, and I've got it.
(19:47):
And I might not have the kids that I've always wanted.
I might not have.
A relationship right now that I've wanted.
I might not have the job that I want.
I might not have the income that I want, but at the end of the day, like this is, this is pretty killer.
This is pretty good.
And I know that all of those things are big things, but it is, but my life is made up by a lot of small things.
(20:10):
It is.
That cup of coffee that I have in the morning, it is being able to have a warm hot shower.
It is being able to to appreciate, like I don't live in a food desert so I can make a nice, healthy meal for myself, a nice home cooked meal for myself.
I'm grateful that I have.
The opportunity and means to be able to connect with you all, there was another thing that I thought a lot about this week, which is that, for a long time I thought gratitude was a crock it that instead of comparing.
(20:42):
Yourself to people who have more than you, it's a way of comparing yourself to someone who has less than you.
And I guess I always felt that that was gross, and that somehow you're taking pleasure in someone else's misery but then I realized I was doing it wrong.
And I think there's still.
I think there for me, and this is probably just something that's as I get, I think gratitude is like a growing practice.
(21:04):
So that's where I'm starting at now is like I am starting in this place of like comparison.
I don't love that, but I think that's like an easy place to start, and I think gratitude is like a snowball effect.
Like you have to start somewhere.
I'm not trying to be like, ha ha better than someone else.
I think it's just like an awareness.
I think you have to have an awareness of sometimes it's privilege that you have.
(21:27):
Sometimes it's.
Just that like you've worked really hard for certain things and you happen to have more than somebody.
So don't lose sight of the fact that there's someone out there that would like, love to be sitting in this chair right now, that for someone else, this is their dream.
And taking a moment to appreciate that.
Like I have, I, I do have just that.
That's it.
That's the statement I do have.
(21:49):
The one thing that I also get tripped up with gratitude is that I feel like gratitude is like a slippery slope into manifestation culture, and I'm not nagging on manifestation culture as a whole because I do buy into the principles of manifestation and I'm not a manifestation expert, so please take this with a grain of salt.
(22:09):
But I do believe in the principles of manifestation, like attraction and that, positivity begets positivity.
If you think about yourself if you, if you think about you want what you want, if you visualize it, it helps it come to fruition.
I believe all of, all of that.
But there's something.
Insidious at times about manifestation culture.
And like I said, gratitude just feels like it's a slippery slope into manifestation, but I don't like how it's been so commoditized and commercialized and feels so capitalistic and at times predatory.
(22:41):
If it works for you, great.
Like more power to you.
I just personally don't love the idea of paying a monthly subscription for millions of courses that constantly upsell you on the next course and constantly leave you in the state feeling like you're less than because you didn't like bio.
There's, I just don't like the, sometimes it gives off like charlatan vibes I believe in the principles, but something about it feels predatory.
(23:03):
I feel like gratitude is always the thing that is necessary to start manifestation, but I feel like it's also like a trap sometimes.
I feel like sometimes people use it as like a trap.
So that's, I don't know, that's maybe like a hot take for some people.
But I think some people are very genuine and some people I think.
Are getting so wrapped up in the commercialization of, the law of attraction and manifestation that it almost feels like, mm, are you guys even living by the principles that you're like really supposed to be teaching now? Because it sometimes it just feels like a money grab.
(23:38):
Anyways, that was a bit of a tangent, but and again, like if you have the money for it and if it helps you and it brings you joy, if it centers you all the more power to you.
I just there's just something icky about some of it for me, and maybe I just haven't found the right people who are teaching those things that draw me into it and it doesn't make me feel icky.
Going back to gratitude specifically, there was something that I realized I think I was doing with practicing gratitude that I, I bet a lot of people also do this, which is only focusing on the good things in my life.
(24:10):
And rather than paying attention and being grateful for the things that aren't perfect, because I also don't wanna be in a mindset where like I'm just like hyper focusing on everything positive and then pushing aside the stuff that isn't great and not still being grateful for some of the bad stuff.
And there are some things that never deserve gratitude, but there are some things that so let me give you an example.
(24:32):
I'm not where I wanna be with my career.
My romantic relationship has fallen apart, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn more about myself.
I am grateful that both of these things have pushed me into this self-growth journey that I'm on.
I'm grateful for what I've been able to learn about myself and being given the opportunity to change what I feel needs to be changed and embrace things about myself that I haven't really embraced before.
(24:58):
I am grateful that I have a support system to help me navigate these really turbulent times.
So do you see where I'm going with it? There are things that are not great in my life, but it doesn't mean that they're, I'm not still getting something good from them.
It's like there's not, there's still there's still a silver lining, like another example would be my house.
(25:19):
So I just spent forever talking about how much.
I love and appreciate this house.
In the grand scheme of things, I think this house is amazing and I'm grateful that my great-aunt gave me an amazing deal on my great-grandmother's house.
I spent so much time here as a kid.
This house is filled with memories.
I feel so comfortable in this house.
It's a cute, small, cozy, old millhouse, it's like the perfect amount of house for me.
(25:43):
I don't need a big house.
It's perfect.
And I'm grateful that I got a good deal on it because there is no way I would've ever been able to afford a house in the White Mountains region in New Hampshire as a single person, maybe five years ago, but absolutely not post COVID.
So I'm grateful for what it gives me now.
I'm also really grateful for what it's gonna give me in the future in terms of equity and re resell value and what that means for the next phase of my life, because this house is probably the only thing that's gonna give me a leg up in that the downside.
(26:17):
Of this house is that it's a total fucking pain in the ass.
It's a pain in the ass house.
Everything is shoehorned together and it's like fif.
There's only been one person, two people that have lived in this house who've owned this house.
My great-grandmother and me, and.
You would think that 4,000 people lived here because there are, everything is made so cockeyed and weird and just thrown together, and every time I work on something, there's some disaster.
(26:50):
I come into the electricity needs to be completely rewired.
Every, there are so many little problems.
I don't think the foundation is set quite right.
I live on a piece of land the size of a postage stamp.
I can, I feel like I can hear my neighbors sneezing.
So it's a pain in the ass.
Anytime I try to do anything in this house, there's like an issue.
But all of, and most days, all I focus on is the pain in the ass part, how much this house sucks.
(27:15):
But at the end of the day when I take a step back, I go.
I still have that house at the base of a mountain filled with cats.
That's pretty fucking cool.
And I know a lot of other people who live in Millhouse, just like mine, like on the same street, on the next street over.
They have all have the same floor plan.
They were all made at around the same time.
And I know that there are people that are like E.
(27:37):
That place is a fucking disaster.
Like I know my place sucks, that place is 10 times worse.
So I'm glad I don't have like those problems to deal with.
I still have my own problems, but it could be a lot worse.
So I need to be grateful that I only have the problems that I have and I don't have all the problems I could be having.
I will say that sometimes I think there's a fine line between gratitude and optimism and finding silver linings.
(28:00):
I'm still kind of like learning that balance.
But I'm someone who leans negative and catastrophizes.
Literally everything.
So it's important for me to push myself to find silver linings where I can in order to find more opportunities for thankfulness and gratitude.
So that's why like a lot of my, again, like I don't know if finding silver linings is like the best way to go about gratitude all the time.
(28:22):
I don't think it's supposed to constantly be like a compare and contrast kind of situation, but that's where I'm at right now because I'm so new to it.
And so I'm excited to see how.
That practice of gratitude evolves over time as I learn more about it, as I learn to recognize the things in my life I can be grateful for.
So this is just a starting point take it, take all of this in that spirit, I wanna close this conversation around gratitude.
(28:46):
About the power of gratitude as like kind of a concluding thought.
So I have noticed that when I'm actively thinking about gratitude, that those days are just better.
They're not perfect by any means, but I am able to like power through with a smile on my face.
I'm still tired, I still hate my job, I'm still scared about money.
But it makes everything a little bit more bearable and I think.
(29:10):
Maybe it feels that way because it's okay, a good thing is just always within reach.
So it's just a really reassuring thought.
It feels like the, the pain and annoyance is maybe like temporary and that if you keep your eyes open and you're open to the idea of gratitude and you're open to the idea of optimism and you're open to the silver linings.
(29:31):
That the more you're open to it, the more they present themselves and the more you can see them and the more you practice it.
I just feel like.
The more good you're able to see out of a day versus all the bad that you see in a day.
And I feel like it takes some power away from the bad stuff and gives more power to the good stuff, if that makes sense.
(29:52):
It makes the bad not seem quite so bad.
It makes the bad not seem quite suffocating, and it makes room for the positive and the lightness that I think we all need every day.
So yeah, this was like a, this was like a, in all, a pretty good week.
I will say have I been crying constantly about a lot of things? Sure.
I'm going through a lot, but it was nice to try to find myself catching moments of.
(30:17):
Thankfulness and gratitude and positivity.
So before I end today, I guess we should talk about what my word of the week is next week.
So I, I'm thinking it's body and I.
That might sound weird, but I just, I feel like my body needs a jumpstart.
I've been focusing so much on the mental stuff.
I feel like my brain needs a, needs some time to like keep processing everything that's been happening.
(30:41):
Like it really doesn't have the capacity right now to throw like another mental thing at me.
I also feel like physically I need.
I just need a jumpstart, like it's fall, winter will be here before I know it.
And I'm a total hibernator.
I don't do any winter sports.
I do not leave my house in the winter.
I don't like the snow.
I don't like the cold.
That's not why the winter is not why I live in New England.
It's just something I tolerate and endure and I've been sitting around a lot feeling sorry for myself and I just feel like my body is begging for more movement.
(31:11):
So I really wanna spend the next week really thinking about my body, feeling more connected to my body, finding ways to infuse my, my day to day with movement.
So the word of the week next week is body.
We'll get into all of that stuff next week.
I do think next week will be a doozy body is a big old word for me in my life.
(31:33):
It's a big looming presence.
It's something I think about every day.
So I think next week will be an interesting episode.
And full disclosure, we'll probably run, it could probably run a little long.
I could talk about my body all day long, and the body mind connection all day long.
That's the word of the week for next week.
Thank you everyone for tuning in yet again.
Really appreciate it.
(31:53):
Once again, you can find me on Instagram at Solitary Creature Pod.
Follow me on there and oh, as always, please send me a dm.
Let me know how you're liking the show what you're learning, what.
How you connected to the word of the week this week? How are you practicing gratitude in your life? Maybe there are things that you're grateful for that I haven't thought about that I could be more mindful of.
(32:16):
Let me know and I will see you next week.
Okay, thanks everyone.
Bye.
Bye.
Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of a solitary Creature.
I'm Steph and I'm starting this week off with my recommendation corner.
I'm gonna throw a little bit of a curve ball because I think a lot of my recommendations up to this point have been very self helpy and all that stuff.
But I am throwing in a bit of a random one this week, and that is the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
(00:25):
A new season kicked off this week.
It was a juicy first episode.
These gals.
These gals never disappoint.
Now, some of you may be thinking, isn't this a podcast about healing and self-reflection and growth? Yes, which is why I am talking about Housewives.
Any real fan of the show knows that these women, while very superficial.
(00:47):
Often very manipulative and they generally act scummy.
But for all the backstabbing, there are genuine, beautiful moments, especially in Salt Lake City and deserves a shout out.
For instance, Mary who is problematic don't get me wrong, all these women are problematic.
But I do feel like they are whole people where they are problematic, but they also have some redeeming qualities.
(01:11):
That's what keeps us watching, honestly.
But anyways, for instance, Mary is dealing with pill addiction in her family, and both she and her son have been very open and honest about those struggles and some of the most emotional, honest.
Vulnerable moments I've ever seen in reality television.
There's another woman, Whitney, who has dealt with addiction issues in her family as well, her father to whom she is now estranged again and had to basically go no contact with.
(01:39):
There's a lot in this franchise about spirituality and moving away from the Mormon faith or struggling to be a good Mormon in a mor in a modern world.
Whitney has also dealt with a lot of childhood trauma and sexual abuse, there's a lot that they're going through.
There's a lot that they talk about.
Very open and honestly, and it's really refreshing.
I think they talk about a lot of things that most people who aren't on TV don't even talk about amongst their own family.
(02:06):
And to be someone who's like putting it out into the universe, knowing fully well that you're gonna be judged for it, I think it's very brave and I think it not only makes for good television, I think it makes for compelling television.
And I think there seems to be in every franchise, someone like someone's story you can always relate to.
But Salt Lake City is, for me in particular, they talk about a lot of very a lot of really serious things.
(02:30):
For all the nonsense that these women create.
They are still human and they still bring storylines with hope and courage and openness, which I love.
So that's a big recommendation for me.
If you've never watched Housewives I, I recommend Salt Lake City and give it a try and go in with an open mind.
And also it's sometimes it's just mindless and fun.
Like they're not talking about this stuff every episode.
(02:51):
So sometimes it's like we just need a dumb show to watch sometimes.
And I think that's a great one.
Another thing I wanna recommend is paint by numbers.
So I got into paint by numbers because I am in my granny era getting ready for a long winter hibernation.
(03:12):
And I'm actually loving it.
Like I live in a house that I my great grandmother.
Lived in and her mother was really into paint by numbers.
And so I have all of these old vintage paint by numbers all over my house.
And I thought I would pick one up and try it just because I can't paint, I can't draw, I can't do any of that.
(03:34):
Like I'm the type person who draws something and go, oh, did your kid draw that? And it's Nope, I don't have kids.
I drew that.
It looks like a 5-year-old did it, but I'm 38 years old, painting and all that was definitely out of my wheelhouse.
So I thought I'll try to paint my numbers.
That would be a cute tradition to the other women in my family have done it, like I can give it a try.
So I found one it was very overwhelming.
(03:56):
I was expecting there to be like five or six colors.
There's 32.
It was wild to me.
It's taken me forever to do it, but.
I on the weekends when I watch TV or something, instead of feeling bad because it's 1:00 PM on a Saturday and I just wanna watch, somewhere I turned pretty, I can pull out my paint by numbers and watch TV and feel like I am having like a fun Saturday and also like doing something a little productive and not just wasting a whole day watching tv.
(04:24):
So it's been really fun and it's a nice kind of creative outlet, especially for someone who likes painting but isn't good at it and is constantly embarrassed by it.
This feels very doable.
Pick up a paint by numbers and try a new hobby.
On a more serious note, I wanna recommend a book called Addict in the Family by Beverly Conyers.
Honestly, I recommend it for everyone.
(04:45):
I think everyone should read a book on addiction in their lifetime, regardless of whether or not they have a loved one struggling with addiction.
I think the more people educate themselves on the disease of addiction and how it impacts the person and their decision making, I think the better equipped we'd all be able as a society to effectively treat addiction.
(05:07):
But more importantly, not more importantly, but also be able to see addicts as human beings again.
I love this book so much.
I'm reading it for personal reasons obviously, but it is so informative.
I love the anecdotes of the different people that they use as like case studies that they talk about.
It's so relatable, but I also love that they talk a lot about the science of the disease and how it works and.
(05:31):
Not just how the disease impacts the addicted person, but also how they talk a lot about the addiction of the loved ones, being addicted to the person that has an addiction.
What you can do altogether to Better understand boundaries and take care of yourself.
And also kind of like let the addict be and, and, and figure their own stuff out.
(05:54):
And I don't know, it's just it has been very eye-opening.
Like I'm someone who I've always thought I already knew I knew addiction was a disease that wasn't new to me.
But a lot of the science that they talk about and the neuropathy, was eyeopening.
I feel like I heard addiction is a disease so much of my life just through like health class and growing up and just being a person out in the world, that that wasn't, it was almost like I had become desensitized to what that phrase actually meant and what was actually meant by disease and how that actually impacts the person's.
(06:31):
Brain function and, and their critical thinking skills and how cravings work and stuff like that.
It's like you feel like you know it, but then when you actually really read about it, it was like, oh, I, was close, but I wasn't on the mark.
And the nuances are very important.
So I recommend all of that.
So my word of the week for this week was gratitude.
(06:55):
And it's been a very, it's been a very interesting, I feel like I'm gonna say eyeopening about 5,000 times.
'cause I think I've already said it about four, but it has been a very eyeopening week for me.
The first thing I realized, and it was more of a question because I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try to like practice gratitude more.
So I've been listening to other podcasts and.
(07:17):
Reading articles about gratitude and all this stuff, and the first thing that I encountered was why is gratitude such a difficult thing for me personally? Why do I have such a wall up around gratitude? I like to think of myself as someone who is appreciative and thankful, both of which I think lay a foundation for gratitude.
(07:41):
I think gratitude is something a little bit more deeper and almost spiritual and thankfulness and appreciation is a little bit more superficial, and reactive and gratitude is more, I feel like gratitude is maybe somehow leans more like proactive.
I dunno, it, it, they're just like not the same thing, one is just deeper than the other.
But so why is this such a difficult thing for me? Why do I have this wall up? And what I think I've come up with is that for the longest time, I've always associated gratitude.
(08:12):
Maybe not gratitude the word specifically, but like the feelings that gratitude and like the principles that gratitude are sort of like based on.
I've always associated that with settling, like with complacency.
I'm grateful for what I have, so that means like I'm not gonna strive for more.
I'm not really sure where this came from.
(08:32):
I may, I have some ideas.
I think in part.
It's just that hardened new Englander attitude that is very pervasive in the area where I live, but also just really deeply rooted in my family.
I just have a very pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kind of new Englanders.
There's no time.
I always talk about how when I do.
(08:52):
Projects, like house projects and DIY projects or whatever with my family, it, they're like drill sergeants.
And that's what it feels like.
My parents are not Protestants, but it does make me think of like the Protestant ethic, if you've ever heard of that.
And I read about it in one of my classes and, it's just like this, I, it's basically that saying of idle hands is the devil's playground or whatever.
(09:13):
That's should be my family's motto that should be on a crest somewhere because it's just part of how I grew up.
No one in my family is particularly good at just being and being still.
It's always go, go, go.
I feel like we don't really celebrate.
Accomplishments, especially little accomplishments like, you'll get a pat on the back and then it's okay.
(09:34):
Now that thing's over with.
Let's get started on the next thing.
Like for instance, my parents spent all summer a few years ago, they spent all summer restoring a boat, and they've probably been on that boat only a handful of times since, not because they don't like being on that boat.
But because they can't bring themselves to prioritize joy over tasks, and they always tell themselves if we spend the summer taking care of, X, Y, Z, then we'll have more time next summer to be on the boat and go on vacation.
(10:02):
But there's always another project that's gonna pop up.
You're not gonna go a full year, and there's just.
Gonna be no other house project that you have to do.
Another example.
My parents spent all summer, this summer working on their backyard.
It's beautiful.
Now.
They built this really nice deck, this like new awning.
They created a play space for their dog.
They redid all the landscaping and I think they even like redid part of their fire pit.
(10:26):
And I bet they haven't set out there once.
I think if you can't sit still, if you can't bask in the hard work you just did, you're not really present.
And if you're not present, then I think it makes it really hard to make space for true gratitude.
I think gratitude requires a certain amount of you gotta stop.
(10:52):
Bask, so that, that was like the first eye-opening thing.
And then I started thinking okay, well what am I, what am I grateful for? Now that I've recognized that this wall up, let's like really look at gratitude.
So what am I grateful for? The world is chaotic.
I'm not where I wanna be in my life, physically, emotionally, financially, just across the board.
(11:14):
I do think I do myself a terrible disservice when I just focus on what's ahead versus what I have now.
When I compare myself to other people, it's so easy to lose sight of what I have which for me is actually like quite a lot, even though I float through most days thinking I have nothing and I am living the most desperate, destitute life imaginable.
(11:38):
And it feels like that for sure, because I think, everything is relative.
But when you really look at the nuts and bolts of my life, I have a good life.
It doesn't mean that it's easy.
It doesn't mean that there's not struggles.
It doesn't mean that there aren't a roller coaster of emotions that I cycle through every single day, but.
(11:59):
Net everything, like it's net positive.
Like I have a lot in my life to be grateful for, and I found it's really easy to be grateful for the big, obvious things in my life.
Life.
Things like my health, my freedom, even though that feels like it's dwindling by the day.
For my very idyllic childhood, even though it had its tumultuous moments and there are things that you always have to work through in therapy like that goes back to my childhood.
(12:28):
I grew up in a cute, small, new England town where I rode my bike around town.
I didn't have to worry about getting snatched up.
I can't believe I didn't get kidnapped, frankly, for all the shit I was doing as a kid and nobody watching me whatsoever.
But my childhood was pretty great because of all of that.
(12:48):
Like I got to ride my bike from sun up to sundown.
I had a pool.
I was one of the few people in town that had an actual pool.
I had a lot of freedom.
My parents gave me a lot of freedom.
There was a time of my life when I looked back on that childhood thinking, no one was paying attention to me.
All the attention was going to my brother and sister because, they needed to be disciplined all the time.
(13:10):
They had learning disabilities.
Like I felt like no one was ever paying attention to me.
All the attention went to my brother and sister, and that is true, but at the same time, it taught me to be.
So independent and so self-reliant, and I have good instincts for the most part, and I think a lot of that was developed in this childhood that I had.
I had to keep myself occupied.
(13:31):
I developed a lot of great.
A great love of books.
A large, I think largely because I had to keep myself occupied all the time.
No one was gonna be reading me a lot of books at night.
My parents were dealing with trying to get my brother and sister to go to sleep, so I read myself to sleep, but that helped me, and it sounds sad, but there's some really great things that came out of that.
(13:53):
So I had a really great childhood.
All in all, I had a great childhood.
I lived in the same.
Town as both sets of my grandparents.
So I've been incredibly close to my extended family most of my life.
I'm grateful for my friends and most of my family.
Sure.
Can.
They be really annoying.
Of course, everyone's family is really annoying, but I know that they're there for me and I know that they love me and I know that they care about me, and that's lot more than what a lot of other people have.
(14:23):
Do my parents handle when I'm talking to them about issues in my life? Do they handle it well? No.
Are they definitely people who like are trying to fix and solve and they can't let you ever just like vent? Absolutely.
That is so annoying.
Even when you tell them like, could I just vent and not have you give me a solution? The answer is always no.
I will always give you a solution.
That is very annoying, but.
(14:44):
I am still grateful that I have them because I know a lot of people don't have that at all, and I don't know what I would do without being able to know that if the worst thing ever happened to me.
I have someone there regardless, no matter what.
I am so grateful that I have that.
And frankly, I'm grateful to be alive because there have been a few really dark times in my life where I honestly didn't think that I would be.
(15:10):
So the point is, is that it's easy to be grateful for the big, big things in our lives.
Those are a little bit easier to grasp because they hold so much weight in the grand scheme of things, but it's.
More difficult for me to pinpoint the little things that I'm grateful for, but I think that's where most of the focus needs to be because it's the little things that get you through day to day.
(15:31):
Like I was listening to a podcast and I'm gonna try to remember who this person was.
The name alluded me and I wrote it down and now I can't find it.
So I will figure it out and.
Maybe mention her on the next podcast, but I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts.
And it's a Housewives podcast, but they also do bonus episodes that focus on various different things.
(15:53):
And one episode that they did, I wanna say a year ago, was about it was more about manifestation, but the person that they had on.
I think her name was Alicia Soul, and she is like a manifestation person, but she was, she had started this, the session talking about the importance of gratitude in her own story, and I basically long story short, she even due to a bunch of things, she had to move back home with her parents.
(16:16):
She didn't have a job.
She didn't know what she was doing.
She felt very lost and she just started to rebuild her life simply by starting with gratitude.
So she she said that she was so low that she basically.
Had the only thing she could be grateful for to start with was just a hot cup of coffee in the morning.
(16:36):
Like she loves coffee and she was grateful that she was able to make herself a cup of coffee.
If I have nothing else today, at least I got to enjoy this one moment of my day.
I got to do something I really truly like for myself today and today.
That might just have to be enough, and when I first heard it, I thought, that's so stupid.
That was so condescending.
(16:57):
And so dismissive.
But when I really thought about it, I was like, that's actually very powerful because I take so much stuff like that for granted all the time.
And it wasn't until I was really thinking about gratitude a little bit more this week that I went back and re-listened to that episode.
It was really profound because I was like, you know what I, I should be grateful that I got to have a cup of coffee today.
(17:23):
There are people starving around the world.
And I am, I can't even just appreciate the small things.
I have so much.
I have so much.
My life is actually very full.
I have friends, family, cats.
I have food.
I have more food than I need every week.
I have electricity.
I have a job.
I have money.
(17:44):
I am slowly building my savings.
I have a retirement account.
I have.
A library of books in my house.
I have access to healthcare.
I have access to dental.
I have a car.
I have more material possessions than I know what to do with.
Like I, I'm not saying like all those things are like good, but I'm just saying like my life is full.
(18:04):
My friend reminded me, over the summer, my friend reminded me that when.
I might have mentioned this on the podcast, like the first episode, but I didn't really, it was just like a fleeting thought.
But I was telling her I think just like how fed up I was with my whole life and how defeated I felt.
And she reminded me, and I don't remember saying this to her, but she, this is definitely something I would've said though.
(18:28):
anyway, she said when I first met you.
You said all you wanted was a house at the bottom of a mountain filled with cats, and she was like, and you have that now.
You have this little house in a ski town at the foot of the White Mountain National Forest with four cats like that.
It is sort of like, what more could you really want? At the end of the day, like at the end of the day, I love being in this house.
(18:54):
I love logging off of work and getting to hang out with these cats, and it's a simple, it's a simple love, but.
I, it really took someone else saying there's people that would die for that.
There's people that are wanting that and you have it and you're so lucky.
And I just thought, yeah and I need to be more appreciative of that.
I need to like, think about those things because it's so easy, especially in the culture that we live in, where it's like consume more, consume more, go, go, go.
(19:20):
To forget that.
It's what am I really like working for? Like I've spent years and years saving up, scraping by.
Making the smartest financial decisions that I can because I wanted to buy a house because I wanted to have some stability because I wanted that house at the base of a mountain filled with cats, and I have it.
And it might not be the thing that other people want for themselves, but it is something that I have wanted consistently for a very long time in my life, and I've got it.
(19:47):
And I might not have the kids that I've always wanted.
I might not have.
A relationship right now that I've wanted.
I might not have the job that I want.
I might not have the income that I want, but at the end of the day, like this is, this is pretty killer.
This is pretty good.
And I know that all of those things are big things, but it is, but my life is made up by a lot of small things.
(20:10):
It is.
That cup of coffee that I have in the morning, it is being able to have a warm hot shower.
It is being able to to appreciate, like I don't live in a food desert so I can make a nice, healthy meal for myself, a nice home cooked meal for myself.
I'm grateful that I have.
The opportunity and means to be able to connect with you all, there was another thing that I thought a lot about this week, which is that, for a long time I thought gratitude was a crock it that instead of comparing.
(20:42):
Yourself to people who have more than you, it's a way of comparing yourself to someone who has less than you.
And I guess I always felt that that was gross, and that somehow you're taking pleasure in someone else's misery but then I realized I was doing it wrong.
And I think there's still.
I think there for me, and this is probably just something that's as I get, I think gratitude is like a growing practice.
(21:04):
So that's where I'm starting at now is like I am starting in this place of like comparison.
I don't love that, but I think that's like an easy place to start, and I think gratitude is like a snowball effect.
Like you have to start somewhere.
I'm not trying to be like, ha ha better than someone else.
I think it's just like an awareness.
I think you have to have an awareness of sometimes it's privilege that you have.
(21:27):
Sometimes it's.
Just that like you've worked really hard for certain things and you happen to have more than somebody.
So don't lose sight of the fact that there's someone out there that would like, love to be sitting in this chair right now, that for someone else, this is their dream.
And taking a moment to appreciate that.
Like I have, I, I do have just that.
That's it.
That's the statement I do have.
(21:49):
The one thing that I also get tripped up with gratitude is that I feel like gratitude is like a slippery slope into manifestation culture, and I'm not nagging on manifestation culture as a whole because I do buy into the principles of manifestation and I'm not a manifestation expert, so please take this with a grain of salt.
(22:09):
But I do believe in the principles of manifestation, like attraction and that, positivity begets positivity.
If you think about yourself if you, if you think about you want what you want, if you visualize it, it helps it come to fruition.
I believe all of, all of that.
But there's something.
Insidious at times about manifestation culture.
And like I said, gratitude just feels like it's a slippery slope into manifestation, but I don't like how it's been so commoditized and commercialized and feels so capitalistic and at times predatory.
(22:41):
If it works for you, great.
Like more power to you.
I just personally don't love the idea of paying a monthly subscription for millions of courses that constantly upsell you on the next course and constantly leave you in the state feeling like you're less than because you didn't like bio.
There's, I just don't like the, sometimes it gives off like charlatan vibes I believe in the principles, but something about it feels predatory.
(23:03):
I feel like gratitude is always the thing that is necessary to start manifestation, but I feel like it's also like a trap sometimes.
I feel like sometimes people use it as like a trap.
So that's, I don't know, that's maybe like a hot take for some people.
But I think some people are very genuine and some people I think.
Are getting so wrapped up in the commercialization of, the law of attraction and manifestation that it almost feels like, mm, are you guys even living by the principles that you're like really supposed to be teaching now? Because it sometimes it just feels like a money grab.
(23:38):
Anyways, that was a bit of a tangent, but and again, like if you have the money for it and if it helps you and it brings you joy, if it centers you all the more power to you.
I just there's just something icky about some of it for me, and maybe I just haven't found the right people who are teaching those things that draw me into it and it doesn't make me feel icky.
Going back to gratitude specifically, there was something that I realized I think I was doing with practicing gratitude that I, I bet a lot of people also do this, which is only focusing on the good things in my life.
(24:10):
And rather than paying attention and being grateful for the things that aren't perfect, because I also don't wanna be in a mindset where like I'm just like hyper focusing on everything positive and then pushing aside the stuff that isn't great and not still being grateful for some of the bad stuff.
And there are some things that never deserve gratitude, but there are some things that so let me give you an example.
(24:32):
I'm not where I wanna be with my career.
My romantic relationship has fallen apart, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn more about myself.
I am grateful that both of these things have pushed me into this self-growth journey that I'm on.
I'm grateful for what I've been able to learn about myself and being given the opportunity to change what I feel needs to be changed and embrace things about myself that I haven't really embraced before.
(24:58):
I am grateful that I have a support system to help me navigate these really turbulent times.
So do you see where I'm going with it? There are things that are not great in my life, but it doesn't mean that they're, I'm not still getting something good from them.
It's like there's not, there's still there's still a silver lining, like another example would be my house.
(25:19):
So I just spent forever talking about how much.
I love and appreciate this house.
In the grand scheme of things, I think this house is amazing and I'm grateful that my great-aunt gave me an amazing deal on my great-grandmother's house.
I spent so much time here as a kid.
This house is filled with memories.
I feel so comfortable in this house.
It's a cute, small, cozy, old millhouse, it's like the perfect amount of house for me.
(25:43):
I don't need a big house.
It's perfect.
And I'm grateful that I got a good deal on it because there is no way I would've ever been able to afford a house in the White Mountains region in New Hampshire as a single person, maybe five years ago, but absolutely not post COVID.
So I'm grateful for what it gives me now.
I'm also really grateful for what it's gonna give me in the future in terms of equity and re resell value and what that means for the next phase of my life, because this house is probably the only thing that's gonna give me a leg up in that the downside.
(26:17):
Of this house is that it's a total fucking pain in the ass.
It's a pain in the ass house.
Everything is shoehorned together and it's like fif.
There's only been one person, two people that have lived in this house who've owned this house.
My great-grandmother and me, and.
You would think that 4,000 people lived here because there are, everything is made so cockeyed and weird and just thrown together, and every time I work on something, there's some disaster.
(26:50):
I come into the electricity needs to be completely rewired.
Every, there are so many little problems.
I don't think the foundation is set quite right.
I live on a piece of land the size of a postage stamp.
I can, I feel like I can hear my neighbors sneezing.
So it's a pain in the ass.
Anytime I try to do anything in this house, there's like an issue.
But all of, and most days, all I focus on is the pain in the ass part, how much this house sucks.
(27:15):
But at the end of the day when I take a step back, I go.
I still have that house at the base of a mountain filled with cats.
That's pretty fucking cool.
And I know a lot of other people who live in Millhouse, just like mine, like on the same street, on the next street over.
They have all have the same floor plan.
They were all made at around the same time.
And I know that there are people that are like E.
(27:37):
That place is a fucking disaster.
Like I know my place sucks, that place is 10 times worse.
So I'm glad I don't have like those problems to deal with.
I still have my own problems, but it could be a lot worse.
So I need to be grateful that I only have the problems that I have and I don't have all the problems I could be having.
I will say that sometimes I think there's a fine line between gratitude and optimism and finding silver linings.
(28:00):
I'm still kind of like learning that balance.
But I'm someone who leans negative and catastrophizes.
Literally everything.
So it's important for me to push myself to find silver linings where I can in order to find more opportunities for thankfulness and gratitude.
So that's why like a lot of my, again, like I don't know if finding silver linings is like the best way to go about gratitude all the time.
(28:22):
I don't think it's supposed to constantly be like a compare and contrast kind of situation, but that's where I'm at right now because I'm so new to it.
And so I'm excited to see how.
That practice of gratitude evolves over time as I learn more about it, as I learn to recognize the things in my life I can be grateful for.
So this is just a starting point take it, take all of this in that spirit, I wanna close this conversation around gratitude.
(28:46):
About the power of gratitude as like kind of a concluding thought.
So I have noticed that when I'm actively thinking about gratitude, that those days are just better.
They're not perfect by any means, but I am able to like power through with a smile on my face.
I'm still tired, I still hate my job, I'm still scared about money.
But it makes everything a little bit more bearable and I think.
(29:10):
Maybe it feels that way because it's okay, a good thing is just always within reach.
So it's just a really reassuring thought.
It feels like the, the pain and annoyance is maybe like temporary and that if you keep your eyes open and you're open to the idea of gratitude and you're open to the idea of optimism and you're open to the silver linings.
(29:31):
That the more you're open to it, the more they present themselves and the more you can see them and the more you practice it.
I just feel like.
The more good you're able to see out of a day versus all the bad that you see in a day.
And I feel like it takes some power away from the bad stuff and gives more power to the good stuff, if that makes sense.
(29:52):
It makes the bad not seem quite so bad.
It makes the bad not seem quite suffocating, and it makes room for the positive and the lightness that I think we all need every day.
So yeah, this was like a, this was like a, in all, a pretty good week.
I will say have I been crying constantly about a lot of things? Sure.
I'm going through a lot, but it was nice to try to find myself catching moments of.
(30:17):
Thankfulness and gratitude and positivity.
So before I end today, I guess we should talk about what my word of the week is next week.
So I, I'm thinking it's body and I.
That might sound weird, but I just, I feel like my body needs a jumpstart.
I've been focusing so much on the mental stuff.
I feel like my brain needs a, needs some time to like keep processing everything that's been happening.
(30:41):
Like it really doesn't have the capacity right now to throw like another mental thing at me.
I also feel like physically I need.
I just need a jumpstart, like it's fall, winter will be here before I know it.
And I'm a total hibernator.
I don't do any winter sports.
I do not leave my house in the winter.
I don't like the snow.
I don't like the cold.
That's not why the winter is not why I live in New England.
It's just something I tolerate and endure and I've been sitting around a lot feeling sorry for myself and I just feel like my body is begging for more movement.
(31:11):
So I really wanna spend the next week really thinking about my body, feeling more connected to my body, finding ways to infuse my, my day to day with movement.
So the word of the week next week is body.
We'll get into all of that stuff next week.
I do think next week will be a doozy body is a big old word for me in my life.
(31:33):
It's a big looming presence.
It's something I think about every day.
So I think next week will be an interesting episode.
And full disclosure, we'll probably run, it could probably run a little long.
I could talk about my body all day long, and the body mind connection all day long.
That's the word of the week for next week.
Thank you everyone for tuning in yet again.
Really appreciate it.
(31:53):
Once again, you can find me on Instagram at Solitary Creature Pod.
Follow me on there and oh, as always, please send me a dm.
Let me know how you're liking the show what you're learning, what.
How you connected to the word of the week this week? How are you practicing gratitude in your life? Maybe there are things that you're grateful for that I haven't thought about that I could be more mindful of.
(32:16):
Let me know and I will see you next week.
Okay, thanks everyone.
Bye.
Bye.
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