5 heart lessons PLUS a super-specific gratitude practice

1. Stay open, even when things get scary, when things hurt, or when your heart is breaking.

2. Reconnecting with your tenderness and innocence creates space to have compassion for yourself & others.

3. Balance taking care of yourself with serving others. Self-care is a selfless act and you cannot pour into others when your own well is dry.

4. You are your own source of love. Stop seeking the “kind of love you need” from others. It’s time that you realize every tiny ounce of love that you can feel and receive is generated from WITHIN you.

5. Grief is simply love that has nowhere to go. When you’re feeling loss, grief or sadness, take a moment for real gratitude.

I don’t mean rattling off a list of things you think you should be grateful for.

I mean pausing, finding stillness, and feeling a powerful sense of love and a humble sense of awe and wonder, as you visualize or see something very specific* that you are grateful exists or that it happened.

Let it wash over you and warm you from within.

*Example of specific gratitude that summons a feeling and energetic charge:

Instead of “I am grateful for my dogs”, summon something more specific and emotionally resonant that creates a visual (if you are not currently seeing it in front of you)…

“I am grateful for the joyful feeling that washes over me when I remember bending over my dog Zoey in the kitchen for a squeeze. The sun was shining on my pinkish hair, her white fur looked so bright, almost translucent against my blue shirt. I remember the little sigh she made and how soft her velvet muzzle was.”

Now that is a memory that reconnects me fully to a past-present moment.

It makes my heart feel full and brings tears to my eyes that this moment existed and that I had the chance to experience it.