I have a hard time answering questions about what I want to do next in my life. The reality of my life is that I am leaving a life that already succeeds my greatest expectations. After having a baby at sixteen, all I wanted was to provide for my son and to give him a good life with a loving family. Sixteen years later, having achieved that goal, all the other amazing blessings I received in this life require me to pinch myself often. I have found this beautiful secret in life and this secret is gratitude. It’s even hard now for me to separate which came first, the gratitude or the success.
In reflecting on life, I think my gratitude has been at the root my successes in life. Believing I already have everything I need has allowed me to make decisions with a very different lens than I may have if I wasn’t so deeply grateful for the basics. Gratitude is life’s antidote to so many of the emotional viruses that prevent our forward progress. So many people want to have so much and I am pretty sure they will never get it without an authentic shot in the arm of gratitude.