Leading With love 💕

Hello, Cadre. Hello, Cadresphere. Anila here focusing on helping us lead with love. And it takes practice. It is October 9th, and the theme this week is harvest, abundance and gratitude, and looking at life's gifts. And so with this topic, the thing that really comes to mind for me. Hi, Nikki. Hi. Speak wonder. I'm gonna get cozy with my kiddo's blanket. The thing that comes to mind for me when I think about being thankful for life's gifts is this idea of looking at the hard stuff in your life as gifts rather than garbage.

I think a lot of us, you know, everybody's got something. Everybody's got a sick family member or your own sickness or, you know, just problems abound, right? It could be financial. It could be the water pipes burst. It could be, you know, getting stuck in traffic. It could be trying to find a job. It could be anything, right? Everything is hard. Life is hard. And the way through that, that I've learned personally through my own journey, and I'm still learning, but the way through that is to still try and find the gifts or the treasures in the tragedy is actually the exact words my treatment professional, my mental.

My therapist challenged me to do a few years ago as I was trying to heal at the loss of my father when I was 17. So first, when I was from 17 till mid-30s, I took that pain, that big, hard thing, and I allowed it to fester, and I allowed it to, oh, just become like this big bruise on my heart. And when she, you know, when I was finally ready, she challenged me to find five good things that came from his sickness and his death. And I was able to. I was able to see that all of these dominoes fell into place for me to be where I am today.

And that his sickness was a catalyst for a lot of really amazing things in my life, including meeting my own husband and meeting my best friend. And when I was able to, you know, take that really hard, heavy thing, right? Like losing a parent at such a young age and watching him for four years battle leukemia. Like, you know, I didn't have a childhood. I didn't have a high school career in the way that most normal, most kids did because I was at the hospital all the time. But that's okay. It made me who I am, and I can see that now, and I can see the gifts.

And so when we think about harvest, harvest is like reaping what you've sown. It's like getting to enjoy the fruits of your labor, right? So seasonally, we are in harvest but inside us, we are constantly doing the same cycle, which means you might be sowing seeds right now and I'm planting a seed right now. You might be like, there's no way I can ever find something good in that bad. And so I'm planting that seed so that when you're ready, just like I had to work to get ready for that, that challenge that she gave me, you can then sow new seeds of goodness, of gratitude, of recognizing that when you just take that really s***** thing in your life and turn it around and say, okay, is there any good here?

You can turn that giant rock, that giant obstacle into stepping stones to who you're meant to be. So when we think about abundance and gratitude, it is actually very easy to be thankful for the beautiful sunset. Like, oh my gosh, we left the gym today and my son was with me. And I said, we always joke that Bob Ross has painted the the sunsets because we love Bob Ross and we do our own Bob Ross's. And so, you know, it's easy to be grateful for something beautiful. It's easy to be grateful for all the green lights.

It's easy to be grateful for a nice warm home cooked meal. It's harder to be grateful for all red lights when you're in a rush, which may just be preventing you from meeting with an accident. You'll never know, right? It's harder to be grateful for. Like today we, after the gym, we went out to dinner and it was so packed. So we waited so long just to get a table. We waited so long just to get a menu. We waited so long just to be able to order, but maybe there was some goodness in it. So when we talk about gratitude again, it's easy to find gratitude in good things.

So my challenge to you is to flip it and try to find gratitude in the quote, unquote, bad things. With that, I will pause and say hi to everybody. My brain just goes into flow. So sorry. But yeah, we'd love to know if this is something you're willing to try to do or have done and have been able to turn around something in your life just by saying, I'm gonna find the good in it and I'm gonna be thankful for it. That's kind of what I did with my breast cancer in 2022. I already had one relationship with cancer and I said, I'm not gonna do it that way again.

And so I thanked it and I said, okay, you're here for something. What do I need to do? You're my body signaling me to change something. What is it? And I just trusted that if I answered, I would be well. And I am. And I also did, you know, the non woo stuff of getting surgery and doing, you know, hormone therapy and. And that kind of thing. But I do believe that attitude switch, right? That's what it this. That's what it is. An attitude of gratitude. That switch saved me, so I'll leave you with that tonight as we talk about leading with love.

It truly does mean looking at all the bed in a loving way, too. Have a good night. Punch me in the face if you want, but in time, give it a try. Test it out. See? And then come back and let me know if you still want to punch me. Good night. Bye. Oh, hey, Einstein.