As I sit here in lock down and remember back to my first experiences in the world where every new experience was positive and encouraging. From the day I cried to the day I learnt how to walk and did my first 2sie in the potty. Such fond memories. Those experiences were exciting and inspiring, encouraged a mindset of growth, determination, and resilience. They were exciting times, as there was no discouragement. They were from the ages of 0 to 3 years of age. They were exciting times, fun times, and times of exploration.

Do you remember how you felt when you first realised that you could get around on your own by means of crawling? Weren’t you excited and wondering if one day you could get around on 2 legs like those that were older than you were? Of course, you were, so you tired it and you weren’t afraid of falling down and having to get back up again or of being judged for it. You were so determined to walk that nothing would stop you from trying to do it. Little by little, day after day, you tried and failed and tried and failed some more, but you always got back up and tried again. A little piece inside of you was excited about the whole experience and that was what motivated and inspired you to keep trying. How did you feel after you took your first couple of steps? You laughed and giggled and you loved the challenge and every day you would find that you could take more and more steps on your own without anyone’s help because at first you needed a little help to strengthen your legs, get you more stabilised and balanced so that you could do it all on your own one day.

The day you did it on your own, didn’t you feel proud of yourself and what you had accomplished? Of course you did! Then you once you had accomplished that you wanted to try your luck at running so a little at a time you tried to run but it you found it easier that walking as you already had your balance, stability and strength to do it. Of course, it took you a bit to run as you had to change the way you breathing patterns, but that didn’t matter as you really just wanted to do it and you did. That’s right, you did!

What about the first time you heard a sound like really heard it? Maybe it was the sound of a bird chirping or maybe it was one of your parent’s voices. Didn’t you find that exciting and amazing?

And then to find out you could talk by saying your first word well, everyone cheered and encouraged you to talk some more when that happened. That made you feel good, didn’t it? Once you had mastered talking, you thought you would have a crack at singing. You weren’t worried about being judged for it, as you only wanted to see if you could do it. So you tried on your own for a little bit in private with your radio going louder than your singing so now one could hear you. Once you had mastered it, you then sang in front of family members and depending on their reactions, you would then, if positive, sing around your friends at school. It felt great, didn’t it?

You know what you learned, how to do those things out of your own strength, will power tenacity and resilience for life. There were now manuals on how to do that stuff. They were life lessons that you needed to learn by doing them over and over again and practicing them, and you were very excited and grateful to be able to do those things. The world was at that age a massive place full of fun and exciting to be in, with wondrous adventures to dream about and achieve. The gratitude for what you could do, and experience was there within you.

It seems though as we grow older we lose some of that gratitude and take for grant the big things we learnt to do when we were little as they are not that big a thing to us anymore as they come automatically to us now and that is sad as we now live in a world full of discouragement, judgement, fear and shattered dreams which makes sad and negatively geared. We are now less willing to face our fears and overcome them, riddled with shame and guilt, less spontaneous, less kind and positive towards others. We now see the world though tainted glasses instead of fun and exciting we see it as judging, cruel hard and cold and so we learn to me more guarded, more judging on ourselves and others and air on the side of caution because of the negative experiences we have had throughout our lives and some people will become bullies and be selfish and try to change others while other people will become people pleasers longing to be love, belong and to be enough for others not realising that in order for us to be truly happy we must go deep within ourselves and find out the deeper meaning behind why we are this way and explore this and ourselves fully so that we can know and truly love ourselves.

Gratitude is a big part of this process as when we are in a place of gratitude and are truly feeling that gratitude, we then start to feel self-love and with self-love comes that boldness of daring to be yourself around everyone else. My only hope is that throughout the pandemic we are going through that we go back into a place of gratitude for who we are, what we have done and can accomplish and the journey we have travelled during our lives to get to where we are now. That we have gratitude for all the small things as well as the bigger things in our lives even if it means remembering back to our first steps, the first note we sung, our first of firsts when it comes to doing and experiencing things as there is so very much to be grateful for in our lives and out there in the world we live in today!

Practicing gratitude every day is one of the keys to living a truly satisfying and fulfilling life as it gives us back the ability to be bold and try new things and it gives us more excitement and zest for life and the world around us so that we are encouraged to step out of our comfort zone and really experience what life is about. ©

Copyright © 2022 Lynette Diehm.

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