#91 - Gratitude Ahead of Time

Have you ever considered being grateful for something that hasn't happened yet or for something you haven't received yet? This is a really powerful practice. It's a faith practice. Listen in to find out exactly how to do this and why you might want to give it a try.

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Transcript

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I'm jamielynn. Colin Stephan. And this is, want to watch an episode number 91 gratitude ahead of time. Welcome to want to want it a podcast for women of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints who are ready to ignite not only their sexual desire, but all of their desires to create a more fulfilling life and marriage. I'm jamielynn Stephan. I'm a certified life coach, a wife, and a mother of seven children. I'm excited to share my personal journey to desire with you and teach you how to desire more as well Hi, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. How are you doing? I am so grateful that you're here and taking time to listen to some of my ideas today. And I'm so grateful for the ideas that are going to speak to you and make a change for you in your life. And I'm grateful that I'm okay. If some or even all of my ideas really don't resonate with you. My goal is to put some goodness into the world as best as I can. And to put ideas out there that will at least start a conversation for some of you within yourselves or with others. That even if you totally disagree with. Can help, you know, your own mind better and help you live in alignment with your best self. So thank you so much for being here today. I want to talk about gratitude, but more specifically gratitude ahead of time. Now I know that I don't have to tell all of you all the benefits of gratitude because we hear a lot about it and we are encouraged to have gratitude practices. But I do want to just reiterate that gratitude is a positivity practice and a consistent practice of gratitude. Actually changes you. Gratitude has been proven over and over again, to be associated with greater happiness. Because when we practice consistent gratitude, we begin to feel more positive emotions in general. Like you enjoy your life more. You relish really good experiences. You're able to find the good in so-called negative experiences. Gratitude is linked to better health. It helps us deal with adversity in our lives. And gratitude is key to strong relationships. When we express gratitude to someone like genuine gratitude, our respect for that person grows our love for them increases. And just like when someone expresses heartfelt gratitude to us. It also increases our love and respect for the person sharing their gratitude with us. Gratitude, I believe can be contagious in two ways. First, when we start expressing gratitude and our hearts start to really feel that gratitude, we can get onto a gratitude train, it can seem to really multiply within us. And we start to see more and more of what we're grateful for. And it's also contagious in the way that by sharing gratitude that others hear or read, they can also grab that gratitude and start to feel more gratitude in their bodies as well. So the idea of gratitude ahead of time is to picture the future. And imagine the gratitude that you will feel then. So once you can imagine how grateful you'll be in that moment, then you can just let yourself feel it now. So one of the best examples of this was something that I heard in church recently. So this young man had just returned from serving as mission. And he was talking all about the miracles he'd seen while he was serving. So he said how after seeing so many miracles every morning, he would pray and he would thank heavenly father for the miracles that he was about to witness and be a part of that day. And I love that because I feel like one definition of faith is gratitude ahead of time. To have faith is to have gratitude for something ahead of time. To have faith for something hoped for, but not seen. Does that make sense? American author Florence shin said. Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly. Let me say that again, faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly. So faith says I already have the thing I want. I have already received my hoped for desire. I've already accomplished what I set out to do. So now how do I act? And if you put yourself into that position of seeing yourself in the end result, One of the things that you for sure would do is to express gratitude because you would feel grateful. So act as if by having gratitude ahead of time. Take a few minutes in your morning prayers or meditations or journal, or just in your mind to be thankful for all the abundant lessons that your day is about to teach you. Be like that missionary and express gratitude for the miracles you are about to witness. Now if you are too full of doubt or fear to feel grateful. Then that is where you have to start. You have to get that all cleaned up. If I can't get to gratitude, I need to do some work. Not because I need to rush into gratitude, but if I can't move out of doubt or fear or overwhelm or judgment, then that is my work. My work is to look at the thoughts causing those emotions and see what's going on. So here's an example. We are about to replace some carpet in our home. And the thought of it fills me with a lot of negative emotions. I feel fear. I feel doubt and I feel totally overwhelmed. And I guess I also feel some self judgment as well, and it's all coming from my thoughts. And here's what some of my thoughts are. I've never done this before. So I have no idea what to do. I have no idea, even what I like or what would look good in my house. What if the carpet I like actually is super dumb, like an interior decorator would frown upon and mocked me for what if someone else doesn't like the carpet I get. I'm going to have to move a lot of furniture to make this happen. Where am I putting all of this? Right. So these are the things that are going on in my mind, right? This is going to be so much work. All of these thoughts. And so even though I can logically say, I am so thankful that we have the money set aside to get new carpets. And I can feel this measure of gratitude in the moment. I am really struggling to hold on to that. I can't sustain the gratitude for more than a few seconds because my brain is running away with fear and doubt. So I'm not going to stop practicing gratitude. I'm not going to stop reaching for it, but at the same time, I've got to clean up my story about the carpet, because it's so practiced and so strong It's making it super difficult for me to fill my heart with gratitude. And that's okay. I'm not abnormal, but I believe that what I focus on, I create more of, so it matters to me to move out of fear and doubt to at least quiet down those emotions so that I can move into more empowered and grateful feelings, because then I can create more of that. I can feel more of that more of the time. So my work is to clean up my negativity ahead of time and move more to gratitude ahead of time. Because that's really what fear and doubt are. Right. They are just failing ahead of time. They're just negative emotions ahead of time. And because of the future can be anything at all. It can hold any possibility. Why not choose to feel good about it, to feel gratitude for it ahead of time, instead of fear and doubt about it. And I know for me, if I could just get myself more often into, I am so grateful that we are going to have new carpet that has no silly putty stains in it. What a blessing that is going to be. If I can keep myself there, this whole experience is going to be so much different. Instead of thinking and feeling all the negative emotions ahead of time. So it is good to practice, feeling gratitude for the future and for what is coming and for what you're going to create. If that feels hard for you, take yourself back to your past, to a time that you felt gratitude or take yourself even into the present is something you currently feel so thankful for put yourself into a gratitude frame of mind, and then let that feeling, fill your body, like really feel it, remind yourself what gratitude feels like right now. And by doing that, then you can take that feeling with you as you think about the future. So maybe you have an event you're responsible for maybe you're planning your child's birthday party or a work retreat or a church event. I want you to take a minute to picture that event. Really let yourself see it and let yourself see it going really well. And because your brain does this, let yourself see you handling things that don't go as planned. Okay. So your brain is going to be like, but what about this? And what about that? And just imagine yourself handling all of the things that come that are unplanned. That come into the picture, but you are able to take care of. And then let yourself imagine the end of that event and the gratitude you're going to feel for everyone who helped for the miracles you witnessed for the people who participated and for yourself for showing up and making it happen. Let yourself feel that gratitude inside of you, the gratitude, you know, you're going to feel when this event is in your past. And just feel it like it's already happened. When you do this, you have created something in your mind. You've created something spiritual that can now become manifest into reality. It is spiritual creation. And you've also sent out good vibrations into the world. And you've increased your own happiness and peace. You are exercising faith By imagining it all and being so grateful for it. Another reason this practice is so good is because it gets you out of the victim mentality that says my life is just happening to me and I have no control over this. Cause that feels terrible. When we practice looking into the future at something we want to see happen, or we want to create, and we want to feel grateful for it. We are now in a place of feeling empowered in our lives, instead of at the effect of our lives. Now, obviously there are going to be some twists and turns on the roads of our life that we did not expect and that we would never have chosen. We understand that this is real life. So what I'm practicing and I'll admit that some days are better than others. Is I'm practicing gratitude for the hard I'm practicing gratitude for the difficulties. Now, just like you, I have experienced some challenges in my life. Some challenging relationships, challenging trials. But I have been practicing, looking back at those things and seeing how they have blessed my life. I've been practicing what you might call belated gratitude because I couldn't access it in the moment, especially when I was younger, it was just all terrible and overwhelming and unfair back then. But I see how I have changed for the better, because of my difficulties. I see that I am a person I respect and a person that I like a whole lot more because of them. And so now I'm able to have so much more gratitude for them. Even if I think it would be hard to choose them again. If I knew it was the only path to make me the person I am today, I think I would do it all again. Like my marriage is the most precious relationship I have. I can't even put into the words. I can't even put into words the way I feel about my relationship with my husband. He is my favorite person in the world. And I love the way that we just are together. But we have the marriage we have, because it wasn't easy all the time. In fact, it was really hard at times. And I'm so grateful for the hard that has been instrumental in creating so much good. And the more that I practice this belated gratitude or this rear-view gratitude, the more I'm able to be grateful ahead of time for the things that are going to be challenging in my future. When my brain says, like, what if something terrible happens? And my heart wants to stop beating. I can say to myself, that would be hard. I'd probably be very sad. But I have had enough experience in my life to see that God consecrates everything for my gain. And so I am grateful for the hard things that will bless my life. It's not a perfect practice, but I'm getting better and better at being grateful for the hard. And having hard things to look back on, I'm able to see how my resilience has increased and how much more capable I am at actually facing unexpected setbacks and trials. And so I can have gratitude ahead of time for my capacity to handle anything that comes my way. And when I remember that God has always been with me and is still always with me. I can feel confidence and gratitude that he will be with me in the future as well. So all is well. You can use this practice of gratitude ahead of time for everything in your future, things far away and things happening to night. You can practice being thankful for the meal you're going to make for dinner, you can practice feeling thankful for the trip you're going to take in five years, you can feel really deeply grateful for a tree. That's going to be fully grown and shading your yard in 20 years. You can feel grateful for your good health, your strong body that you're going to have. You can feel grateful for empty nesting ahead of time. You can feel thankful for your savings or your vehicle that you're going to buy or for the treat you're going to enjoy. Once you get home. Feeling gratitude ahead of time is super powerful and useful and helpful. If you're trying to achieve a really big goal. So I want you to think about a goal you have now I say really big, but it doesn't actually have to be a really big goal. It can just be a goal that you want to achieve. So, for example, for the month of November, some friends and I each picked something that we're going to do every day in November, that gets us closer to the life. We really want to live. So it can be something simple. Like I'm going to eat five. Cups of veggies every day for 30 days, or I'm going to write a poem everyday for 30 days, or I'm going to do yoga every day for 30 days. Okay. So the goal that you imagine here, it can be simple and short term, but maybe you have a bigger, longer term type goal. Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds or make a hundred thousand dollars in your business or renovate your bathroom or run like an ultra marathon or read the Bible cover to cover, like, whatever it is. I want you to think about a goal you have right now. And I want you to imagine yourself achieving that goal. Now I'm not always a great visualizer if I'm totally honest, but I want you to require yourself to get the best picture you can in your mind of you achieving that goal. Where are you when you realize you've completed that goal? What are you wearing? Who's with you. What do you see around you? Make it as real as possible, and then allow yourself to feel what you will feel when you achieve that goal. Are you excited? Probably. Are you proud? Yes. Are you so grateful? For sure. Let yourself feel it all and let yourself almost memorize the feeling you have of gratitude for you. And for what you've accomplished and for all the people who have helped and for the heavenly help along the way. Memorize that feeling, you know, you're going to have it when you. Get that goal. So memorize it. Then as you're working towards your goal and things start to feel hard. Maybe you start to doubt you can ever lose the weight or maybe it's nine 30 at night and you don't feel like doing the yoga. Or you still haven't signed a client or you've run out of money to finish your bathroom right now. Like whatever happens, you can take yourself back to that feeling of gratitude. You're going to experience. When it's all over and you can bring that feeling into your body right now. And I promise it will help, you know, how to move forward because bringing that gratitude back for a completed goal is just practicing faith. It's admitting that things aren't exactly as you thought they would be, but believing you can still get what you want. The gratitude will give you momentum or comfort or assurance, but most of all, it will open your mind to possibility. Doubt and fear and frustration. Shut down. Creative brains. Gratitude and other positive emotions, open our brains up to new ways of seeing things, new ways to try things, new bursts of energy. Suddenly, you can find out what your future self. The one who is grateful for the completed goal, you can find the wisdom that that person has to share with you. And that's going to help you achieve your goal. Gratitude ahead of time also allows you to practice desiring something. Sometimes we can think of something we want, like maybe you really want to have more genuine sexual desire, or maybe you want to learn to cook like Julia Childs. I don't know. But sometimes we think of something we want and our brain just can't shut up about how impossible it is. So it's just constantly saying, like, stop thinking about that. Stop wanting that stop, desiring, things like that, and stick to desiring the things that everyone else tells you you should want, and that are achievable. If you can remind yourself that you're practicing gratitude ahead of time. You can tell those voices to be quiet for a minute, and you can take yourself to the place where your desire is now a part of your life, where you feel more natural sexual desire, Where you cook as good or better than the French. Let yourself just go to that wild and crazy place where your brain thinks it's impossible. But imagine yourself there. It's just like imagining you suddenly inherited$10 million, even though your brain says that'll never happen. I know right now you're thinking about it. What would that be? Like? How would I feel? What would I do with that money? You can feel it in your body. It's exciting. Do the same thing with other desires that you have and do the same thing I asked you to do with your big goals. Because goals are just desires. Reworded. A goal is just a desire in a different word. What does it look like? Smell, like, feel like to be a person who has what you really desire a person who's done the work taking the time and now has what you want. Imagine him or her in as much detail as possible, and then be so grateful to that person and be so grateful you're there and really, really feel it in your bones, feel that gratitude inside of you that will help to increase your desire and increase your chances of making that desire a part of your life. Gabby Bernstein says a powerful way. We multiply miracles is by appreciating and appreciating more. Be grateful for your past. Be grateful for your present and be grateful for your future. Appreciate and appreciate more as you practice gratitude ahead of time, you will be amazed at the miracles that multiply in your life. Have the best week, everybody by. Thanks for listening today. If you like what you hear on the podcast, and you'd like to learn more, feel free to head over to my website. Jamilin Stephan coaching.com or find me on Instagram or Facebook at Jamileh. step in coaching.