Dawn Damon 0:05

Hey everybody welcome this is the brave hearted, woman, and you are the brave hearted woman you are the reason why I'm sitting here today. You're the one I want to talk to. You're the one I want to encourage, I want to motivate I want to inspire that I don't want to just motivate you to feel good for a moment. I want to offer you steps and principles and how to live your best life. That's what we're doing here on the brave hearted woman. This is a program where I inspire you and motivate you sure but I give you a process steps to transform and change your life, you know, and when I say that we all we all have areas in our life. I believe that we'd like to change, or we'd like to be transformed. I believe that there beats inside of each and every one of us a sense of unfulfilled destiny. Perhaps that we think there is more out there there's more yet for me to do or to accomplish, or to become. And quite honestly, if you don't ever get out of the comfort zone, you will never meet that person inside of you that wants to get out that that potentially best version of yourself that authentic person, and I'm on that journey and I want to invite you to join me and be on that journey too. I'm glad that you're with me. I want to talk to you today I want to give you a key to living a happy life. Did you know that there really are keys. There are some secrets to living a happy life. And we know that happiness is a choice, isn't it, and that's one of the keys one of the secrets, is to make that choice every day to have an attitude. This is it. This is the key I'm about to give it away, an attitude of gratitude.

Yes, I know it's an old cliche but listen, it's so powerful, I want you to get this. A key. The key to a happy life is to live, grateful to be thankful to live with a heart filled with gratitude. There's a proverb that says, A happy heart is a good medicine, and a joyful mind causes healing. I truly believe that the physical energy of our body, our health of our body. This sustenance the strength, the endurance of our body is directly connected to the level of gratitude that we possess. Have you ever seen someone who's cranky and complains all the time and negative and pessimistic and everything is wrong, always. That's not a healthy person, and it's certainly not a healthy person for any of us to be around. I've been around negative complaining, people before, and you feel like you just want to take a bath. Afterwards, it feels like you know, that was not beneficial. That was not helpful. And right now, that toxicity is all over me. But the premier key to living a fulfilled life is being grateful, and gratitude is something that you can practice, you can employ one of the most reliable methods for increasing happiness and life satisfaction when you practice being grateful, and you can literally generate feelings of optimism and pleasure and enthusiasm and other similar positive emotions, you know somebody once said that they're waiting for motivation to come, motivations, not going to just come, I mean, sometimes we,

we are awakened with the gift of motivation that often motivation follows action, and you know that it's very similar to gratitude that sometimes we don't automatically just feel grateful. Sometimes we're in that space where, you know, quite honestly, maybe we want to complain, maybe we do feel upset about something. But when we start cultivating and practicing being grateful and setting our mind and our thoughts on things that remember and remind us what we're grateful for, and all of our blessings, you will begin to see that your brain, your heart, your spirit, you will begin to find that joy, that optimism that positivity that gratitude is really the primer, if you will, to feeling good, to having happiness and joy. And I really believe that gratitude is, is your ticket to a meaningful and happy life. And so it's important to cultivate Thanksgiving, so I want to give you some proven ways that you can cultivate gratitude, today. And the first one that I want to say to you is get grateful for the life every day. Just be thankful that you have breath in you. If you can't find something else that you want to be thankful for. Just say, you know I got up this morning I've got air in my lungs. It's a new day to do over a fresh start fresh. Bucket of Mercy falling all over me. So just get grateful for life. If you're not grateful, change it. And that's a decision you can make. Gratitude is a decision, and where focus goes, energy flows, if you focus on what is bad and what is wrong and what's negative. Focus on that your energy is going to go towards that or your energy is going to be depleted, you're going to feel a lot of emotion around this sense of being unhappy. But if you start every day just be thankful for life itself. Here's the second thing, do this every morning, start a practice of gratitude. Now I have a proven routine that I do every day when I say a proven routine. This is something that all successful people do, and I'm going to put myself in that category because I'm believing. And I claim success in every way and all of the Seven Pillars of life. My emotional, spiritual, physical, mental, relational social, financial and all the pillars of life. I am claiming success, how about you. I'm encouraging you to do the same thing, but I'm starting every day with this proven routine, And I believe it was John Maxwell that said the secret to your success is found in something you do every day, every day. And so there are certain things that you need to include in your daily routine. That will bring you to success because success is a direction that you choose, it does not just happen by accident. Oh yeah, a few of us might stumble, you might stumble accidentally into some sex. Oops, got to be careful, successful things, but success is on purpose, it happens on purpose. Start every morning with the practice of gratitude. So here's what I do I count and recite my blessings, out loud, and I like to write down three things that I'm thankful for every day. And so I'm thankful, like I said for another opportunity to take air into my lungs. I'm thankful that I can sing and I can laugh. I'm thankful that I can sit here right now and talk to you. Amazing, brave, beautiful women. I'm thankful that I can cry. You know what I am thankful that I can cry because there was a long season on my life where I couldn't cry, where I couldn't access tears, there was so much trauma in my life that I got stuck. So I can be thankful for that. That I can feel emotion. I'm thankful that I have eyes that see, and I just recently had cataract surgery and so I can really see well out of this one. And I'm thankful for that.

Now I don't have cemetery right now, in my eyes but I'm going to be thankful I'm thankful that I see and I'm thankful that my eyes are symmetrical. Amen. Come on somebody. You can be thankful that you have mobility, you have mobility, you can be thankful for the ability that you have. Many are paralyzed, and if you're listening to this and you have paralysis, you can be thankful that you have ears that you can hear right now. Be grateful for another day to make a difference. Be thankful that you can change someone's life. Be thankful that you have a spouse or that you don't have a spouse, be thankful so many things around us that we can be thankful for. And the third thing is that you can change your perspective and learn to be grateful. As the adage goes, some people are glass half empty, and some are the glass half full. Okay well gratitude says, I'm thankful. I have a glass. I'm just thankful. I have a glass. Be grateful in your circumstances. We're not always thankful, or excited about every circumstance that we're in, not thankful for this thing happening, but I'm thankful in it. I'm grateful in it. This has come to pass, not to say, and our attitude about our circumstances and our situation can make all the difference in the world, you want to accelerate your exit from a season that's uncomfortable right now. Change your attitude change the way you you perceive it, change your perspective. Be grateful for the chaos of children around you, that means you're not alone. Be thankful for the dishes that are in the sink it means you have a family to cook for or be thankful for the laundry pile it means that you have people in your life. Be thankful you know whether you're washing another plate, we have food to put on these plates we have clothes to wear. So you can thank God for the people in your life. Sometimes there are many people who are lonely, there are many people as we've gone through this COVID pandemic that have experienced many many days of sadness and isolation and loneliness. I think of my beautiful sister who her 34 year old son's tragically swept away into eternity. And we struggled, having a funeral because of COVID We did have one by the way, and hundreds of people came out. I'm thankful that we got to say goodbye, in a proper appropriate way. My sister here she does like a soldier, pressing on thankful for each new day, thankful that that she, the time that she had with her amazing son named Daniel. Maybe you feel like you've lost a loved one that should still be with you. Be thankful for the precious memories that you have, be grateful. Be thankful for protection and provision, but we're also thankful for trials and pain and storms because we're becoming stronger we're becoming better. Now, Robert Emmons wrote a book why gratitude is good, and he gives us these points and I'm going to share these points with you as well. Today, he says gratitude allows us to live in the now why be thankful because we're living in the now the brain is addicted to new things. And we adapt very quickly to the goodness around us. And so we constantly need something else to bring that feeling of joy. But gratitude delays the adaptation, and it helps us take in moments that matter. And so when we live in the now, instead of becoming accustomed to the things that we have, and taking them for granted and getting used to them and not even noticing it, because the brain very quickly adjust to adapt to what is around you. Being thankful and grateful keeps you longer gives you hang time keeps you in the moment keeps you in the now. The second thing that he says is that gratitude blocks, negative, toxic emotions. Now I am not negative when it comes to emotions. Okay, I think that we should have the kaleidoscope of emotions and that we should feel them. I just don't think they should be in charge of our lives. And I don't think that we should be run by them. But I do think we should be really good friends with our emotions know what they're trying to tell us about ourselves, be aware of what the emotions are that message that they're trying to bring to us. But gratitude will block the negative emotions that are toxic to you, that can literally, literally bring sickness to your body and weakness to your body. Feelings like resentment and envy and regret. And the older I get, the more understand the power of regret and you have to overcome that on a regular basis, depression, not chemical depression, not, not the medical problem and diagnosis of depression, necessarily, although yes that too, but feeling blue gratitude can black depression in those blue feelings by adopting this attitude of gratitude. It prevents the episodes of depression, evidence proves studies prove and evidence will show us that gratitude does indeed minimize these negative and other toxic emotions. And so you can't be bitter and negative at the same time, excuse me, you can't be grateful and bitter at the same time, you can't be grateful and thankful and negative and bitter at the same time they really don't coexist.

Robert Emmons also shares this gratitude makes people more resilient, and I know for a fact in my life. That is true. People who count their blessings and interpret life's events through a filter of thankfulness, they are more resilient. They endure through trials come on you know that has to be true. The way you perceive and the meaning that you give to trials determines on how you're determines how you're going to come out of that right. If you have a filter of thankfulness and you interpret life's events is something that is happening for you not to you. You can endure through trials, suffering even trauma, better and with more resiliency. Studies show that these blessing counters, that's us right we count our blessings that bless encounters are healthier, we're less stressful, and we have lower blood pressure. That's good. No wonder Proverbs says that a happy heart is good like a medicine, and a joyful mind causes healing, but a broken spirit. The proverb says it dries up the bones. I've seen people with a broken spirit, I've been a woman with a broken spirit, and it can dry up the bones. I don't want that for you. Braveheart and women, I don't want that for me. So let's cultivate this gratitude can I just give you a couple more. One more for sure gratitude, strengthens relationships, and it strengthens your self worth, they're all combined them when we're grateful we can feel others that when we're thankful and grateful. We can feel others blackcat, we're thankful for the contributions others make in our lives and the contributions that we see. I see it as a relationship strengthening emotion, says Robert Emmons, because it requires us to see how we've been supported and affirmed by other people. Isn't that beautiful when I cultivate gratitude is strengthens our relationship because I'm thankful for you, and the contribution you've made in my life. I'm thankful for the words of positive affirmation that you've spoken over me. And if you haven't, I'm just still thankful that you're in my life and I'm going to speak words of life over you. So it's science, we know this studies prove that when grateful feelings are present. Your brain shows activity in a set of the region that's located in the medial prefrontal cortex of your brain we're hearing so much about neuroscience today, we're hearing so much about the prefrontal cortex. If you're not familiar with the book by Mel Robbins the five second rule, get that book and read it. Atomic habits is another great book, but we're learning so much about this prefrontal cortex in the brain. This is the area of the brain where those frontal lobes of the brain are, where the two hemispheres meet, and it's the area of the brain that's associated with understanding other people's perspectives, empathy, feelings of relief, and this is also the area of the brain that it's massively connected to the systems in the body, the brain regulates emotion, and the support I get supports processes of stress, stress relief. So, what I'm saying is that it is science when you are grateful, and you are thankful you light up the front of your brain, and it starts operating and connecting in ways that it wouldn't otherwise. That's powerful stuff, my friends, that is powerful stuff. To sum it all up. Gratitude is the key to a happy and

I hope your content. I hope you're thankful. I hope that you are speaking gratitude on a regular basis. Today you have been given a gift called life, and it is a gift. That's why it's called the president. What are you going to do with that gift are you going to be thankful. Are you going to be grateful. I pray that you will. I pray that you will take these words that I've given you today, and I encourage you that your practice get out that journal and, and by the way I'm going to be making available very soon. I, it's called 606 rise, the six things that I do every morning at 6:06am, the six things will change your life. And if you're interested in getting that handout in the six things called 606 rides, you can email me at Dawn@DawnScottDamon.com and put in the subject line 606 rise, and I'll make sure that you get a copy of that. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. I hope it's been helpful and hey if you've enjoyed this today make sure that you share it and like it, and do all those great things but also I want you to know very soon, I am launching my online course, in fact, by the time you listen to this, it may be launched. You talk about something powerful that's going to change your life. I'm so excited about it because it is my process of six steps that I went through when I did it radically changed my life. Discoveries I made, as I was rising like the Phoenix, out of the ashes birth ashes of my life. And, and hitting rock bottom and decided, this is not how my story is going to end. Not how your story is going to end. And so I would love you to be a part of that one. Email me too, or visit my website gone Damon, calm, and you will see the uncover your brave vision, online course, we open up a couple of times of year, so I don't know when you're going to be listening to this, if our registration is open, but I'll sure add you to the Maryland mailing list and let you know what it is. All right everybody that's all I have. This is Don Damon your Braveheart mentor encouraging you find your brain. Live your vision, and you'll never be the same.

Transcribed by Opulence Multi Media Management