I Give Thanks for Being Me!

Dear Friend,

I feel so lucky to be able to say that and mean it. I know I have a lot to be grateful for. Looking back at my life I see that the biggest Gifts that I have received and feel immensely grateful for have come out of some very difficult circumstances that looked nothing like gifts back then, and it was hard to see what there was to be grateful for. But at hindsight…

In a few weeks, I will be featured in a book called The Gratitude Book Project: Celebrating
365 Days of Gratitude. And that is exactly what I wrote on my page in the book: receiving the gifts from the hardships we have gone through in life and feel true gratitude for what happened. 

How can you be grateful when something ‘bad’ happens?

That is a good question, and usually you don’t know it until afterwards. It is by going through the circumstances step by step, that you get to realize what is really going on. Of course there has to be an openness to see deeper than our own projections. I realized that when I would stop believing that this happened to me because I was bad/wrong/unlovable/unworthy and all those silly limited beliefs and even stopped believing that this was ‘God’s Will!’ I could finally open up to receive the real gift in the situation.
I know these limited beliefs quite well and stewed in them most of my life. As long as I did that, I simply couldn’t see where the gift was. All I could see was my own beliefs projected outside of me, like a good piece of evidence that my mind was right.

It takes a radical shift in perception to open up to other possibilities. When I finally shifted from believing it was because there was something inherently wrong with me!!! a whole new field of perception and possibilities opened up. Just that realization was worth all the pain this limited perception had caused. Suddenly ‘seeing where before I was blind’ is such a sweet experience. All the pain and all the blame melts away. Gratitude takes it place. Gratitude to realize a deeper part of me – a more expanded part of me – the non power and irrelevance of the mistaken identity I had taken on. Sweet relief and deep gratitude for the lessons that helped me realize this deeper truth about who I am.

Any challenges we go through that give us the gift of realizing who we are beyond the limited identity we have taken on, is something that can only evoke gratitude and deep reverence.
I give thanks for being me and am grateful to know I never was the identity that I can claimed myself to be.

Please share with us what gifts you have received so far by having lived through challenging times and the person you have come to be today because of it.

ALL Love,
Pernilla