[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I help people pleasers find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind through inner child healing. If you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, I'm here to guide you along the way. In this space, you'll find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We will talk all things inner wellness with spirituality interwoven at times. Being a mom to three, parenting will be a topic of conversation for sure. So happy to have you.

Enjoy today's episode. 

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Gratitude is a way of living for me, and I want to share it with you, and now just feels like the right time. So gratitude, what is it? You know, it's more than just being thankful.

I feel like it's this place deep within you that is grateful and happy just to be alive. And then you look at everything in life and you feel a certain sort of way towards it. You look at beauty and you realize, wow, it's speaking to me.

It's touching me. It's making my life better and enhancing it. You see relationships and the things that you have in life, and you know that it's a gift, that not everybody has the same experiences.

Not everybody has the same gifts in life, and your heart just feels thankful. It feels satisfied. I feel like gratitude and living in a lifestyle of gratitude has created a satisfaction within me even as I reach for more because I'm not wanting to stay where I'm at even though I'm satisfied while I'm here. I have dreams. I have big things I'm running after. 

But I'm still satisfied in the season, in the place that I'm in right now. Not because everything's perfect. Not because it's all easy. It is definitely not all easy and it's not perfect.

But it's this posture within me. And I want to give you an example of what this looks like in everyday living. So I don't know about you, but I grew up in a home where before we ate a meal, we did a thing called praying.

We basically were thanking God for this food in front of us before we consumed it. In my home right now with my kids, we don't practice that as an everyday occurrence that happens every time we have a meal. It's not because I don't think it's good.

It's just because we are practicing gratitude throughout our days. So if we sit down in front of food, yes, hold gratitude for it. But take it a step further.

Am I just thankful for this meal? Or am I thankful for the bed I lay in at night? Am I thankful for the car that runs and takes me places? Am I grateful for my body that can function and move and carry me through the day? What do I feel about the relationships I have and the experiences? Where does gratitude start and end?

If it's simply an act before a meal or in the exchange of goods, when someone gives you something and you say, oh, thank you. I don't think that's enough. I don't think it should stop there or just start there.

Unless it starts there because you want to start somewhere. But take it further than that. And here's another thing.

With my kids, what we practice before a meal, and again, it's not every occurrence, but we talk about what we're grateful for, who we're grateful to, because there's more things than just God. Who worked and provided the resources so that we could go out and buy the food? If you eat animal foods, there was an animal that sacrificed its life. It gave itself so that we could eat it.

And maybe that sounds silly to you, but when my little four-year-old at the time was carrying a rotisserie chicken in a container, you know, from the store into the kitchen, and she was thanking the chicken for giving its life so that we could eat it, and she meant it, guys, that touched something deep inside of me. 

Because I realized that I don't always think about who pulled the vegetables from the ground. Because there was a person involved who pulled those vegetables from the ground so that I could eat them. There is a process, and there are real people involved in this. There are real parts of nature, animals, and the earth. And I'm grateful.

I'm grateful to and for it all. It's just a posture within your being that realizes how much goes into what happens and how good life is. It's literally birthed from knowing that life isn't always easy and things don't always get handed to you, but then realizing how good your existence is.

So I think it's been birthed out of what I've come from, but I don't think you have to go through hard times to be a grateful person. My little five-year-old now, I can't say she's had a hard life. I don't know how she would explain it to you, but I don't think she has.

And she knows how to be grateful because she's learning, as I'm learning. She's seeing it modeled, and she's being taught a way of living because she's in the space. I have learned from other people.

You catch everyone's energy, catch people's moods, right? If you walk in a home and somebody's depressed, you can start to feel pretty sad while you're there. Or if you walk in a place and someone's super happy, not like putting it on, they're just really happy, it helps you feel lighter and we catch people's energy. So being around people who are grateful, it literally will rub off on you.

I have experienced it for myself, and it's what I'm saying is happening for my kids. And think about it in your own life. If you're around people who are ungrateful and they're just like, they're unhappy, maybe they're rude, but at least they're just, they got a lot to complain about.

And I understand I've been that person, but as I've walked out of that way of living, and as I've understood, like how to not be the critic, and how to not empower the critic. It's then that I appreciate being around people who are just grateful. They're people who understand the goodness in life.

So today, I just wanted to share this with you as a motivation to tell you that no matter where you find yourself, you can become that person who is downright grateful. Who doesn't manufacture it, but feels it within their entire being, and it just flows out of that place. 

[Ending] I want to close out today's episode by thanking you for being here with me.

We've made it to the end, and I hope what I shared has been helpful. If there is anything I've mentioned that you want to talk about in more depth, I would be so glad to connect with you. You can always find me on Instagram at @corinne_changeradically⁠, or go directly to my website, changeradically.com. Of course, within the show notes, there's other ways that you can connect with me.

And if there is someone that you think would benefit from this podcast, please share it with them. To help my podcast get more growth and reach more people, please subscribe, review, and rate it. And until next week, I'm wishing you the very best.