Shawn Healey | The Dragon KOI Project Day 3 of 365: Blessings

Throughout this year, my hope is to bring to you ideas, concepts, books, videos and people which bring this Focus Forward concept in a way that can be analyzed, appreciated and hopefully adopted. Some will be simple and straight forward, some will probably be a bit more philosophical and abstract. Today may fall into the latter category. Half of this process is for me to become more consciously aware by sharing my thoughts and discoveries with you all. Learning to connect with my unconscious mind, which I believe has tremendous power if we allow it. Take what you wish, leave what you don't. That being said, here goes...

Today I ran across this picture of Hayley from a few years back. We finally had a couple days away, and it was a beautiful day on the Oregon coast, both of which could be a rarity. We were taking a walk and stumbled upon this "shell message" and had to take advantage of it. It was out of the blue, while at the same time very meaningful to both of us. In that moment, we paused and felt that really we were very blessed. Lots of great stuff, lots of great friends, a great business, a great family.

It's sort of interesting when you think about it. If you're religious, being blessed may have one context. If your not, it may have another. For us, in the moment it simply meant that we had lots of "things" in our lives that we CHOSE to be grateful for. Some were physical, some were emotional, some were actually made up in our heads. Not to be pessimistic, but those "things" are physical, more than likely at some point we will lose them, they will break, or they will in some form go away. If those "things" are connected to people, more than likely we will be disappointed by the actions, at least on a certain level by some, if not many of those people. So what then do we do. How do we maintain a feeling of "being blessed" and having a sense of gratitude?

At that moment in time, I had a great sense of gratitude for what had become of my life, although there were struggles that I had just accepted as "part of the path". Within a year or so from the time the picture was taken, almost of those things that I was "blessed" with, both physical and many of the relationships will have been lost. While in the middle of "the storm" you would think (and I did) that you are losing everything, and it may be true on certain levels. I have less physical "stuff", some by choice, some by cause, which is actually quite freeing. I have weeded out many of the "friends", at least who I thought were friends that unknowingly had sucked the gratitude out of me slowly and steadily. I have no room for negativity, gossip and egocentricity. In all reality, today I feel more gratitude than I ever have in my prior years. Being free of the things that I once considered blessings is truly THE blessing...however you define that word. I don't want "stuff" to own me, whether it be physical or relationship based. I would bet that many of you have your stuff that causes you to stall, to have anxiety, to feel constant pressure and stress to maintain. Some of this is just life, but I believe that the more you can create simple and FOCUS FORWARD gratitude for the truly pure and simple things, the kind acts, the amazing planet that we live and love on, the more you will truly be blessed in this world. All that back end "stuff" becomes like an anchor and will not allow you to FOCUS FORWARD. By no means am I saying that people shouldn't have physical things and relationships, but there is probably a limit to where the gratitude meter starts to become compromised while trying to maintain too many things. Do you have too much "stuff"? Do you have FOCUS FORWARD? Something to think about.

Until tomorrow... cheers and focus forward.

#dragonkoiproject #shawnhealey #gratitude #focusforward#mostofushavetoomuchstuff