5 Things You Shouldn’t Forget to Be Thankful for This Year…
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Thanksgiving is a day to express our gratitude. Most often, the gratitude we focus on is the people around us and the people we are thankful for most. While this is an amazing to celebrate, because the people around us are so important, we forget to be thankful for a few other important things. In this episode, I’m going to reminder you of five more things you need to take the time to be thankful for, not just on thanksgiving, but every single day you are on this earth.
What I discussed:
Everything your body does for you.
Your health.
The food you eat daily.
Your strengths.
Everything you have.
If you loved this episode, I highly recommend tuning into Episode 192: The Science of a Gratitude Practice.
I dive into WHY gratitude is so powerful and why you should stop overlooking it as a daily habit you practice. I personally think my gratitude practice is just as important as nourishing my body with what it needs and honoring my body with movement.
Link mentioned in this episode:
Episode 192: The Science of a Gratitude Practice
If you want more from me, be sure to check out:
Instagram: @embraceyourreal | @movementwithjulie
Transcript:
Hey, beautiful human. Can I steal 5 minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace a real. Let's get it. Let's go.
Hello and welcome to another bonus episode. Today is Thanksgiving. It is a day to express our gratitude. And most often the gratitude that we focus on is the people around us and the people who are thankful for most. Which I think is an amazing thing to celebrate because the people that are around us is so important. But I think that we often forget to be thankful for a few other important things in our life. And so in this episode, I'm going to remind you of five things that I want you to be thankful for this year. And I'm going to challenge myself as well, not just on Thanksgiving, but every single day that you are on this earth. Before I dove in, I want to share this review. It comes from mamiofboys. She gave a five star review and said, Amazing. Love your passion for helping other women and their health and wellness. Well, thank you so much. I am so grateful that you are here on this Thanksgiving Day. This Thanksgiving special bonus episode. And I am just thankful that you took time every day for this review and tuning into the podcast. This community is truly something I do not take for granted. I am so grateful for every single one of you guys who tune in week in and week out. You guys are the real OGs sharing this with your friends, your family, your coworkers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We would not be here without you. All right. Let's dove in. Number one, everything that your body does for you, be thankful for this. I think we have such a tendency and it's a bad tendency to speak down about our body and find everything wrong with it. Like when is the last time that you actually express gratitude towards your body? You're probably thinking, What the heck, Julie? I hate the way my body looks. Why should I be thankful for that? Here's the thing your body does so much for you on a daily basis, and I think that most of us fail to acknowledge that just because it might not be the shape or the size that we want it to be, because of that, we're failing to give it the gratitude that it deserves. Think about it like this Your body allows you to move. It allows you to breathe. It allows you to hug your husband or your boyfriend or your best friend or your daughter or your child, your niece, your nephew, your grandma, your mom, your dad. The most important people in your life. It allows you to crush your workouts. It allows you to go on hikes or walks, enjoying nature, the smells, the feels. It allows you to clean your house or go grocery shopping. These are all things that none of us should take for granted. Ever imagine if that were taken away, you would be devastated. And that's why I think it's so important that we prioritize this intention of gratitude for everything that our body is capable of doing. You are capable of doing so much, and that is something that you should be grateful for. You are fortunate. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have those things in our lives. And so we must take time to appreciate it. To piggyback off of number one, the second thing that you should be grateful for is your health. Our health is so important. Without our health, we wouldn't be able to show up to those who we love most. We wouldn't be able to create the memories with those who we love most.
We wouldn't be able to live life to the fullest with those who we love and create these amazing and beautiful, breathtaking memories. Without our health, we truly have nothing. We can't be the person that we want to be. We can't accomplish the things that we want to accomplish. We can't live the life that we want to live. Our health is something that so many of us never actually stop on a daily basis to appreciate. We only appreciate it when something is taken for us. And so I want to encourage you and challenge you to have that at the forefront of your mind today and moving forward. So instead of focusing on what I just need to lose more weight and take in these unhealthy practices from there and start to have resentment against your body and every movement. It's not in everything that you wish it was. I want you to focus on everything your body is and does for you. And yes, there might be things that you're like, Dang, I wish I was able to do X, Y and Z or I wish that I could run at this speed. Like, I'm not saying you can't have goals, but I am saying that you need to draw a line in the sand and you need to say, I can have these goals, but at the same time I'm going to start every single goal coming from gratitude. I want it to be such a deep appreciation and such a deep gratitude for our body that we believe we can challenge ourselves to take it to the next level. Because I'm telling you, when you set a goal out of celebration instead of out of guilt or hatred, that goal that you set out of celebration and out of deep, deep gratitude, that will mean so much more to you when you accomplish it. And not only when you get to the finish line and accomplish it, but. On the way because you're doing it every step of the way. You're celebrating yourself. You're celebrating how far your body has come. You're thanking your body for doing all these things on a daily basis. And so I want to challenge you as you are gearing up to start to think about your 2023 goals, try to set your goals from a place of complete and deep gratitude, appreciation and celebration.
Number three, the food that you eat daily. We are so beyond fortunate to have food, food on our plate every single day. We are so beyond fortunate to not have to worry about when our next meal is coming from. These are real issues that people face in the world, and I'm sure that if you are listening to this, you don't face the issue like so many people do around the globe. Most of us listening, we feel guilty for the food that we're eating. We hate ourselves when we eat too much. We punish ourselves for eating certain things. We need to be thankful that we even have that ability. We need to be thankful for the food that we are putting it in our stomachs instead of hating ourselves for it. So many people across the world would kill to have the food that you are punishing yourself for. Just remember that. And I think that so often we forget how incredibly blessed and fortunate we are to even have the ability to feel full, to eat delicious food, to have the option to eat organic or regular like that is just mind blowing for so many people in this world.
They couldn't even fathom to even have that option to go into a grocery store and pick what you want to eat. So I want you to try to reframe your perspective and just realize how fortunate you are for even having the opportunity. And this is a great practice. The next time that you're shaming yourself, you're feeling guilty about what you ate, acknowledge it. Ask yourself what you could do differently in the future, but then kind of reframe your perspective and say, Dang, yeah, I overate. I don't feel great, but I'm fortunate that I even had the opportunity to eat that food that will kick you straight in the face and straighten up and remember that you are so you and I, we are so incredibly blessed to be able to have that option number for your strengths. We forget about everything that we do well because most of our time we're focusing on all of our weaknesses, the mistakes we made, how we feel like we're not good enough. But what are the things that you're actually great at? Stop overlooking them.
We need to acknowledge our strengths. We need to acknowledge things that we do really well and not just focus heavily on everything that we fall short. I don't think there's anything wrong about having an honest perspective on your life and looking at your shortcomings and asking yourself how you can improve those. But don't just fixate on those. Don't just fixate on the things that you are falling short at because that will throw you into a tailspin. Pity party. These things don't have to be big things. Sometimes the smallest things you're good at make the biggest impact in other people's lives. So don't overlook them. I hope today that you really take a moment to reflect on everything that you've done well and continue that practice. When you place your head on that pillow at night, reflect on everything that you did well, not just all the mistakes, all the weaknesses that you had that day. You deserve to acknowledge your strengths and so acknowledge that. And number five, everything you have, social media makes it easy for us to believe that we don't have enough. It can make us think like our living room or our kitchen. Is it enough? It can make us hate our boots because they're not the most trendier in style this year. It can make you think that your relationship is not perfect enough, or the car that you're driving isn't nice enough, or that your life isn't fun enough. You get the point you need to get social media out of your head and realize that your life is pretty dang amazing. You need to push the noise to the side and look at what we have through the perspective of abundance. We have so much and so much of what we have. So many other people would like to have you live in a place with four walls, a roof. He and running water. Stop taking it apart and be thankful that you even own a home. That you're even able to live in a place. Do you know how many people in the world with love to even have that option? I was just watching this documentary. You have to watch it. Oh, my gosh. I've been telling every single person that I have literally come in contact with, like even strangers, basic strangers. I'm like, Go watch this. It's called Molly Amu Ally. It's on Amazon.
It's like a deep it's like buried deep, deep, deep documentary on the documentary side of Amazon Prime. And I'm telling you, this man who his name is, Molly and. Oh, I don't want to spoil it. You just have to go watch it. But it just really reminded me of how grateful I am for my life. And just to see the poverty in parts of this world is just astonishing. It's so eye opening, and it just makes me want to fight even more for for those people that that can't fight for themselves or that just are in so much need that we just look at as like, oh, well, we we're kind of almost entitled to it. Like, Oh, you don't live in a house with four walls. And he like, that's just something that I don't know, people in the U.S. and like in a lot of these, you know, U.S., Canada, U.K., all those places, like we just have that like it's just something that we have.
And I think so many of us and I'm talking to myself to like I overlook that that it that basic fundamental ability to live in a house with he right now as I'm recording this it's a blizzard outside and I'm toasty warm in my house like there are so many people in this world that don't have that. And so I just want to remind you and just kind of give you a wake up call, like stop comparing your behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel on Instagram or TikTok or social media. Because I can guarantee that there are other people that are looking at you and they wish they had X, Y and Z and you have so much in your life to be grateful for. Life isn't meant to be perfect. It's simply meant to be enjoyed. And I truly believe that you start deeply enjoying life when it comes from a place of gratitude. So I hope that this encouraged you. I hope that this gave you some food for thought. Definitely. Please, please, please. If there's one thing that I ask of you in the next six weeks is to watch Molly. It will change your entire perspective. It's so good you allow. Why?
Again, it's a documentary. It's free for Amazon Prime users. It's so, so good. Okay, so let me recap those five things that I want to remind you to be thankful for today and every day. Number one, everything your body does for you. Number two, your health. Number three, the food that you get to. The food that you get to eat. Daily number four, your strengths. And number five, everything that you have. If you love this episode, I know you also love Episode 192, the signs of gratitude and kind of like the gratitude practice in particular. I really dove into why gratitude is so powerful and why you need to stop overlooking it as a daily habit that you practice. I personally think of my gratitude practice just as important as nourishing my body with what it needs on a daily basis, as well as honoring my body with movement. It is just a part of me, and the gratitude practice daily has changed my life in more ways than one. So I will link that in the show notes again. Episode 192 The Signs of a Gratitude Practice. I will link it in the show notes as well. If you have a friend or coworker or someone in your life that you feel like would really benefit from this episode, I just ask that you share it out with them again. With it being Thanksgiving today, I just want you to know that I am so grateful for you. Our team is so grateful for you. We would not be here without you. And I want you to go out and be deeply grateful for all the things in your life. Of course, the people in your life, but also you. I want you to establish that gratitude for your body, for everything that it does for you, for your health, for your current situation. Yes. Things are not perfect. Life isn't perfect. Yes. There's things that you wish you could change, but try your hardest to look on the other side. And I guarantee when you look and even put an ounce of effort into looking for things to be grateful for, you will be totally and completely astonished at how many things you actually have in your life that you might be overlooking. I love you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you in episode. All right, sister. That's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, @juliealedbetter. Yes, it's with an a in the middle for that daily posts about real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check.
The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember, that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace the real because you're worth it.