Designer Sanity’s Month of Gratitude Week 3: Yourself

Welcome to week three of our FREE 30-day Designer Sanity Gratitude Practice!  In case you missed week 2, Gratitude for Your Network, you can find that here.  And you can find week 1, Gratitude for your Clients, here.  It’s never too late to jump in where you are! 

Click here to download your free 30-Day gratitude journal with daily prompts to get you focused on gratitude in your kitchen and bath design business all month long.   In minutes a day, you can increase your happiness and overall sense of well-being in a powerful way. 

 “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” - Epicurus

Week 3: Gratitude for YOURSELF

This morning I was given a perfect example of when to have gratitude for yourself by a designer friend of mine.  She called asking for support in firing a client who was driving her to drink (and not in a good way! 🤪).   

We talked about what was happening and strategized how to break up with this “bad fit” client with integrity and grace.  

Then, before she could lose her nerve, she hung up with me and called the client and took care of business.  Minutes later I got a text from her gleefully telling me that the call was done, the client was let go, and she felt so much better.  

This designer had her own back in that moment.  Instead of talking herself out of firing this client (as we so often do), this designer listened to her own feelings of frustration, validated them and then DID THE HARD THING and acted on it.  

She deserves to take a moment and feel gratitude for HERSELF for doing the hard thing and taking care of herself.  Her energy is going to be freed up in the future to do bigger and better things instead of being dragged down by that bad-fit client, and who knows what wonderful things she’s going to make possible?  

Best of all, she shared this experience with me and some other designer friends, so we get to be inspired by her, which fits so nicely into last week’s gratitude focus, which was gratitude for our network.  It all flows together and creates a beautiful upward spiral.  

As high-achieving professionals, it's easy to spend far too much mental energy being hard on ourselves. Do you tend to focus only where you fall short? This habit saps your energy and makes it hard to do your best work and show up as your best self.

This week is going to change all that, because you're going to focus on feeling gratitude for yourself.

Who gets up every morning and does the hard things? You. This week, you're going to step outside of yourself and see yourself as others see you. You get to give yourself the gratitude that you deserve.

Making this a habit moving forward will fill your life with grace and make your job so much easier on a daily basis because it builds confidence.  As we reflect on the hard things we’ve done (and do daily), and feel gratitude to ourselves for those things, it makes it easier to do them in the future…. This, in turn, builds more confidence and makes it easier to continue that upward spiral.  

Don’t wait to start building that habit of expressing gratitude toward yourself.  Start today.  

Gratitude Practice: Yourself

So here’s what I’d like for you to do with this weeks’ gratitude journal practice focusing on YOURSELF.

1. Find a time when you can be alone and won’t be disturbed.  
2. Sit down with your coffee or tea or each morning with your tea or a glass of wine in the evening. 
3. Light a candle and get comfy in your favorite chair. 
4. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.  Let it all out, and then take another deep breath. 
5. When you feel relaxed, turn your attention to yourself and the things that you have done to contribute to your professional life, present and past.  Go as far back as you wish.  Feel the love in your heart of gratitude for yourself.  Let the thoughts and feelings flow through you. 
6. When you’re ready, pull out your journal and write about it.   

• When did you make a difficult choice or face a fear to get you to where you are now?
•  When could you have given up on yourself but didn’t?
• When did you go outside of your comfort zone?
• How have you been kind to yourself or taken care of yourself?
• What have you done right on recent projects?
• List out what you have had to learn to get to where you are now professionally
• How have you helped others?

 Do this every day this week.  Aim to write three things each day.

 Keep it up! 

Don’t limit this practice to your journaling time!  Aim to make it a habit to notice and thank yourself for the hard things you do every day, just as you would thank anyone else who did these things for you.  It’s like a breath of fresh air to give yourself the gratitude you deserve in these moments, and you’ll feel much more energized and stronger moving forward.  Try it!  

 Don’t forget to join me for Designer Sanity’s  30-day Gratitude Practice this month.   Sign up here to download your FREE 30 day gratitude journal each day  to bring more gratitude into your design business this month.   

Also don’t forget to follow me on instagram - @designersanity where I’ll be doing posts about our journal prompts.