Stop and Smell the Fucking Roses

Today would have been my grandmother’s one hundred eleventh birthday. She’s been gone since the late nineties, and I still miss her, but I never focus on her being gone.  I always think how blessed I was to have her wonderful energy in my life.  

Life is full of challenges that demand our time and energy. Sometimes they grab our attention so hard that for awhile that challenge is all we can think about. In our minds, we slow time and chew our options.  The subject constantly pops up uninvited. We may lie awake at night turning it over and over. When it slips out of mind, we almost reach to bring it back because we miss the familiar vibration.

I want us to learn to savor every blessing, every success, every step achieved toward our goal, every tiny triumph with the same single-minded focus that we use to worry!

Why?

The things that we look at, and think about are the things life brings us.

When we focus on hardship or challenge, Life brings us hardships and challenges.  When we focus on what we love and enjoy, Life brings us love and enjoyment. I want us to celebrate everything we love, and get infinitely MORE to love.

I want us to stop and smell the fucking roses!

I feel like roses are literally an invitation from Life to slow down enough to enjoy what’s right in front of us. Not all roses have scent anymore since they have been bred for beauty, so when we find a scented rose, it’s a moment to enjoy.  Let’s stop and enjoy it!

We’re always in such a hurry to rush into the next challenge that we often forget to celebrate finding a solution for the previous challenge. We can get so focused on the larger puzzle that we fail to give ourselves credit for all the pieces we’ve already fit neatly into place.  

If we have a goal to take a fabulous vacation, I invite us to enjoy thinking about it every chance we get! We want to enjoy exploring the area with Google image searches. We want to research fun places to stay, and activities we might enjoy and imagine ourselves being there.  We want to savor the trip long before it begins!

Equally, we can savor the trip long after it ends.  The moments that brought the greatest joy can be brought back to enjoy and appreciate until the day we die, if we invite them in to lift our hearts and delight us again.  We want to milk those special moments for all the pleasure, all the upliftment we can get.

If we have a goal to drop some excess weight, I invite us to celebrate every step in that direction.  Make a different choice for breakfast?  Do a happy dance! Stick to our food plan for the day?  Celebrate! Did we slow down to be present with our meals? That’s a HUGE win!  Woo hoo!  

Why wait to celebrate once the whole goal is reached, when we have the opportunity to create MORE success by acknowledging and celebrating every decision in service of that goal? When we applaud every step we make in that direction, Life brings us more success to applaud.

When we slow down to appreciate the roses, we get more roses.

Grow on!

In what ways do you celebrate success?
What milestones are you ready to celebrate?