The other day I overheard a few friends talking about what Oprah gave her employees for Christmas… I haven’t ever really kept track of this so I thought it sounded really generous when they said that this year she gave everyone a $200 Starbucks gift card… then one of them pointed out that last year she gave everyone a car and I jokingly responded something like – whaaat, last year we got a car!

totally joking… and everybody laughed – which was the point…

right after I said that another person jumped in with “they should just be grateful they have a job“. But here’s the thing – she wasn’t joking.

So right after I picked my jaw up off of the floor and finishing saying a silent thanks for not having to work for her, I started thinking about the energy of that phrase and the heavy baggage that it sneakily brings with it…

When she said that to the group it didn’t really affect me because living life in fear that it’s not safe to want more is just not how I roll anymore – that, and she is not my boss so what do I care – but I have been there, afraid to want more, feeling like I don’t deserve to have things that other people seem to have with ease, it will never happen for me… and I had to make a conscious decision to say goodbye to that perspective, to that energy… but it is 100% where she is living in her life… and where many people reside every day. She said that phrase with alarming conviction, and it made me a little sad.

What is the energy of ‘just be grateful…’ – really? What are we also silently saying… to ourselves?

When someone says ‘you should just be grateful [fill in the blank here]’ in response to you – they are also silently saying:

• Don’t you dare want more…
• What you have can be taken away at any minute, it’s not in your control at all…
• Wanting more means that you are not grateful for what you have right now…
• It’s wrong to want more than what you have…
• Don’t you dare speak out about not being happy or wanting something to be better because I can take it away at any second…
• If you want more then I have to have less… and so I want you to stay small… smaller than me…

To me you might as well lock yourself in a prison and throw away the key.

Energetically this is invalidating, kind of like being covered in punishment for wanting more… of anything…

But I also thought to myself, many people go their entire lives afraid to want more of something… and it could be anything. Some people have an abundance of certain things and not others… so next time you daydream about wanting more of something (and these are just a very few examples) –

• more time
• more money
• a deeper love/connection with someone
• less stress
• your life to flow with more ease and less effort
• a bigger house
• to work for yourself
• to be able to make your own schedule

– take a second and notice what you feel right after you think it. Do you feel like it’s impossible, is there something inside of you that feels even a little bit wrong for thinking that? You might have this energy in your space and not even know it… and it will affect what you experience… what you are actually able to have.

So here’s to being grateful for what we have and not being afraid to still want more… and realizing that it can also actually happen.