Guidepost 4: Cultivating Gratitude and Joy; Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark

Gratitude has become my go-to ritual at the end of the day. Whether it’s jotting down three awesome moments, celebrating how I connected with my kids, or appreciating how they got along and embraced our family values, it’s all about highlighting the little wins. It’s so easy to get sucked into what’s not working, that sight of what is going well is lost. Neurologically, we cannot be judgmental with ourselves about this — it is the evolutionary burden we all carry where our amygdala (the part involved in emotional processing), responds strongly to negative stimuli, leading to a heightened focus on negative experiences. It’s like having an internal alarm system that loves to spotlight the negative stuff. Knowing this can actually be empowering. When we mix in a bit of