When life feels overwhelming, gratitude is the last thing on your mind. But what if gratitude and uncertainty, used together, are the most powerful tools you have to stop suffering and reclaim your life right now?
In this episode, learn why stress and anxiety make your problems feel so loud, how to turn down the volume, and why the unknown future is not something to fear but something to celebrate. The "maybe" practice introduced here has the power to dissolve anxiety, open your heart, and remind you that your biggest fears are not certainties, and that means healing, joy, and peace are still possible.
This is the episode that will change the way you see your hardest days.
In this episode:
∙ Why gratitude is harder when you need it most and how to find it anyway
∙ The "maybe" practice that dissolves fear and anxiety
∙ How to stop catastrophic thinking and negative self talk in its tracks
∙ Why uncertainty is your greatest tool for stress relief and personal growth
∙ A simple mindfulness breathing technique you can use anywhere, anytime
Lastly, you can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you are interested in my work, please check out my books, The Gift of Maybe: Finding Hope and Possibility in Uncertain Times (including a new audiobook), A Year Without Men: A 12 Point Guide To Inspire and Empower Women and my new Audiobook, Maybe Everything Is Okay, A Parent's Guide To Less Stress and Worry. Also you can check out my new Maybe Cards: A Path to Stress-Free Living or my new digital Maybe Journal.
Above all, my heartfelt hope is that this podcast has supported your journey of personal growth, helped shift your mindset, reduce stress, built emotional resilience, and brought you less suffering and more joy, clarity, and peace.
Poem: The Two Truths
There are two truths
that will set you free
if you let them.
The first is this.
Everything you have
right now
in this very moment
is more than you know.
Not because your pain is small.
Not because your losses do not matter.
But because pain has a way
of consuming all the light in the room
until you believe
it is the only thing that exists.
It is not.
Beneath the weight of what is wrong
life is still moving through you.
Quietly.
Faithfully.
Without condition.
The breath that arrives
before you ask for it.
The heart that beats
through every loss
every fear
every night you were certain
you could not go on.
This is not ordinary.
This is everything.
And when you place your hand
over that faithful heart
and you remember
not what is missing
but what is here,
you become larger than your suffering.
This is gratitude.
Not a feeling.
A power.
And the second truth
is this.
You do not know what comes next.
And I mean this
not as a warning
but as the most profound liberation
you will ever be offered.
Because the same uncertainty
that makes you afraid
is the very thing
that makes your healing possible.
Your transformation possible.
Your joy possible.
Nothing is sealed.
Nothing is final.
The future has made
no promises to your fear.
Maybe the thing you dread most
will never arrive.
Maybe the door that closed
was never your door.
Maybe the life you cannot yet imagine
is already moving toward you
from a direction
you have not thought to look.
Maybe is not hope.
Maybe is truth.
Because no one,
not one soul who has ever lived,
has been able to say
with certainty
what the next moment holds.
And that means
neither can your doubt.
Neither can your despair.
Neither can the voice
that tells you
this is all there is.
It is not all there is.
Gratitude reminds you
of the ground beneath your feet.
Uncertainty reminds you
the horizon has no end.
Together they ask only one thing of you.
Stay open.
You are not finished.
The world is not finished with you.
And the life that is seeking you
is seeking you now
through every unknown
every unanswered prayer
every moment you chose
to remain.
These are the two truths.
What is here is enough.
What is coming is possible.
And you,
standing between them,
are exactly where
you were always meant to be.