Living from a place of gratitude

As my facebook statuses may have indicated already, I've been trying to live from a place of gratitude these last few weeks. Just that subtle shift from being frustrated with what's wrong to being grateful for what I do have has been huge. I've always understood that the not so great things will always be there so worrying about them is futile, but living in it this week has seemed so much more amazing than ever before.

Every day I'm seeing tons of reasons to be happy. My prime examples:

This morning, I forgot we start later on the weekends so accidentally showed up almost an hour early for work. Instead of moaning about my missed hour of sleep, I went out and sat on the grass, over looking the water. I finally tried out one of those free meditations that I downloaded weeks ago and got a chance to enjoy the view. It made my day go all that smoother.

A couple days ago, I was biking up Shelbourne, feeling all happy with myself thinking I was going fast when another biker sped past me making me look like I was going at a snail's pace. I admit my first reaction was to snarl and make an off hand comment about her having a proper commuter bike, but I stopped myself almost immediately. Instead, I remembered two summers ago trying to bike from the Root Cellar back home was so painful we had to stop/walk our bikes every hill, no matter how little, and I was near tears by the end. And now I can ride my bike the 10km to work, clean rooms for 8 hours, and then bike home and still be smiling by the time I am finished! Not to mention that just a week or so ago I did that same route that almost broke me two years ago, and I didn't have to stop once. I powered through those hills out of sheer determination!

I've had guests at the hotel that anger me.. who leave their garbage everywhere and expect us housekeepers to be their personal maids during their stay. They really got to me when I first started working there, and it made it tough for me to enjoy the things I did like about my job. Now I am so thankful every time I meet a nice guest, or go into a room where the guests are clean. Every time I see that a guest has attempted to make the bed already it makes me smile, and feel very grateful that they want to do something to make my job a little bit easier. Once I started looking out for those nice guests, those not so great ones just faded away.

I've been really missing my cat, Tilly, lately. It was more painful than I realized it would be to let her go. But when I start to feel that sadness take over me, I am reminded of how grateful I am for the amazing family I found for her. Where I know she's loved and spoiled absolutely rotten. Given that the only time I've spent at home these last two weeks has been to sleep, I know she wouldn't get the attention she needs. Also, I'm SO grateful that the Delta hotel lets our head of HR bring her dog to work every day. I've been stopping by almost daily for a quick pet.

The other thing that I'm SUPER grateful for is that I feel like all my hard work with weight loss is going to pay off this next week! I've wanted to do Wild Play, a super fun looking rope obstacle course, for as long as I could remember. However, they had a size limit because their harnesses only go up to a certain size. This is the first summer I'm able to fit into them so to celebrate I'm going there for my birthday on Saturday! I am beyond excited for the entire day and love that I get to do it with some very dear friends!

A lot of exciting things have been happening in my life since I calmed down and started to truly appreciate what I have. I can't wait until I can share them with you! Hopefully by the end of the week :)