Grateful is…what…Grateful brings.

Bismillah.

Per usual when folks call me it’s usually to get some sort of insight on quite a few topics. This given day a friend of mine stopped me mid sentence and said, “bro, I love talking to you because it seems like you get it!”. We began speaking on that and I wound up explaining that I don’t get it. I merely understand who I am and what makes me tick. There came a point in my life when I realized that, the truer you are to self the more the Universe will avail to you. Nobody can beat you at anything when you’re being your true self. And a part of that process is learning what genuine gratitude is. Once you unlock that aspect of your thinking, you almost become unbeatable. What is genuine gratitude? Being able to name what you’re grateful for without finishing the statement with the word “but”.

It’s wild to think about because in times like those, a lot of reflection happens. You also become amazed at the things you’re able to genuinely smile through. I can honestly say that I was at possibly one of the lowest points in my life(that I’d recognized) and still managed to squeeze out a smile or a laugh somehow…it all came down to one thing, GRATITUDE. It had gotten to a point where I finally realized that, though I would’ve loved for the situation to be over as fast as it began there was a process I needed to go through and learn from. I’d say it took me about a good month and a half to two months before I grasped this and took hold of it. Once I did there wasn’t much looking back. My needs are constantly being met and that was what I recognized. It was an unfamiliar face that I had to see for myself, I didn’t like what I was becoming as result of my situation and the only way to fix it was to be grateful for even for having the ability to be able to decipher what was necessary and what wasn’t. I’ve been placed in tough positions before but the lesson always escaped me. And if you know anything about life lessons…you’ll endure the same hardships in different forms until you figure out what it’s trying to teach you.

Another aspect that continues to cross my mind is, the fact that even what seems impossible at the time always works out if you take care of the variables that are within your control. Prior to all of his happening I spoke a lot about “controlling what you can and the rest leave to who else can.”. But in the dark I was somewhat of a control freak, I liked things how I liked them and wouldn’t touch it if it couldn’t be done in a certain manner. I hit a brick wall with this thinking. When everything first happened like I said, I wanted to have everything over and done with right away. But that wasn’t in the stars at all. I needed to be shown patience and the Universe was going to do it one way or another. I read a quote not too long ago that said, “The Universe has a funny way of making you be who you say you are…”. And sure enough she made me become patient not only with other people but with myself. I fell victim to the concept of placing timelines on myself instead of embracing process and adjusting at each stop. I’ve come to understand that once you begin to actually enjoy whatever process it is that you’re going through, you then begin to understand your “why” more. Because you begin to see it unfold in front you with each small piece that you conquer. You also can decide whether or it’s for you without feeling like you’ve failed. We hear, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” all the time and I think we hear it so much that it goes in one ear and out of the other. That saying is basically saying that great things take time(now if you know me, you know how I feel about the Roman empire…) but you get what I’m saying. One of the greatest “things” to take place in the human experience is the building of self! Along the path you’ll take to build self, you’re going to have inconveniences that at the time will feel major but in the grand scheme will be speed bumps. The purpose of life isn’t to try and hurry to get as much as out of it as possible…but more so to enjoy the experiences we encounter, no matter how insignificant it may seem to be at the time. One of my favorite examples I like to use is, the gym. Everyone wants their results as fast as possible or they want to resemble someone else, whether it be an influencer or an old version of themselves. Without realizing that they literally have an opportunity to create a better version of what they thought they wanted to be or once were. But this “new self” will take time to cultivate. You won’t go to sleep and wake up a brand new being, you have to learn you all over again everyday. Trial and error became one of my best friends during this time…what worked I kept, what didn’t I threw away. I gained this understanding through talks with one of my closest friends who’s more like family…we both were at points where we were starting from scratch him physically and me mentally. He went through something that had almost taken away everything he’d worked for but he still had the hunger to reclaim what he’d lost even if it meant breaking himself all the way down and rebuilding from the ground up. And when it came down to it I realized that I needed to take a similar approach with my mental and how I thought about things going forward. What I’d dealt with wasn’t the end but merely a pause…a much needed break from myself.

Life isn’t perfect but it always works in favor of the grateful.

Asalaamu Alaykum.