Getting intentional with gratitude

Tiffany Sauder:

I'm a small-town kid, born with a big-city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago I founded a marketing consultancy, and ever since my husband, JR and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline.

Yep. That means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life. We love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world, and I want that for you too. I'm Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared Confident.

We are on the week of Thanksgiving, kind of officially kicking off the holiday madness, and I don't know if you're like me, but sometimes a season can be another environment of just a long list of to-dos. Overperforming with perfectly set tables and perfectly wrapped gifts, and a perfectly cooked Turkey and secret competition of who brought the best side.

But I hope that if you're listening to this, you'll take even 15 minutes to sit in a moment of quiet reflection and thanksgiving. Actual Thanksgiving, I was doing a little bit of reading before I jumped on here to record about like just the early days of Thanksgiving and what was it about. Sometimes when I go back and take myself out of the environment of today, it gives me just a little bit different perspective, and it was a season of certainly celebration and being with family and celebrating like bountiful harvest.

There's also a really rich season of prayer, and if I look at my holidays, they aren't oftentimes steeped in a lot of, even a little bit of time of really quiet reflection and prayer. So I gave myself the. I guess tasked to do of, I'm like, how do I wanna express thankfulness this year? Do I wanna do that?

And I said, well, I wanna come up with 10 things I'm thankful for, but I wanna create some criteria for myself. So the criteria, I don't know why. I think just to force myself out of the obvious things, like I'm thankful for my kids, I'm thankful for my husband. It's true. It can become almost a little accidentally trite, I think.

And so I wanted to put so qualifiers to it to push my mind in a different direction. And. I said I wanna come up with 10 things. I didn't want any of the things to be stuff, you know, like belongings, like physical things. And I wanted it to not be things that were trite, which I know is very subjective, but for me, , that was the rule.

So I'll share my 10 with you, and then I'd encourage you just like put on some quiet music and maybe do some yoga stretching, and then allow your mind to think on what are you really thankful for over the last year, or. You really wanna bring into consciousness intentionally right now.

The first one I wrote down is that my great-grandmother is still living. She is in her early nineties, and so I have the opportunity for four generations to sit in one room, great grandma, my mother, me and my girls. And that is a really special sight and a really special moment and. Have enough friends.

I've lost parents and people who have not or will not have that moment, and so I'm really grateful for that right now. I can sit in a room where there's four generations. That's really special. The second one is that my husband lets me be me. This is different than just being grateful for my husband. You know, I joke like I'm a lot, I have a lot of things I wanna do.

I have. A lot of things I need to say, a lot of things I wanna experience and sometimes the process is a little bit chaotic. And as our relationship has matured and as we have matured, I'm just really grateful that he, he's confident enough in who he is to just let me be all of who I need to be. And we have.

I created an environment where there's communication in our marriage where I can be me and he can be him, and I'm just really grateful for that, that I don't feel in any way, like I need to bend and contort who I am, that I can just show up in our marriage and in our relationship authentically, who I really believe God designed me to be.

The third thing I wrote down is close real friendships. I was talking to my mother-in-law about this in that when we first got married, there's just a season for us that was like kind of clumsy on the friend vibe. Jared didn't grow up in Indiana, my friends that were here, and it just was like, We kinda like didn't fit anywhere and really having friendships was really hard.

We didn't have good friends that we were like coupled friends with. Uh, I don't think that's unique to us. It's really a journey right now in this space in our lives. We have just really close friendships that we can drop in on, that we can inconvenience, that we can call and say, Hey, can you take my kid?

And it just feels really awesome and that close real friendship is something that we experience this season without, and I feel really grateful that I have those friendships. My fourth one is a body with no physical pain. I'm so grateful that I wake up every day and don't have chronic pain. I'm so thankful for that.

I recently. We went to DC and I was on the bus for a million hours and I was unloading the dishwasher like a maniac and hurt my back and it was so stupid. I think it was just because my muscles were so tight from sitting for so long and for like four or five days, it hurt so bad. I'm just like bringing that into consciousness.

So grateful that I don't have to wake up every day with chronic pain. I'm so grateful for that. I know there's a huge percentage of people that deal with that, and I feel very grateful for that. The fifth one is smell and taste. I don't know if when you got covid, if your taste and smell went away, but mine did and it was when I had a little baby and not being able to smell my children.

If you know me in my real life, you. Such a Smeller. I have such a nose, but not being able to smell my kids, not being able to like smell garlic and onions on the stove, not being able to like walk into my bedroom and like a smell of fresh sheets. I really miss that. It was a loneliness that that made me feel.

Then I remember praying like, If I get my taste and smell back, I am never gonna take it for granted again. It creates such joy in life to be able to taste food and smell your surroundings and the people that you love. That's kind of strange, but my taste and smell, I'm very thankful for that this year.

Number six is laughter in our home. There are days when I secretly earn for quietness in our home, but I'm thankful for the laughter that there's joy, um, that that will be part of what my kids remember about our house. So I'm thankful for laughter in our home. That's number six. Number seven, as I'm thankful for messes, just the commotion and I don't know, ideas and creativity in our home.

I'm just grateful for that. So I'm grateful for the. I also applaud my kids when the messes go away, but I'm thankful for the messes that we have. Number eight, I'm thankful for the courage to keep taking risks. It can become easy, I think, as you get older, when you have more to lose, um, to stop taking risks, to stop putting money back in, to stop putting your time into new projects, to stop exposing your own like brand and reputation and all that kind of stuff and new ways.

I feel like this year I really stretched myself some ways that are public and seen, like continuing at this project and some that are not as much. And I just, I want that to continue to be a part of my life and my journey, that I'm comfortable looking down, that I'm humble enough to still be the student, and I feel proud that this year I feel like I had the courage to take some risks, and so I'm thankful for that muscle of courage and risk taking.

Number nine. I'm thankful for new relationships that were added into my life this year. Again, I think this is probably front and center in my consciousness Again, you know, kind of coming out of a fully post covid world where it was very difficult for me, at least as an extrovert and somebody who loves big, vibrant community.

To add new relationships into my life that felt connected, that I knew their stories, that I felt like I really knew, and this year I went on some trips with some different people, spoke in some different places. I just feel like really stretched my web of relationships, and I'm really grateful to have those new relationships into my life and just be back to a place where that is part of my life.

I feel very thankful and fulfilled when that is. Number 10 is just saying yes to this project for another year. My goal in the first year of Scare Confident was that it would help one person that I actually liked jumping on the microphone, and that it began to extend some of the reach of my speaking and those things happened.

And so I said, all right, I'll say yes to a second year, and it's like a pre. Because it's an exercise of being present for the journey and what you're learning, but also being planful enough that people around you can like assimilate and be prepared. And I really feel like this has been a forcing function for me to capitalize lessons to like view what's going on in a way that is very present and to force a process of reflection that I hope becomes a really intentional habit of mine.

So I'm grateful to this project. I'm grateful to those of you who listen to those of you who share it, to those of you who have been on this journey. When you reach out and say that it's helping you, that it's changing your perspective, that it introduced you to somebody who changed your world, that is a hundred percent why I'm doing this.

And I appreciate you showing up for it. It's really satisfying. It gives my life a lot of purpose to feel a bit of redemption for the lessons that I've learned and the things that life has taught me. So those are the 10 things that I'm thankful for this year, and I feel blessed to be in this moment.

I've seen enough valleys in life to know. It does not always feel light and full. And for those of you who are in a valley, I'm sorry because it's hard and it can feel very, very alone. But no, there is another day, there is a new day. Remember that. It's the relationships that matter, not the presents, not the food, all that.

It's the relationships. And so let's make sure that we hold each other accountable, focusing on the right things. Thanks for listening today.

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