Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast

Episode Title: Waking Up Grateful: How Taking Nothing For Granted Changes Everything

Host(s): Monica

Guest(s): Kristi

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Monica (Host) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:36
Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project podcast. I'm your host, Monica Rogers, and my guest today is Kristi Nelson.

Monica (Host) | 00:00:37 to 00:01:16
Kristi Nelson is the recently retired executive director of a network for Grateful Living. Congratulations. She has a master's degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and has spent more than 30 years in nonprofit leadership development and consulting. She has worked at the center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Krupalo Center for Yoga and Health, and she's worked at the Soul of Money Institute alongside Lynn Twist. She is a stage four cancer survivor who cherishes living among friends and family in western Massachusetts.

Monica (Host) | 00:01:16 to 00:02:29
And today, we're here to talk about her book, Wake Up, Grateful the Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. I love this book so much, and I'm so pleased to bring you this conversation because it's through the practice of gratitude that I have come to know Grateful Living and the difference. And Kristi's here really, to share with us more about this practice and bringing it through our lives with five guiding principles. And, of course, we also touch in on so many essential truths about these challenging times we're living in. So this episode is really about reminding us what is most important and how to not take what's most important for granted, and how to align our lives with awakening to more and more beauty and possibility that is always present amongst darkness and fear and chaos.

Monica (Host) | 00:02:30 to 00:02:40
And so, without further ado, please join me in welcoming Kristi Nelson. Hey, Kristi.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:02:40 to 00:03:32
Oh, my gosh. Hi, Monica. It's so lovely to be here. Thank you for that.

Monica (Host) |
Oh, and this book is such a gift. I tell my listeners that I just returned back from another trip to Scotland, which was just brilliant in so many ways, and I always tend to come home with that sense of overwhelm. And I was preparing for the podcast, and as I was reading, I was just gaining so much, just ways of really grounding myself back in what I call kind of full permission to be messy, to breathe, to be human about it, and to just inhabit myself in these ways that allow myself to show up and wake up, as you know, grateful. And I loved reading this, Kristi.

Monica (Host) | 00:03:32 to 00:04:08
And I just really wanted to start with I know your personal story, but I would love for my listener to hear how this became such a I'm going to call it magical because it's one of those what I call the oracle of the obvious. It's right here, but yet when we practice it, it becomes this access to more magic in our lives. So how did that really start to occur for you and why?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:04:08 to 00:04:42
Thanks for the question. It's beautiful and beautifully asked. There's so many places to start on one story and where all these things are sourced and originate. And yet for me, the journey of being ill, as ill as I was with cancer in my early 30s, was profoundly life changing. I have to credit that. I have to really bow to that experience for how much it opened me to living life in an even more enhanced way than I had lived it before.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:04:42 to 00:05:52
I was not an unconscious person before I had this cancer journey, but it deepened everything and it offered me the opportunity for having everything stripped away. So for me, living for weeks on end in a hospital room with no windows, it had a window, but it looked out on a brick wall in the summer and I was 32 years old, and it took me out of everything that I thought mattered and stripped everything away. So it was like the silent retreat, the kind of cave, the top of the mountain cave that I never asked for at that point in my life, I didn't understand fully. But in having everything stripped away, it taught me how much was present that we almost all walk around taking for granted everything. And so giving everything up made me acutely awake to how much was available to us that we have come to assume and expect and make not enough.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:05:52 to 00:06:50
And we forget to celebrate the fact that just another day is the most extraordinary gift we could possibly ask for. So there's something that happened for me that made the most basic things that I could count on, even in a hospital room. So when you've got nothing that you're accustomed to and nothing that you think you need and want, and that makes life yummy and delicious and all those things, and you're in pain and you're attached to all kinds of cords and IVs and everything, and even all the people who you love are not there, you're by yourself. And how did I connect to feeling grateful for the fact of being alive? Was grounding myself in the things that could never be taken away, the things that were unconditional, that could stay with me till the very end of my life no matter what.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:06:50 to 00:07:18
And so if I could find and locate those things as sources of the deepest gratefulness, then I knew I was going to be okay no matter how long I had to live. Because it deepened the quality so much that the quantity became less important about how long I lived.

Monica (Host) | 00:07:18 to 00:08:06
Honestly, I loved how you started the. Book with Not Dying changed everything, right? It was like, whoa, right that a statement to start with. And then not only did you not die, you go on to say, but you got to live. And that's what I'm really hearing you say, is that it became this simple yet profound way of being in relationship to all of these ways that we all take life for granted. And then what I loved is how real you got about how you super soaked all of this life back in. And then just like we all do, we go back.

Monica (Host) | 00:08:06 to 00:08:19
We go back to taking life for granted again. And you were like, whoa, wait a minute. Stop the press. I know better. That's what I felt like you were saying to yourself, like, I know better.

Monica (Host) | 00:08:20 to 00:08:57
And so henceforth came this really demonstrative way of guiding yourself and others in the principles and practices of what it means to wake up grateful and to practice this in the same way we would practice any commitment.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:08:58 to 00:09:31
Absolutely. Mindfulness is a moment to moment practice. It's not just something you sit on a cushion and you have a 45 minutes experience of mindfulness. Mindful meditation. Gratefulness is a moment to moment experience way of going through life to really hold your heart open and to be grateful. And what I call it is spiritual musculature, actually. I really think that in order to develop spiritual musculature, it's about having those things to which we return over and over again the things that we know deeply are true. And we're going to forget them over and over again and also be able to laugh at that, to be light about that, to know that that's the human experience. And the worst thing is beating yourself up and then beating yourself up for beating yourself up.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:09:31 to 00:09:57
And then you get lost in the sex. So it's like, oh, okay, there I go again. Look at me losing perspective. And that was revelatory. That was revelatory for me, that I could be in these spaces of such profound, fully juiced, fully eyes wide open, heart wide open experience of the gift of life.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:09:57 to 00:10:25
And how little it took for me to feel blessed. And to feel privileged. And then in the next hour, to be absolutely sunk into a different experience of overwhelm, of stress, of scarcity, of something that kind of and then I would look and I would say, I know how to get back to this. I know what matters. But I needed to help myself.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:10:25 to 00:10:47
And the book is also about helping other people know. How do we get back? How do we get back to the remembering? To the depth of what we know is true? Which is that every single day and moment that we're alive and awake, it's this extraordinary blessing that so many people would give.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:10:48 to 00:11:06
Anything. So many people in my life who I've lost would give anything to wake up to the day that I woke up to today. Even if it's hard, even if it's hard, even if it's challenging. And someday, I won't wake up to it again. So who am I to thumb my nose at something I might consider imperfect?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:11:07 to 00:12:09
And it's like we pass them by these gorgeous, normal, everyday things because we think that we're on some quest for something more extraordinary and more perfect, and we miss so much in the process.

Monica (Host) | 00:12:10 to 00:12:39
Yeah, I'm also really hearing this familiar refrain. For me, it's familiar because in the context of the Revelation Project, there is this constant forgetting and remembering. And I'm hearing a lot of similarities in how you frame these ways again, where we forget and come back home to it with this tenderness and gentleness and levity for ourselves because it is part of the human experience.

And so finding that flow, balance isn't necessarily the goal. It's more about noticing when we're off balance 100% to be able to kind of come back to it. And those indicators that tell us, oh, am I wearing my shoulders for earrings? Am I holding my breath? Am I tight?

Monica (Host) | 00:12:39 to 00:13:12
And where have I forgotten that I'm allowed to breathe? Where have I forgotten that I have so much to be grateful for?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:13:12 to 00:14:06
And what are the things that help us? What are the reminders that help us get back to what we know is true and to what helps us treasure the moments that we have? Because the real tragedy is when we forget, and then we keep forgetting. And for me, that's, I guess, just what I want to look back and say, I remembered as much as I could, as often as I could. And it's not a perfect equation. It's to say that I brought myself back to treasuring life as a gift as much as I possibly could. And the human blessing is to know that that's not going to be a constant state of being.

Monica (Host) | 00:14:06 to 00:14:30
Yeah, you say gratitude is great, gratefulness is greater, and then you go on to say that gratefulness does not serve only for when good things happen, or it's not reserved for when only good things happen, that it enables us to have the tenacity to attend and respond in a more resilient way to challenges.

I'd love to hear the distinction for you between gratitude and gratefulness.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:14:30 to 00:15:00
Yeah, you'll hear me? I don't use the word gratitude very often, actually, because I feel like, especially these days, it has a lot of cultural association to it. There's a lot that's tied to it. And how it's been defined is so interesting. And how we experience it is as a feeling state. So feelings come and go. We know that about feelings. And so to try to hold on to a feeling state, to me, is really different than holding on to a state of what we know is true, what we know is truth, which is connecting to something much larger. So just to say gratitude basically is how we've learned to respond to something good happening, something we want to have happen.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:15:00 to 00:15:12
It's a reaction, okay? It's a reaction. So it's like happiness. We kind of learn the same thing, and we talk about the pursuit of happiness. And I think we similarly pursue gratitude inducing experiences.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:15:12 to 00:15:44
We want things to go just right. And I love talking about the green lights, like the string of green lights, and how easy it's like, oh, my God, gratitude. And then I got the parking space. And the truth is, gratefulness is about really getting it, that the yellow lights and red lights have a very important part of life as well. I love that, that if we don't stop, if we don't yield, if we don't slow down, we're just on this trajectory where we're going to crash, basically.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:15:44 to 00:16:19
So these things that get put into our lives, that allow us to have to adjust, to adapt, to not always have this, and to really have a bigger picture of where the meaning of all that stuff lives. So, again, gratitude is super fleeting. It's highly conditional. We really reserve it for when things go exactly our way. Gratefulness lands itself in those things that I was saying, which are the unconditional, the very fact of being here.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:16:20 to 00:16:59
We can hold gratefulness when it's connected to our breath and the very fact of being here and air and the existence of love and the sun rising, the things that will be with us until the last moment. We take a breath. If we locate our deepest gratitude right there, it will never fail us. We can always find it. But we've attached gratitude to so many things that are really unfortunately, they're fleeting, they're conditional.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:16:59 to 00:17:16
And so I love to just deepen that practice of I'm here another day. Like Maya Angelou says, this is a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before. Can we wake up and just say, this is a wonderful moment. This is an amazing opportunity.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:17:16 to 00:17:30
I've never seen this one before. I've never felt this feeling before. I've never had this experience before. And welcome things like the gifts that they really are into our lives, even when they're difficult. Yeah.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:17:30 to 00:18:09
Can we say thank you? Is it possible.

Monica (Host) |
I'm thinking of our card that we chose because the card that we chose was becoming and what I hear in what you're saying, Kristi, is gratefulness as a way of being, which is different from gratitude as a feeling that comes and goes

Kristi (Guest)
Exactly. .

Monica (Host) | 00:18:09 to 00:18:58
And so it opens us to the opportunities or the revelations in everyday moments. Absolutely It's like this everyday way of being in relationship, in the gratefulness of life.

Kristi (Guest)
Exactly. You got it so much.

Monica (Host) |
Okay, well and I'm also really just loving how it ties into our card because even though I was saying, oh, it really is the perfect card, now I'm really hearing where the resonance is because this particular card for my listener, we chose from The Journey of Love a Deck by Alana Fairchild. And it was all about I'll just read this one part, so celebrate what you're creating now and realize that it is a step in your major work of divine art, this life of yours.

Monica (Host) | 00:18:58 to 00:19:35
Not to be planned, but to be experienced stroke after stroke, step after step. You shall witness the picture coming to life. It may not be what you expected, but it will be the most beautiful, extraordinary creation. Right. And it was also this reminder of the messiness along the way and what I call the sacred, and that there's these ways that we get to be in our messiness and our magnificence, and that is the gratefulness of life.

That the paradox, is where we get to be all of it, and we get to be with all of it. So that's what I mean by when I started reading your book, I was like, oh, right. Permission to fully breathe. Permission to fully be in this experience of the overwhelm and let it just be what it is in this moment and just not judge it.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:20:02 to 00:20:17
Yes, exactly. And even to be tender is the beginning of being grateful. To be able to be compassionate is the beginning of gratefulness. Right. So how do we get ourselves back out of these states of who doesn't get into overwhelm?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:20:18 to 00:20:39
We have to know the pathways and the first steps that we can take. And those are really sacred. Those are sacred steps. Because it's that recognition that we're on a journey and that that journey has so much to do with our making, our craft, our brushstrokes, as well as what's handed to us. Right.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:20:39 to 00:20:53
So I think that's a super powerful way to think about it. And the great fullness of life is such a beautiful way to think because it's absolutely everything. It includes everything. .

Monica (Host) | 00:20:54 to 00:21:05
Yeah, it does. I love that so much. Okay. And you talk about commitments and responsibilities as blessings and privilege.

Monica (Host) | 00:21:07 to 00:21:22
Okay. Right. And again, back to forgetting and remembering about even saying commitments and responsibilities. I feel heaviness. Yeah.

Monica (Host) | 00:21:22 to 00:21:52
This contraction, this heaviness. So what do you mean by that? I

Kristi (Guest) | 00:21:53 to 00:22:33
t's such a juicy concept for me. It's so big because I think about the language around being at the effect of something versus affecting something. So we so often feel at the effect of life that life is besieging us and that we are just done unto in all these ways by the things that we have to do.

And if only I didn't have these things to do. And yet, for me, when I think about all the things that I have to do in a day, there's a whole practice around. I get to do those things because one day I won't get to do them anymore. And right now I get to do things like be with my dad in the last stages of his life, and I get to go visit him, and I get to sit with him in all the illness and struggles that he's dealing with. I get to take care of a home.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:22:34 to 00:23:10
I get to drive my car to a grocery store and pick up food because I have a car and I have enough food to buy groceries and I can move my body still. And I had periods of time when I couldn't move my body through space. I couldn't walk. And my dad currently can't really walk and my stepdad can't walk. And so when I walk, can I walk in the get to I get to this privilege, this opportunity that's being given to me to walk someplace, even if it's doing something that I don't want to do.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:23:11 to 00:23:36
Can I see the privilege in that? Can I feel it? And then how do I walk differently? How do I carry my body differently when I know that it is a privilege to be able to walk and not everybody enjoys it and someday I won't. And for me, it just makes me want to cry because it's remembering all of what could be and I do it in honor of all those who can't.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:23:37 to 00:24:21
When I can breathe unassisted, it's like all the different things that encompass me and that my life encompasses. How do I look towards those things as blessed privileges on this day that I get to be alive no matter what I'm doing, that I get to do it?

Monica (Host) | 00:24:23 to 00:25:46
Yeah, I was tearing up as I was listening to you as well. Because what comes up for me is this I don't want to regret, right? Like there's some regret under there that immediately kind of comes up wanting the throat of where Eespecially when we talk about our parents or our caregivers and what we can often see as this. Again, back to the responsibility. Or the obligation or the burden and changing that perspective and just by changing it in the slightest way how deeply that impacts how we move in the world. And so what comes up a lot for me lately is the distance between or the distance that has been between my mother and I, let's say, or people in my life that have had very different ways or ideas that differ from mine, whom I love very much and want to be as intimate and as close. And at what point do we isolate, limit, barricade ourselves with our righteousness or all of the associations of that?

Monica (Host) | 00:25:47 to 00:26:55
And so what comes up for me again is this softening to ourselves and to others when we're living more in this attitude of how blessed am I that I get to do this, how privileged am I that I get to still be with? And how there's so much room there in that perspective change to relate to? And I think that's at the deeper heart of what I continue to experience as I do my own Revelation project are the ways in which I have started relating differently to all of the things that used to be a boundary or these harder edges. I find that there was a time that I needed those things. I was going to say yes, that.

Monica (Host) | 00:26:55 to 00:27:21
Those were important for a time. And now I find that I'm softening those very what felt like hard earned edges in order to individuate and figure out who the hell I was. Like, I almost needed those hard edges for a while.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:27:21 to 00:28:11
I have so many things I'm wanting to say, so I'm like going back. Good.
I want to make sure that I say these couple of things. Because when you talked about regrets, part of what I think is this idea of time being so precious. And when we begrudge what we're doing, when we are bemoaning the things that we're doing in those states, we've lost opportunity. And so what we want so much is for opportunity to open. And one of the things that gratefulness opens is the capacity for forgiveness and intimacy and being with being with what's true, and I like to call gratefulness is the ability to greet the gratefulness of life with gratefulness of heart.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:28:12 to 00:28:41
That if we can bring gratefulness of heart to all of what life, even the challenging things, we're much less likely to regret. And regret is so painful to carry. And regret lives so much in the assumption of more time. I have more time to attend to that. And I think what's fascinating to me is this whole way of living gratefully, taking nothing for granted.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:28:42 to 00:29:10
The primary thing we don't take for granted is time, which is life itself. The ability to be here and to have all the opportunities available to us that are here. And we tend to squander those and dismiss those and so many what are the things that are calling to us for our attention. And when we bring gratefulness of heart, we open up so much opportunity for healing.

Monica (Host) | 00:29:11 to 00:29:19
I feel like this is appropriate. This is a quote from your book. Gratefulness is a powerful intervention whenever a sense of lack permeates our lives.

Monica (Host) | 00:29:22 to 00:29:43
And it's that moment, right, where we're recognizing, as you were mentioning, that either that scarcity of time or the way that we are almost dancing with certain future regret. Right? That's what I'll call it. Yes, exactly.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:29:43 to 00:30:20
It's beautiful way to put it.

Monica (Host) |
Yeah. So it opens up the gratefulness or this way of being in relationship with gratefulness opens us continually to this experience of enough, not only for ourselves, but as it relates to whatever is happening, whatever is in the space, it just gets to be enough. Yeah, right. Like there's no need to fix it. Or control it or manage it and change it.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:30:23 to 00:31:00
I was going to say too, about what you were saying before in my life, I've had to have boundaries because I needed to be able to say no and know that I could say no before I could say yes. And when I would give myself full permission to say no, a yes, would sometimes open. And that was powerful to watch how that would happen and how critical those things were at those moments in my life. And what's also interesting to notice is not needing it to be necessarily other than it is. When do we need it to be other than it is?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:31:00 to 00:31:39
Sometimes it's really appropriate to take a stand against something or a stand for something. And can we also marvel at how much is already in our midst, how much fills us, our bodies? Like I literally say it's so astounding and miraculous. What is happening inside your body at every single moment that you are alive, that you could be, if you wanted to just be in a constant state of shock and awe and truly awe, you could focus on what your body is doing every single moment to keep you alive. And you would literally almost never have to leave that space.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:31:39 to 00:31:47
It would be enough. So how do we fill ourselves and then the natural world? Holy moly. Right? Like if you want to be connected.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:31:47 to 00:32:28
And yet we get driven. Because we all know in this economic system, in this culture, there's so many drivers for us to be consumers and to need more and want more and want other and want better and want different and improved and all those things that we absolutely negate the glory and the power and the extraordinariness of what is already in our lives. And brother David Steinelrast, who founded our organization, he has a beautiful quote that's quite well known and often changed. People say it differently, but it basically is it's not happiness that makes us grateful. It's gratefulness that makes us happy.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:32:28 to 00:33:22
And the reason for that so much is if you can't be happy, like if you can't figure out how to navigate, if you're not grateful for what you have and you already have, you see the happiest people are the people who not who we can justify, okay? They're going to be resource poor, so we're going to be okay with them because they have so little. But look at how happy they are. No, it's something about treasuring, what is already in the world, in life, in this way that everything else becomes icing on the cake or unnecessary or just extra or to give away when we have more than we need and we're able to have those encounters with sufficiency deep, deep felt sufficiency that I think are transformative, really transformative. Right.

Monica (Host) | 00:33:22 to 00:33:57
It really, of course, reminds me, as I'm sure it does you, of the intersection of this conversation with Lynn Twist's work, someone who is beloved to both of us and actually is how we met. Such a our listener understands that that's kind of how you and I connected. And it really makes me think about where she talks about what true poverty is. Right. It's like it's not what we might see on the surface.

Monica (Host) | 00:33:57 to 00:35:12
It's actually this lack of gratefulness is what the true poverty is of not knowing our sufficiency or the sufficiency of life and always kind of being consumed by these lies of scarcity and lack. Yeah.

Kristi (Guest) |
And the longing for more that negates the moment that you're in the longing, the idea that more is going to satisfy something, and it's not to diminish the importance of resources and having sufficient resources in our lives that's so important for people to be able to have what's needed. And of course, there's so much we could say about that and redistributing the resources that are in our midst and how inequitable and the world is. And what I think is so important is how much we lose touch with and how grounding and important it is to be able to reconnect with that deep wellspring of marvel and mystery and magic that's at the core of our lives, that the quest for more is going to constantly take us away from.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:35:13 to 00:35:56
And some of I know a lot of people who are all points on the socioeconomic spectrum, people of all different kinds of lives and backgrounds. And some of the people, the people who we project on, the wealthy and it's always the wealthier than we are because we negate our own privilege, right? Like that's what we're taught to do because it's all about them and we point at them and no matter what they have, is it ever going to be enough? Is it ever going to be the source of true joy and happiness? So I think it's really worth checking in on again, back to I woke up again today.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:35:57 to 00:36:28
There are countless people who would give anything to wake up to this day who didn't get to live till today and thought they would and wanted to. And who are we to find it not enough. This day, this moment, this body, this life, this love, right? That to me is the tragedy.

Monica (Host) | 00:36:28 to 00:37:16
It's reminding me of this conversation that I was having with my daughter this morning. And it was around FOMO fear of missing out. And again, it's such a precious lesson that I have to relearn over and over again. And I was sharing with her that this way that we speak to ourselves is the place to kind of, at least for me, to keep coming back to over and over again. And I know that this is something that you talk about in your book a lot because it's noticing in that moment, like, what is the story that I'm telling myself about how I'm lacking or missing out or missed the boat again? And usually there's this very unkind inner critic who's doing the narrating of that story in the moment.

Monica (Host) | 00:37:16 to 00:37:43
And the goal for me is to intercept and to pivot and choose in that moment a different voice, which comes oftentimes for me, either the voice of the inner child who is always the oracle in my life, or the voice of the inner. Sage. Yeah. Oracle of the inner child often says the party doesn't even get going until you get there. Silly.

Monica (Host) | 00:37:43 to 00:38:14
And the sage is often reminding me that if I was supposed to be there, I would be. That not every moment or every experience is actually for me. Love it. There's this also way of kind of that you've pointed to again and again in this conversation of turning and looking through. And of course, this is where I want to surface these five points of perspective that you talk about.And I wondered if you could expand on those.

Kristi (Guest) |
I was just going to say that what you're talking about is perspective. When you talk about the inner child and the inner sage, those are places where we go to look for perspective and when we I really think so. Perspective is the spiritual musculature and perspective is these beautiful ways that we can re see exactly what we're currently seeing. We just see it differently and by remembering these other bigger truths.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:38:46 to 00:39:14
So there are five points of perspective. There's also five principles. But I'll talk about the five points of perspective because it's actually interesting because not a lot of people get their heads around this. Monica so I'm so happy that you asked me about it because it was so important to me in the book and in articulating this whole way of being, which is okay if perspective is the key thing that we have to cultivate, what are those points of perspective that we can tap into? Where are the places where we can go?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:39:14 to 00:39:57
And the first one is poignancy. So poignancy is that gorgeous, gorgeous state of being, like paradox that holds the both and it holds the beautiful, bittersweet the truth of life is that it is precious beyond measure and fleeting beyond time. It's just we are perched on this like angel dancing on the head of a pin and it goes before we know it and it's more precious than we can know. So it's like that if we don't experience poignancy in those truths, I cultivate poignancy. Someone told me when I was writing the book that poignancy was too sad and that I shouldn't include it.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:39:58 to 00:40:29
And poignancy to me, is to be fully, fully alive, so in the moment and so fully connected and aware that this moment is passing and that we are mortal. And that in that state of impermanence, everything becomes more vivid in that state of recognizing the impermanence of life, of this moment. It's so poignant and it's so rich. So poignancy is the first point of perspective. Peak awareness is the second point of perspective, which is the mountaintop view.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:40:30 to 00:40:49
How do we connect to the sage, kind of, or the crone or the wise elder? That perspective which sees it all. And where do you get that? Standing at the edge of an ocean? For me, standing at the edge of vastness and peak experiences lend us peak awareness.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:40:49 to 00:41:18
So what's great is we can cultivate peak experiences. Make sure. Like yesterday I was having a really hard day and I said I'm going to go hike a really hard mountain and get to the top where there's this amazing view. And I literally took an hour and a half in the afternoon and I did that because I needed a different perspective on what I was trying to say to somebody. And I knew that if I could do that and sweat and push myself and get up there and see the whole world around me from Skinner Mountain, that I would be able to then come back down.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:41:18 to 00:41:49
So peak awareness comes from peak experience, which can be music, it can be the mystical, it can be psychedelics, it can be love making, it can know the depth of the forest and the edge of the ocean. It's all those things that make us feel connected and belonging right in that same moment. And small for some people, going into a church can be that. Like when you feel the vastness and your smallness at the same time. Yeah, and how exquisite that is.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:41:50 to 00:42:11
The third one is privilege and plenty. The perspective that helps us recognize how much we actually truly have and that we discount so much of what we have. And if we could really live into the abundance or just literally the plenty. Like Lindwist says, abundance is landfill. Sometimes abundance is way more than we need and want.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:42:11 to 00:42:40
And so what is enough? And the privilege of having those things, the privilege of caregiving, the privilege of having a car that we could drive to, a grocery store, a body that works, where do we locate our plenty? Yes, that's really a beautiful thing. And the fourth one is our principles, our deepest sense of principle. Where do those things live that are our core operating systems and how they don't betray us?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:42:40 to 00:43:22
And that we can lock into those things inside our source. So just to finish those principles, right, those things that are our trustworthy true north, where we can lock in and where we really find those places, the Oracles, the Twelve Steps for a lot of people, the things that we really deeply remember that guide our essence and that are our core, core beliefs and values. And when we connect with those, they give us perspective. And then the last one is pleasure. And pleasure is a profound perspective enhancer because it's play, it's connecting with our senses.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:43:23 to 00:44:01
Whenever I connect to my senses, I open myself up in a whole different way for gratefulness when I really tune into all the different ways that I can experience pleasure. And those things are so important. So what's really important about these is there's pathways to give us perspective. And when we're locked in and we're struggling, what steps do we take on that path that we know are going to generate perspective for us? Because perspective will shift everything not our conditions per se but how we see where we are, how we see exactly what's so well.

Monica (Host) | 00:44:01 to 00:45:16
And I also see how closely again related perspective is to revelation because it's through those perspectives that we come to have these revelations that sometimes are so simple that they're profound totally. But it's that open aperture yes that allows us to see the bigger picture and also allows us to see these small, simple miraculous truths about everything, living about everything. And what else comes up for me when I look at these points of perspective is how closely they're related to what I call unbecoming because of the way we've often been conditioned. We've been conditioned to rush, we've been conditioned to deprive ourselves, we've been conditioned to keep our head down, nose to the grindstone. We've been conditioned to see the scarcity.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:45:18 to 00:46:15
I've got one that I'm thinking of as you speak which is to both stay small but to go for big exactly right. Like all of those paradoxical things,

Monica (Host) |
The Double bind that's constantly where people get so caught in the maze of confusion that is and it's kind of what you were talking about earlier there's so much that we could look to and despair about if that's what we want to pay attention to. So it's very much kind of in this realm of what I call saying yes to the mass, which is all of these ways of unbecoming from the way we've been socialized and conditioned to be with life love. That because when we do start changing the world and bringing more of these practices to our lives the more actually the world around us reorients and changes.

Monica (Host) | 00:46:15 to 00:47:21
It's like trueing as we kind of come into relationship with a truer more aligned way of being in this gratefulness of life more and more magic and opportunity shows up and we kind of become less compatible with the relationships and circumstances that have hooked us often in these habitual ways of being for a long, long time. And so what we might find is that the people around us aren't necessarily grateful for these changes that we're making in our lives. But I also believe that this way of being is so infectious that when we see and this is what I loved too, was there was at some point you mentioned something to the effect of the people that you see easily moved, who are easily brought to tears by anything, really, right? A poignant moment. Who wear their emotions close on their sleeves and aren't afraid to be vulnerable.

Monica (Host) | 00:47:21 to 00:48:08
Like go that way. That those people are precious because they're modeling this very, very close relationship actually to what gratefulness is all about.

Kristi (Guest) |
And they are likely to be the most grateful people because I think one of these things that those of us like vulnerability to get the humility of to feel responsible in this way that is people who apologize easily are people who also thank easily. It's an interesting connection because there's vulnerability underneath both of those conditions, people who are able to take responsibility and to own whatever is theirs, own also the privilege and the blessing of their lives as well. So it's that sense of responsible ownership.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:48:08 to 00:48:49
And you were saying something I wanted to just reflect on back there, and I think it is, yes. So what I wanted to say is the same thing that's true, though, about how we can therefore be agents of change for the people around us. We also can become agents of change for justice and for what's right in the world. So how to me, gratitude has gotten absolutely perverted in our kind of cultural conversations about it as a pacifier, as something that's like, self satisfying, oh, you can sit around and be grateful and kind of count all your blessings all day. Right?

Monica (Host) | 00:48:49 to 00:49:12
Like almost bypassing.

Kristi (Guest) |
Yes, it's a bypasser, and then it's toxic, positivity. Like it gets thrown into that. I really always want to hold out gratefulness as a distinction from gratitude for that reason, because gratefulness and living gratefully actually is an activator, I think, on behalf of what it is that you care most deeply about. It's a clarifier, it's a crystallizer.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:49:12 to 00:50:19
It's like I am so much more likely to do things on behalf of my passions and cares for the world when I'm activated by gratefulness of heart, when I'm activated by the kinds of things that are so as opposed to it's so easy to feel overwhelmed and frozen in that state of overwhelm. And if I can connect to what I'm grateful for, it makes me often want to do something on behalf of it, to protect it, to care for it, to advance it in some way in the world. And so I think there's these really key bridges to draw between how we make a difference in the larger world around us, how we make a difference for the close, close people around us, and how we make a difference for ourselves and how interconnected those are. When they're true, when you're really in touch with what is a true source of that internal state of clarity and personal power, whatever that is, you're connected to the source, to the divine, to whatever. I think we become much closer to effective agents for making the world a better place for everybody.

Monica (Host) | 00:50:19 to 00:50:50
Do you by any chance, Kristi, have an experience that you can share, like a real life experience that speaks to what you're talking about? Because what I'm hearing is it's a way for us to get clear about our activism versus in this state of paralysis analysis and paralysis about what's mine to do. So can you help me understand? I can. I think I will try.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:50:51 to 00:51:20
These are the challenging conversations. And to make these links, I think it's important and it's also difficult, but I think when we get it's so super clear in my mind. And I have a big, long history as an activist and as a social justice advocate and as a peace activist and got arrested and civil disobedience and all those different kinds of things. So I've got that in my history and I'm solid there. I know how to take a stand for what I believe in.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:51:21 to 00:52:25
And I also know that there's ways in which there's a greater power for me in connecting to what are the deepest values that I hold, what are the things that I care most deeply for. That when there is an affront to those things, when those things are disgraced, I feel rise up in me this gratefulness of heart I feel rise up in me. The wanting to tend what I value, the wanting to protect what I care for. And it's identifying that for me, people of different diversity backgrounds, people who come from different cultures and who land on our shores, my value of those people, my love for those people, it is what moves me. I can be pissed off as heck with some of the policies and the legislations and the politicians and the things that are happening right now around so many people who I love and cherish and care for.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:52:25 to 00:52:53
And when I am moved by love on behalf of love, on behalf of what it is that I value most deeply, I'm kind of more unstoppable. I'm more fierce, actually. I'm more sustainable in what it is about how I want to show up. Okay. I love that distinction and I hear it now as moved by love on behalf of love.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:52:53 to 00:53:02
Yeah. And fierce. There's a fierceness to it. It's not to be afraid of. It's like actually, it's not just love that's going to sit around and write Hallmark cards.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:53:02 to 00:53:29
It's a love that when there's something happening outside my door and I see it, I am out there because it's so clear, the channel is so clear.

Monica (Host) |
For me, it might come up, too, in how quickly I can come into that fierce mother bear love. Right? It's like it's moved by love on behalf of love, in some cases for my child. But it also speaks to this.

Monica (Host) | 00:53:29 to 00:54:13
What I often talk about is the mother archetype, not as a biological mother, but as a woman who knows her own sufficiency, right? And who is in touch with what is enough and who is also in touch with that's enough. Meaning do not trod on those people. It's that place that rises up in us, showing us actually in that moment what we value and how deeply it moves through us on behalf sometimes in spite of ourselves. It's just whoo, this thing moves right through us and into action.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:54:13 to 00:54:34
Right on. And I think the key to that is, for me, aliveness, it is the degree to which we are alive that we have aliveness bubbling up inside of us, which is life force. It's not just, yes, I'm breathing. So I'm alive. But how alive are you?

Kristi (Guest) | 00:54:34 to 00:55:00
How alive are you to what you care about, to what you're passionate about? How alive are you on behalf of other people's lives, on behalf of your greatest concerns and cares for the world? And like you say, I was just going to say, I'm not a biological mother, but my legacy is love for what I love. And that is all that will remain of me. Right.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:55:00 to 00:55:28
In a way, the family tree stops here kind of a certain way. And yet I know that where I will live on because of my clarity about that love and that legacy and how important that is that will transcend me. But it's only about showing up. We have to show up on behalf of who and what we love. Otherwise it's just all doesn't matter.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:55:29 to 00:55:55
And I think gratefulness really is about being connected to what matters, knowing what matters, staying connected to what matters, living into what matters. Following that, it's such a great clarifier.

Monica (Host) |
Yeah. And here's where I think this might be a perfect quote. A grateful life is made up of grateful days, and grateful days are made up of grateful moments.

Monica (Host) | 00:55:55 to 00:56:48
And it is that day to day practice of being deeply in touch with what makes us come alive. And this is where the status quo and all of the ways that people are so disassociated from themselves. Yes. It's amazing to me, actually, how many people I see who are in action out there in some way, shape or form, who are actually disassociated from what's really going on in their own lives. It's almost a deterrent, a distraction to keep them from being with what is truly kind of alive in them.

Monica (Host) | 00:56:48 to 00:57:34
It looks alive, but it's more kind of this I don't know what to call it, but I see it a lot with people. I see people getting really because it comes from this place of righteous, like you were talking about, for example, people on the shores of our borders. And many just hateful ways, I think, that people can behave in service to what it's not in service to love. So that's where I get really curious about what's really going on, because there seems to be this disassociated way of it's based in fear somewhere.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:57:34 to 00:58:08
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a whole other podcast episode because I think to be cut off from the heart, to be cut off from those things, and it's not saying we all share the exact same. We all have, I think, a responsibility to surface what those things are that bring us most alive, that are our greatest, deepest values. What are the things that we're going to be fierce on behalf of and take a stand for? And I want distinctions among those things, please, because that's going to make the world bigger. Not any of us can do it all.

Monica (Host) | 00:58:08 to 00:58:32
Yes. And to be curious about those differences too, just like you were saying before, to be curious about ways in which we're really different from one another and what is moving other people. But I was going to say, I think that we know really well in this culture how to perform. I think performing and doing what we think we're supposed to be doing and going through the motions. And I think that living gratefully is an intervention in that.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:58:32 to 00:59:03
I do think it's a deep, deep check in with life and with ourselves and that it's like a stopgap in terms of just going through those motions of life, because that's really where you see the people. I worked for hospice for a period of time and I don't want to be one of those people who says, I was just going through the motions. I'm so sad and I'm so sorry I can't get back the time that I lost.

Kristi (Guest) | 00:59:05 to 01:00:09
That's our opportunity is to live now the ways that we really want to live our hearts out loud. I think that's all we have.

Monica (Host)
Yeah, it is all we have. So wow, I feel like we have kind of, wow, I feel like we've really just brought and surfaced a lot of the distinctions, practices, components of what you really so beautifully write about in your book, Wake Up Grateful and how the difference between gratitude and gratefulness? And I'm wondering, Kristi, if there's a question that I haven't asked that you feel would be helpful to our listeners as well and anything that comes up in you that you feel is important to bring in or mention.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:00:11 to 01:01:13
I don't know that it's a question, Monica, but I'm just moved right now by this experience of feeling really grateful myself right now. And that what I think is called for, is that, like, I think we only get the gifts of life made available to us in those moments where we're willing to be really raw and cracked open. And gratefulness is a state of living that way because it doesn't take anything for granted. And so to me, there's a kind of courageous stepping towards and into those places in ourselves that just live in tears. And that that is the reward in and of itself is to live that fully and that vulnerably that we are always in touch with how much it matters and that everything matters.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:01:13 to 01:01:55
And just to be willing to embrace that way of being in the world is to live thin skinned. It's to live with our hearts wide open and on our sleeves and our eyes filled with tears and sometimes singing Love from the mountaintops and sometimes just quietly modeling what it looks like to be fully present with life. And so I think the invitation is joy. Is there deep joy in the space of the courage to be willing to live with our hearts set open?

Monica (Host)
Yeah, I love that so much.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:01:55 to 01:02:32
And that's what I would invite everyone towards in a way, Gratefulness really is.

Monica (Host)
That and you model that so beautifully, Kristi. Truly part of I think the reason I was so moved in our first encounter was how deeply I felt seen by you could have been just a very casual interaction, as so many of our daily interactions are. And yet there was this care and tenderness and, like, a leaning in and a curiosity in you. And so it awakened something in me.

Monica (Host) | 01:02:34 to 01:02:40
And what I think is so what do I want to call it?

Monica (Host) | 01:02:43 to 01:02:58
Precious. It's like this precious way of being with someone. You know, that I've often said how little, actually, effort it really takes.
To. Be unforgettable in this world. Yeah. Simply simply by acknowledging someone yes. In this one brief moment. Kindness. Kindness.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:03:21 to 01:03:32
Right. Patience, care, interest, curiosity. All those things. Exactly. It feels so simple, and yet it is so profound.

Monica (Host) | 01:03:33 to 01:03:59
And so you say grateful Living offers an intimate orientation to life. The more gratefully and intimately we dare to approach and engage with life, the more intimately we will experience it and everything it has to offer. So I feel like that really sums it all up.

Kristi (Guest) |
Thank you, Monica.

Monica (Host) | 01:03:59 to 01:04:09
Where can our listeners go to learn more? And, of course, buy this incredible book? Because thank you. It really is a gift. Yeah. Where should they go?

Kristi (Guest) | 01:04:09 to 01:04:17
They can go to Grateful. And there's a lot of my writing on there. Wake up. Grateful is on there. You can buy the book almost anywhere.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:04:18 to 01:04:29
It's coming out in paperback this fall. I'm so excited. And, yeah, I'm easy to find. And the book is really a pointer. The book will point you to where you need to go.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:04:29 to 01:04:44
And if it's to me, you'll find me, and if it's to the website. And Grateful grateful Living is the name of the organization that I was the executive director of. And there's just so much resource there and so much support. So thank you. .

Monica (Host) | 01:04:44 to 01:04:56
Amazing Thank you. And what's next for you,

Kristi (Guest) |
Getting out. Into this beautiful day? Going to see my dad this afternoon and spending some time with him yeah. Is becoming.

Kristi (Guest) | 01:04:57 to 01:05:03
And I loved the card you pulled at the beginning. Could not be more perfect. So thank you for that. Yeah. And thank you.

Monica (Host) | 01:05:04 to 01:05:29
Thank you so much. And to our listeners, I'll be sure to put any of the links in the show notes. And until next time, more to be revealed. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointerevelation.com and be sure to download our a free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on itunes.

Monica (Host) | 01:05:29 to 01:05:34
We thank you for your generous listening, and as always, more to be revealed.