I was meeting with a group of colleagues and at the beginning of each meeting we do an individual check-in and provide a status update. The question posed to the group was, “What are you grateful for in 2015?”  My desire was to answer that question in earnest, and I didn’t know that I was going to have such an emotional response when I took the time to reflect.  There was a time in my life where gratitude was an expression of being thankful, like when I’d receive a wonderful birthday gift.  But, I didn’t know what it was like to have a grateful heart until I had my joy taken and restored. Until I lacked and was in plenty. Until things were taken and then restored.

Gratitude is not only an an expression, but at a deeper level it is a heart condition.  A grateful heart comes from a position of “knowing.” Knowing is not achieved by reading, hearing about it from someone else, or consulting with Google about the matter.  Knowing is experiential.  As my father always says, “Keep living.”  Meaning, if you don’t “know” now… You will.  I know what it is like to lose a home. To have my character attacked, and be lied on. To lose a loved one suddenly and tragically. To have to start over… Again.

Gratitude is best experienced when you know what it is like to be without something, and find that in the areas where there was lack, now there is plenty… Or, where you were broken you find joy. At the end of each year, I take a few days to reflect like so many do on the ups and downs of the previous year.  2015 was the year that I learned to have a grateful heart. For the first time since my brother’s passing I was able to breathe, we moved into a new home that we own for the first time since 2009, and I started a new career as a voiceover artist and the president of Jamila Chambers Enterprises, LLC.  I am not sharing this with you to boast, but I am sharing because I have experienced a season of lack for the past 7 years, and there were times when I couldn’t see myself out. When I thought God forgot about me. When I had to fight against the “that’s just the way it is” disease. When I lost the fight of faith.

If you find yourself fighting, and need to change the condition of your heart, here’s a few tips that I used that might be helpful for you:

• Choose Your Response – You don’t have a choice over what happens to you, but you do have a choice regarding how you respond. How will you handle that “space” between your choice and your response?  Choose forgiveness, choose kindness, choose love. Don’t fill that space with unforgiveness, bitterness, and hatred. I don’t know what happened to you, and your unforgiveness may be “justified” but by allowing love to fill that space laying the foundation for a change in your heart condition.

• Start Where You Are – No. Everything is NOT OK. But, you have a new day, a new opportunity, a fresh start.  You won’t be able to see all the moves from the beginning, but as you begin to step forward the resources, people, relationships, finances that you need will become available.

• Run Your Race – Avoid comparison at all cost! You might be feeling great until you check FaceBook and see that your best girlfriend is on a vacation that you can’t afford, or that an old buddy from college got the VP position and you are still looking for your next career opportunity.  What a major distraction!  What God has for you, is for you and keep moving forward with your plan and don’t look over your neighbor’s fence!

• Just Do It, Then Do It Again – One of my favorite quotes from Oprah Winfrey is “Do what you have to do UNTIL you can do what you want to do.” How long to you have to keep at it? The answer is, “UNTIL!” Often we give up right before we have a breakthrough!  Today may look ordinary, but your “yes” is just around the corner.  So do it, then do it again!

• Believe – As a person of Faith, I’ve read the scriptures which share that the “just shall live by faith.” [Hebrews 10:38]. That reads well as a Bible study until it is something that you truly have to live, and it ain’t easy to “walk in the dark.”  The only thing you are sure about is what your foot is standing on now, yet you can’t stay where you are and have to move forward… Arms groping to get your bearings, you slowly move forward one step at a time… But, the point is you keep moving forward.  When you doubt. Only believe. When you fear. Only believe. When your faith is shaken. Only believe.

I would love to tell you that I followed each of these steps perfectly, and that I have this mastered.  But, the truth is I am still working on each step!  But, I am standing on the word shared in Psalm 27:25 – “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken, or their children begging bread.”  I believed that I would be better than “alright” even when things were just OK.  Walls began to fall, and doors began to open for me, and they will also for you!  So, with a grateful heart… Here’s to “creating a life without limits” in 2016 and beyond!