THE ATTITUDE IS GRATITUDE By Sara Stepa

Hey Party People, If you’ve spent some time in the personal development space you won’t be surprised to learn that there is an intense focus on being positive, reaching for joy, and practicing gratitude. This blog itself is called the Attitude is Gratitude, and I’ve taken a deeper look at what gratitude means for me and my platform after gaining insight into this week's topic – Toxic Positivity! I always strive to be conscious of how I am showing up in my posts and do my best to share from an authentic space. I want to own that life isn’t always sunshine and butterflies but that it can also be chaotic and uncertain. That’s real, but at the same time, it's really easy to get caught up in the culture of positivity because we think that’s what people want and need to hear. That might not be entirely true.   Ok, so what is toxic positivity?? Toxic positivity is a forced or false portrayal that everything in life is peachy keen. It shows up when we are pretending to be happy o

Hey Party People , Have you ever gone through a time where nothing felt like it made sense? Where the life you were living was now foreign, or didn’t feel right anymore? This was my experience last winter. I was struggling with not only my job, but with who I was, who my friends were, and what I was doing in LIFE! Maybe it was my pre-mid-life crisis. I hear that’s a thing in your 30’s. No? Just me? Anyway, for me this time was a deep reflection of my life. I wasn’t viewing a job as just a job, or relationships as just people. I wanted everything to have more meaning and feel deeper… and I didn’t feel like I had that. I felt very out of soul . Another term for what I was feeling is called the dark night of the soul. This wasn’t a term I’d heard before last year and I’m guessing its not one you’ve heard before either. The dark night of the soul is described as, “a stage in personal development when a person undergoes a difficult and significant transition to a deeper perception