How to Feel Fulfilled Right Now: Gratefulness Friday

Happy Gratefulness Friday, everyone!

It’s funny how sometimes things connect without you having to force. When you just live as you are now, and be who you are now and always, and through and through what you exactly needed — but didn’t necessarily ask for — comes full circle back to you.

I kick started this week with some thankfulness and very special shout outs to friends and mentors on YouTube, where I host my web series to bring you vintage & thrift store style educational how-to’s on channeling fun, positive fashion into your wardrobe [and life!]. If you haven’t checked out the awesome YouTubers I’m loving now, definitely read the post [part one & part two] and check ’em out for yourself.

In my list of 10 fav YouTubers, I only know one of them personally — and only because she lives in New York City. Still, I feel a connection to the remaining 9 because of what they’ve taught and inspired in me. I began musing on this idea last night: How with an open heart and mind, we can connect to every single person we meet, whether digitally or in the flesh.

This week’s gratefulness Friday post is on seeing the beauty and truth in people — ALL people. In the people who you already know and love, in the people who you may only meet once in passing, and in the people who you may struggle to see positivity within — but who do exist in our lives for meaning unseen on the surface, but which can be felt in the soul if we allow it.

Keep reading after the jump for your weekly dose of gratitude! And if you haven’t watched the latest episode of Sammy Davis Vintage, check out THRIFT WARS Episode #4 and vote for your choice of Thrift Warrior WINNER!

Check in next week for more on vintage fashion & thrift store style, including a very special interview with the founder of Etsy vintage shop The Vintage Mistress, where to shop for vintage and thrift when traveling abroad, and some of spring’s biggest vintage trends a la the 1970s!

Hope to see you all back next week, and never hesitate to stop by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter just to shout a friendly HELLO!

xx, SD

I am grateful for … Seeing the Beauty & Truth in Others

It’s tough to see the beauty and truth in each and every person we encounter. This I know. People have hurt me, people have criticized me, people have judged me. They’ve stolen from me. They’ve frightened me. They’ve been in my lives without keeping my best interest at heart.

Note how many references of “me” I just used in that two-sentence graph. Last week’s post illuminated my desire to remove the ego from my consciousness. To not think of my actions and fulfillment from them in regard to “I.”

When we do what we do and live our lives with greater purpose, it is never for us. The “I” becomes the last thing on our minds.

When we continually put up a guard to the truth and beauty in others, we are allowing our ego to block our vision from seeing what true good — no matter how deep its buried — exists in all. The ego has a salacious hunger for the “I” and “me.” Not seeing truth & beauty is not seeing truth & beauty in anything at all — not even ourselves.

We live by the limitations of our ego — the “me” complex — by putting up a defensive guard to protect ourselves. Putting up this protective guard does not shield us. Instead, it surrenders us to having low confidence and low faith in beauty & truth within. When we can open our eyes to potential in all who exist before us, we have opened our eyes — and lowered our guard, by eliminating the “me” complex — to our own energy’s solid beauty & pure truth.

OK, so I’m throwing around a lot of the repeated verbiage here. Let’s forget about beauty & truth and talk about goodness, instead.

Are you a good person? You’d probably answer yes. You go to work. You treat others with respect. You pay your bills, participate in some fun activities, clean up your messes and remember to send birthday wishes and holiday cards.

So you’re a good person. Who else in your life is a good person … who you do not know already? This is the real question. Are you answering everyone? Or are you answering … “I’m not sure?”

You’re probably answering the latter. And that’s OK — this is your ego’s defensive wall arising. Your ego doesn’t want you to see good in anyone else. It doesn’t want you to have 100 percent confidence within to surrender yourself to the good that exists in others.

I know this is confusing, because you think that the ego would WANT you to have confidence in yourself. But this is not true: the ego is not your friend within, the ego is that whisperer of self doubt. And when you have self doubt, you lack self love, and only with self love can we begin to love others, too.

The most modern, popular saint of our day is Mother Teresa. It’s said that when she held the body of a dying person, people questioned why she would do such a thing. Why would someone hold onto death, decay and the bitter, cold fact of our immortality?

Her response: “Because I see such beauty in it.”

Mother Teresa had no ego. Her ego would have said, “Don’t hold onto a dying person — you do not want to acknowledge that you too are vulnerable to that state. Protect yourself and stay away from it.”

But she knew better: her heart led her actions, and her heart saw that giving herself to this dying person in their last moments of life was a beautiful thing. And so her glowing self confidence and assurance in what she knew was true in her — and true and beautiful in all that was in life before her — motivated her to take the actions she did and reap her own centered fulfillment from them.

Today, as you pass someone in the hallway at work or ring up groceries for the weekend, take a pause to look at the person before you. To realize that you are not alone at anytime, but in choosing not to see the truth and beauty in whatever is before you, you are truly alone. Alone with your ego, alone with a “me” & “I” mentality that only holds us back from living in a moment and living without fear.

And as you notice whoever is before you –a coworker, bus driver, grocery store bagger — think of who they are, how they have lived, and what they may be thinking right now. It’s a powerful activity that can connect you to the beings around you, reminding you of the unity of all and the beauty in just being right there, in that moment, with that person before you.

I’d love to hear what “truth” and “beauty” you see in life today … or have seen in life any other day! I articulate these ideas not only to share inspiration with you, but to provide myself a weekly reminder of just why Sammy Davis Vintage exists: to see the goodness in fashion, and to help you style your best soul.