Gratitude

Over this past week I have been focusing on being aware of my feelings/moods throughout the day so that I can see what mood I am in most of the time. And i've noticed that I spend a great deal of time complaining about dumb things frequently. But one of my goals for this year was to focus on the positive and the blessings in my life. 

And now that I am aware of my complaining, I think I found a solution to make myself happier. I have tried very hard to express my gratitude the past couple of days. When I express gratitude it forces me to see that I have so much to be happy for. And when I am thankful for my blessings, I feel like I don't need to complain.  Because I am satisfied with what I have :)

Work

Well, as usual, life is going great :)

I'm starting to get the hang of everything at the new restaurant and it's so much fun. I am really enjoying being able to get to know so many new people. The sad part is that most of them are trainers from corporate helping with the grand opening. So they will be going back to their different stores after this week. That breaks my heart because I have bonded with them and have formed some great friendships! Thank goodness for facebook so that we can stay in touch.

Making these new friends just proves to me that God places people in our lives for a reason. Talking with these guys has helped me to realize how much fun you can have while working hard. A lot of times I allow myself to think that since i'm working I can't have fun. But that is so wrong! Work is great. And since I've allowed myself to enjoy work so much, My life has grown increasingly more positive.

I've also loved seeing a lot of my friends come in to the store! I love seeing you guys. It always makes a shift a little better to see people I love.

That's basically everything that has been goin on in the life of Katie Liddle lately. Life gets better each day :)

Just a Lil Update

So this post is really long. And it's mostly just about the weird stuff that I'm going through these days. It is not very organized, so only read it if you really want to! It's mostly for my benefit I think :)

I feel like what I'm about to write about I write all the time. But I think it's because this keeps coming to my mind. I am being reminded about it again. I have come to a point where I find myself struggling again. Just struggling with different things that we all struggle with. But I have reached the point where I am becoming painfully aware of where I stand in life right now, and I have received several promptings that some changes need to take place.

I'm not going to go into detail about what it is I am struggling with, but I'll just say that I have made stupid choices. Started some awful habits. Broke pretty much all of the good habits that I did have before. And let me tell you, breaking bad habits and forming new habits is an extremely hard thing to do. I had no idea.

This is the biggest reason that I moved back home. I am struggling. I could easily say that I have never felt this way before. We all struggle, like I said before. And I have had my fair share of hard and stressful times. But not like this. I feel like all the other times I was able to make it through the trial fairly quickly. And I bounced back to being a "good girl" with no problem. But when you go so long with out doing the basic things that you've done your whole life, you get used to that. I am used to not doing the right thing. I don't even think about doing those "good" things anymore. And it wasn't until very recently that I became aware of how desensitized I have become. I want to be home where I can have the influence of my family that I have had before in my life. My brother and my best friend came home from his mission and he is always there to talk to me. He does not judge. He shows only love. And he is helping in ways I never thought possible. Just from his example.

After these last 6 months, I am a completely different person. And I wouldn't necessarily say that that is a bad thing. I have grown a lot these past 6 months. Many mistakes have been made, many of my weaknesses have been made known to me, and I have learned from them. I continue to learn from them day by day.

The hard part is just coming to realize that I have to struggle to find my way back to that happiness that I had before. I have been knocked off my feet several times by my Heavenly Father. I feel like He has done everything in His power to make me realize that He is still there. I don't have to do anything in this life alone. For the longest time I have been trying to prove to myself and everyone else that I am independent. And I guess that eventually shut God out of my life completely. And I now know that if I do that, life is almost impossible. It is crazy. It is hard. It is stressful. I was lost. I was confused. I was not happy.

The other day while I was talking to my brother Josh, I was being completely honest and just speaking my mind. I told him that I am struggling mostly because the way I am seeing myself is very bad. I see myself as a sinner who can never get back to how I was. I feel like I am not good enough for a lot of people. I don't deserve to be friends with so many wonderful people. Josh quickly told me that everyone sins. We all sin. But I was struggling to accept that. He told me to pray. And if I didn't want to pray, pray anyways. Pray until you want to pray. And ask God to help you.

So I went down to my room and was probably trying to pray for a couple of hours. I'm telling you, i've been desensitized. But after much praying, I had this feeling of warmth overcome my entire body. I can't say that I have ever quite felt that way. I could feel the warmth of my Heavenly Father's arms wrapped around me. It was very reassuring. It reminded me that God is always here for me. Even when I don't think He is. And after that, I had the most memorable prayer of my life. I've seen a quote that floats around facebook that says, "Pray hardest when it's hardest to pray." And I never truly understood that quote until that night. When it is hard to pray, you need to pray. Keep praying. I have been putting that prayer off for MONTHS! I have no idea why. But that was a nudge that I needed.

I know that I am a daughter of God. And I feel like I have had to be reminded of this way too many times in my life. I can be so stupid sometimes. We all can. But God is always there. And right now that is the one thing that I need to remember. When I remember that, everything else begins to fall into place. I just need to take the time to remember Him in all things.

And for me that means taking a step back from the music. Instead of watching Netflix at night I can take the time to read scriptures and say a meaningful prayer. And I said in my last post that I am focusing my blog on sharing the positive things that happen in my life! Because the positive things are blessings from God. And it forces me to take the time to remember them.

Sorry about the long scattered  post...I think this post was mostly for my benefit. To physically see this process that I am going through. If you made it to the end, thanks for reading. I hope it wasn't too boring for you :) I look forward to many more happy and fun posts next week.

My Life is Good. Really Good.

I've been doing a lot of thinking as most of us do at the beginning of the year and have made a goal that I need to keep track of the positive things that happen each day! So I've decided to just share a few posts a week on here that just say the happy things that happen throughout my week.

So to begin i'll just talk about this week! Most of my Utah friends know that the Chick-fil-A of Provo had its grand opening yesterday! We have been anticipating this opening for the longest time. The owner and my boss of the store at the University Mall is now the operator of this new store, and I am very excited to beging this new journey with him at the new store. After a lot of training and preparation, the opening went very smoothly yesterday. I love that I am able to work with most of the people from my old store. But I am also loving getting to know so many new people. I love making new friends! I really hope that I will be able to see some of you guys stop by and try it out sometime! It's very fun.

In other news, I decided to move back home over Christmas break. I have really enjoyed being around the fam for awhile. It was hard for me to be away from Josh after he got back from Japan. He's my buddy and I love being able to spend time with him again. He is always there to listen and help me when I need it. And I could always use a little help...:)

Life is going pretty good these days.