Earlier this year I made a big girl buy. I traded in my 2016 Kia Sportage SUV for a smaller Mazda hatchback, with fancy features that my older Kia could never compete with. When I say ‘fancy’ you have to understand my Kia only had the bare minimum when it came to features. So the bar was in hell.

Nevertheless, I was STOKED with the features that came with my hatchback. Features like the Apple CarPlay, aerial view and the brake hold feature had me in a choke hold.

As I was discussing all of this with a friend, I asked him a question. I wanted to know if he ever got used to the spanking features that came with the newer cars. To which he responded ‘eh, you get used to it.’

That evening, I reflected on that comment. I considered how many things in life I had ‘gotten used to’. How many things in life I’d taken for granted. Things like a cozy home with a husband and a dog were things that I once prayed for. Yet over the passage of time, all of these things just became the norm.

When this realisation hit me, I knew I had to realign my views and hone in on my gratitude practice. Call me cheesy, but centering my mornings and nights around my gratitude practice helped me. It helped me get a sense of that awe back. A sense of awe that I never want to ‘get used to’.