Redirect – Part Five of SABER

Welcome to the last step of the SABER flow, Redirect. This is the ACTION step where we shift our attention to gratitude and making a NEW empowering decision. 

Having gratitude in all situations isn’t easy, especially if you’ve been struggling with something or moving through a difficult experience. I totally get it. 

But I’ll have you consider the meaning of gratitude. 

The Latin root of the word gratitude is gratis, and it means FREE. 

Let that soak in for just a moment. 

Become Free with Gratitude

To have gratitude means to be free. To be free means having no restrictions, not bound to anything or confined. It’s also a gift from our creator. To have gratitude means to have joy. We are called to be grateful in everything, not just for something. 

So let’s look at how shifting into gratitude and redirecting your thoughts to a new empowering decision benefits you. 

In the journal, Cerebral Cortex, the research showed that having gratitude primes the brain for positive emotions: it “stimulates the hypothalamus (a key part of the brain that regulates stress) and the ventral tegmental area, which is part of our ‘reward circuitry’ that produces the sensation of pleasure.” 

Having gratitude is an essential part of the Redirect process. It allows you to feel joy in every situation, even the hard ones. Once you find gratitude, you can confidently make a new empowering decision. 

Redirect your thoughts once you have gratitude

Redirecting your thoughts and emotions to something that will serve you will be easier to do once you have gratitude. It’s impossible to feel joy without it. 

If you recall my example of being triggered by the bottle of wine at the grocery store, after embracing the moment I was in by allowing self grace, I moved into having gratitude for how far I had come. Afterall, I was 2 ½ years alcohol-free and proud of myself for my accomplishments. This immediately gave me joy, a sense of freedom for no longer allowing wine to be a distraction. I then made a new empowering decision to have my salmon dinner with cranberry and club soda instead of a glass of Chardonnay. 

By using SABER, you are creating new neuropathways in your brain by deliberately bringing awareness to your thinking. Our patterns, habits, triggers and urges are stemming from our beliefs about a former experience, memory, or the habitual process of doing something over and over again. It’s coming from your lower unconscious brain where it’s running on autopilot. When you successfully move through the SABER, you’re creating new neurosynaptic connectors – or simply said, new patterns of thinking.  

I hope you’ve enjoyed the SABER series and use it whenever you feel stuck in a power struggle. It was a gift to me from God as I recalled my steps that day that I’ve been describing to you — the day in the grocery store and that bottle of wine. 
If you’d like to read the SABER flow with a play along version, download the free book chapter, Living in the Gray – A Power Struggle Within.