285. Food Stamps to First Class: Power of Gratitude to Transform Life with Shilamida Friedman

This episode is for you if you want to feel more grateful, thankful, aligned, and motivated toward your dream life. My guest today is Shilamida Friedman, Transformation & Lifestyle Mentor, 4 time bestselling author, podcast host of 50 shades of Shilamida.

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Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me today, Lucy.

I love your brand. You are the goddess of gratitude. And oh, I am so big on gratitude.

And that is why we are here to help you have more gratitude in life and therefore more success. So what does having gratitude mean to you?

So having gratitude is more than just saying, I am grateful. It is an energy. It is a straight connection to God source universe, whatever power out there that you believe in that is guiding us that is connecting with us.

Gratitude is a way to connect. Gratitude is a way to manifest gratitude is a way to shift your whole entire being.

And do you believe this gratitude is a skill that we can develop, or something we were naturally born with, but forget to practice until we’re reminded to, it is definitely a skill set that you get to practice and become really good at.

Because when I say to people, Oh, are you grateful? Usually I hear, of course, I’m grateful, like, who’s not grateful, right? I get an answer like that.

But then when I ask, Are you actually grateful 20 times a day? Like, do you stop and intentionally be grateful throughout your day, then usually like the backpedal answer comes in, and it’s like, Oh, well, maybe no, this, that the other thing. So part of my story, one of my books is called from food stamps to first class.

And so I had a life that was full of misfortune. And everything was going wrong and all the things and then I learned about gratitude. And it wasn’t just learning about gratitude.

It was everything that I was seeking. Kabbalah, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Doreen Virtue, even religion, Christianity, Judaism, like anything that you seek to, there is an underlying core value, and that is gratitude. And so when I was at the peak of my poorest, woe is me victim self, one day I was like, screw it, what do I have to lose?

Let me just try this gratitude stuff. And to be honest with you, I was in such a dark place in my life, I really had a hard time being grateful. I was like, what am I going to be grateful for?

I was 250 pounds, I was a single mom living on food stamps, my dad had just passed away, like it was just like one thing after the other. And it was like, what do I have to be grateful for? And the truth is, is that we take for granted the things that we have in our everyday life, because we just assume that we’re supposed to have it, right?

But how many people are living in this world without a computer, without internet, without a telephone, without communication, without a pair of shoes, without food to eat, right? It’s like the things that we have in our everyday life that we’re not grateful for. I’m sure if I asked the average person, are you grateful for your internet connection?

It would like laugh at me. But the truth is, is that we are so abundant, and we live in such luxury, we don’t even understand it. And those first few weeks, months, even years were really hard for me, I struggled with the gratitude piece.

And now it’s like a superpower. And I’m so easily tapped into it. But to answer your question, yes, it is something that you could definitely develop.

I resonate with everything you just said, because gratitude is so essential in life, it not only does it rewire our brain, like you mentioned earlier, shifts our energy. And I think that different energy is where the transformation comes in. For example, like, even in our darkest days, I can think of my darkest days when I, for example, had an argument with my husband, I would still journal in my gratitude journal, you know, I’m grateful for my husband for teaching me patience, because I was such an impatient person before going through these arguments with him.

And it’s taught me so much, even through the dark tunnels. So yes, thank you for sharing your perception of gratitude. And I just want every listener to really remind ourselves, not just like you said, not just once, you know, on Thanksgiving Day, not just Oh, today, I am grateful.

I am a grateful person. But really the daily hourly even anytime throughout the day, you can stop yourself and reset your intention and feel the gratitude throughout the day.

Yeah, well, that’s really why it becomes a superpower, because people think that you could get to a perfect life. And there’s no such thing as a perfect life. Even when you have all the money in the world, your dream house, your dream car, your dream husband, your dream family, right?

Even when you get all of the things, there’s still things that are going to happen. Right? Bad things are always going to happen.

People are always going to make you mad, you’re going to get cut off, like, you know, things are going to happen. And gratitude helps you live in duality, the person that I used to be, if somebody would upset me, it would ruin an entire week or month or year for that matter, right? I would let something that was so small affect my life in such a big way.

And now I live such a big, abundant life, things are going wrong every hour. And it’s like, I’m able to bounce back and forth, I’m able, I’m able to be really pissed off and then laugh five minutes later, I’m able to cry and then be happy 10 minutes later, I’m able to bounce back in and out of these emotions really fast, because gratitude helps me to do that. But when you’re talking to somebody who’s in victim mode, or somebody who’s not happy in their life, or someone who’s having a lot of problems, they just keep complaining about the same thing over and over again.

And they can’t get themselves out of that story, because they just keep getting sucked into it. And so when you learn to use gratitude as a superpower, it’s like you could be really upset and within minutes shift your whole entire being to being in a better mood in a better state of mind in a manifesting frequency where now you’re calling in positive things instead of more negatives.

And that’s what personal development is all about. We still get those limits in life, we still get those curveballs, but we have the ability to expedite that process, right? Like you mentioned that you can be a certain way because of your thoughts in five minutes time, you could be a completely different person, because you have these tools.

And I believe gratitude is one of those tools that can help us move from self doubt from the to a confident and more joyful life. What role do you think gratitude play in manifesting or attracting what we really desire our dream life? Well, gratitude is the secret, right?

It is the secret to life. And if you’ve never heard of the book, that’s actually what really shifted my existence in 2007. There is a book CD set DVD called the secret and the secret talks about gratitude being the secret weapon of manifesting your desires.

And the thing about manifesting for those of you listening that may have never heard that term, manifesting is attracting, it’s like attracts like, so you’re attracting whatever you’re thinking. And what people don’t understand is that we’re manifesting 24 seven, every thought that’s going out of your mind is an energetic receptor. So if you’re thinking negative thoughts, then you’re attracting more negativity.

If you’re thinking positive thoughts, then you’re attracting positivity. So when you’re using gratitude as a manifesting tool, you’re grateful for the things that you have in the present tense. And then you’re grateful for the things that you desire as though you already have them and you live in that frequency.

If you’re in the personal development world, then you hear the term act as though a lot. And so what does that mean? Act as though and it’s, when I was on food stamps, I was manifesting being a rich, wealthy woman.

And so I didn’t have the money to go get a weekly blowout or to go on fancy vacations or to go to a luxurious spa. But what I did was I called the local hair school and they did blowouts for $5. And so I would save my quarters.

And every once in a while, I would go to the hair school and I would pretend when I would close my eyes and they were washing my hair. I would pretend that I was in a fancy spa and I would feel the feeling and I would be so happy and excited. And I put myself into a situation where I was acting as though, but I was still living in my means.

And now I get blowouts one to two times a week at a beautiful salon and my life matched up to my desire. And so it’s like, if you want to travel, then you have to dream about it. So for instance, today in my monthly gratitude membership, I had an exercise of travel.

And so I asked the question, where do you want to go? Do you want to go to the beach? Do you want to go to the mountains?

Do you want to fly there? Do you want to drive there? What do you want to do when you get there?

It’s like, you put yourself in that scenario because the average person is working all the time. They’re not stopping to think about their next vacation. They’re thinking about how they can’t pay their next bill.

So now they’re thinking about, well, how am I going on vacation if I can’t even pay my next bill? But the thing is, is that a vacation could come out of nowhere. You can win a prize.

You can be invited to go somewhere. You can step into a situation that a trip is involved. The thing with manifesting is trusting that your desire is going to match up with the energy of what you’re putting out because people are stuck in the how.

Well, I’m broke and I’m on food stamps. So how am I possibly going to go on vacation? That’s not even a possibility for my life.

So why would I even think about that? And that’s where the mistake is because if you’re not dreaming about it, then you’re never going to match your energy to it. That’s why the dreaming process is such an important process in this because when you dream and you put yourself in that state of feeling and you can actually feel yourself on vacation, feel yourself in that spa chair, feel yourself in your dream car, then the energy of the universe, God’s source, whatever is out there that we’re creating with matches up to what you’re dreaming.

And all of a sudden you’re like, oh my gosh, like things are happening and it’s like magic and I’m living in miracles.

And it’s truly the way that Yes, I can’t agree more. But you know what, you have to have the audacity to believe it’s possible. Because so many women don’t believe what’s possible out there. And if you believe it, everything becomes easier.

Well, part of it is the belief system is that wherever you are right now is knowing that this is just a stepping point. This is the wisdom that you’re going to talk about in the future. I mean, there was definitely a point where I was on food stamps where I very much played the victim role.

And I was like, this is my life. I’m doomed. You know, this is everything is happening to me.

I don’t understand why I’m living like this. And I would look at other people in jealousy and envy and be like, why does she have that? And I don’t.

Why does she have an amazing man like that? And I’m single mom on food stamps. Why did they get to go to Turks and Caicos and I don’t get to travel, right?

That’s the way that I would spend my day. I would spend my day in negativity, looking at other people, because this is when social media just started. So it was like a real mind leap.

And I just would look at people all day long. And then I got into the world of personal development. And I started learning that you have to look at everything through a lens of love, which is really hard when you’re struggling.

But I started shifting my thinking. And I started looking at the couple that was so in love. And I’d be like, oh, I love that they’re in love.

And I love that one day I’m going to be in love. And I’m grateful for my love. Oh, look at them.

They’re on vacation again. I love that they get to travel so much. I love that they’re at the beach.

I love that one day I’m going to be there too. I’m grateful that I get to go on beach vacations. And I literally started changing the language.

But in order to do that, the first thing that you need to do is you need to be aware of your negative thoughts. And a lot of people, this is where the big block comes in. Because a lot of people cannot look themselves in the mirror and be like, oh, I’m kind of shitty today, right?

People cannot look at their ego and say, oh, I’m being negative, or I’m being jealous, or I’m being envious, or I’m putting negativity out there because misery loves company. So most people are surrounded by negativity. They’re surrounded by people who are complaining so they don’t even hear themselves.

And the way that it shifted for me is early on in this process, I had a new friend come over to my apartment. And she actually said to me, you’re really negative and you complain a lot. And I was like, oh, that’s a really crappy thing to say to somebody, right?

But I’m so grateful for her because it changed everything for me because I truly didn’t know that I was negative and that I complained a lot. It was just my regular being. And I was surrounded by people who loved to listen to me complain.

And I would do the same for them. And so when this person came in, she shifted my whole existence because the next time I walked into a restaurant and I heard the complaint come into my head before it came out of my mouth, and then I took it back. And I’d be like, no, I’m grateful that I could be sitting in this restaurant, right?

I mean, I went from food stamps where there was an entire week that I ate Subway sandwiches because I collected all of my neighbor’s coupons for $1.99 footlongs. And so then I really appreciated the fact that I was able to sit inside of a restaurant, have somebody serve me a meal. And even if it was cold and even if it was gross and whatever, whatever the thing was, because let’s face it, you can walk into a room and you can complain about a hundred things.

It’s so easy to do that. But can you walk into a room and find a hundred things to be grateful for? There’s a very different energetic that comes with that.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. But what I heard is that you had difficult times. And honestly, we all do we have bad days, there are days we just even when we’re fully aware of it, even when we want to be more conscious about our positivity, there are going to be days where we feel harder than the others.

So how can someone stay more grateful, even when life feels hard?

Well, the first step is the awareness of it. Okay, I’m having a bad moment. Let me shift this.

Now let me find something to be grateful for. Okay, this is really bothering me. Let me move this out of my body.

Let me go for a walk. Let me jump up and down. Let me turn on some music.

Let me dance. It’s shit. You have to shift yourself out of the energy.

It’s easy to be mad and to be mad forever. We’ve all been there. And trust me, I call myself the goddess of gratitude, but I’m not grateful all day long.

I’ve got three kids plus two bonus kids. I’ve got a business. I’ve got a husband that runs a business.

There are punches all day long, and you will find me being negative and complaining. That skillset has not left me. I am not positive 100 times a day, but the goal is to be positive more than 50% of your day.

So one of the things that I really adopted was starting my morning with gratitude. First thing in the morning, I thank God. Now, I don’t use God as a religion.

God is an energetic force for me. And so I used to think of God as a dirty word. If you said the word God for me, I was like, no, no, no.

That’s not a conversation I want to have because I did not relate to religion. I did not like all the rules that were attached. But somewhere in 2020 in the heart of COVID, I found my own connection with God.

And I started thanking God first thing in the morning. And I have to tell you, it changed everything. So because I’m the goddess of gratitude and gratitude shifted my life, we always have a gratitude practice at night.

I’ve been doing this since my 18 year old has been about 18 months. So it’s been a long time that every night before we go to sleep, we’re grateful. But once I started being grateful in the morning, everything changed.

I used to not be a morning person. I hated mornings. If you came within five feet of me, between the hours of waking up and like noon, you were getting the wrath of me.

And what happened was once I started thanking God in the morning, all of a sudden I started waking up before my alarm. And there is nothing worse than when the alarm goes off in the morning. It is like the worst sound of all time when you’re sleeping.

But there is a different energy when you’re suddenly waking up right before the alarm goes off and you’re awake. And it was like God was waking me and being like, let’s have our time together. And so I would thank God.

I’m grateful for my bed. I’m grateful for my sheets. I’m grateful.

I woke up today. I’m grateful. I’m going to have an amazing day setting an intention for your day.

I’m grateful that everybody I talked to today is going to be kind and loving. I’m grateful that miracles are going to happen. I’m grateful that unexpected things are coming my way.

And I don’t start every morning like that. I’m not going to sit here and fluff for you that it happens like that. But on the days that I do put that intention in, it is like miracles happen.

Like all of a sudden I’ll get like a flower delivery or all of a sudden like a new opportunity comes my way, or I’ll get a phone call. That’s like really amazing. It really works.

It’s just, you have to set the intention. And if you could do it every day, then you’re going to start to see miracles all the time. But if you just start with thanking God or thanking the universe, or thank you for waking up today, because how many people are going to go to sleep tonight and not wake up tomorrow morning, that is the reality of our existence is that we really don’t know when the end is near.

And so when you’re able to appreciate the fact that you’re alive right now, and somebody else didn’t make it today, it changes everything so much.

Yes, I love waking up a couple minutes before my alarm with gratitude, laying in bed, I am grateful that I am alive. I say this all the time. I am grateful for zoom as we are speaking.

I’m grateful for Facebook. That’s where we connected. I am grateful, you know, just for these platforms where we are able to connect with other people who are on the same journey as us who are more positive, who are genuinely grateful for everything around us, because having gratitude, not only do we wake up in bed, right, it makes a big impact on our day, especially our daily decision making.

And I pride myself in being a very decisive and confident person. And I believe that is deeply rooted also in my own gratitude. For sure.

Yeah, people take gratitude for granted. They think that they’re being grateful, but they’re really not. It’s it’s not just about saying the words I am grateful.

It is feeling it the inside it is being super intentional with it. And it’s making that connection. It’s an energetic connection.

What is one thing you’re most grateful for now in your own journey that you once took for granted?

I’m being grateful now for time freedom. I have a lot of time and space in my life. I used to be a licensed acupuncturist.

I used to work seeing, you know, four patients in an hour, 20 patients a day. I was constantly working. I was constantly running.

And even though I own my own business, I didn’t consider that time freedom. I considered myself a slave to my business. And I remember, I don’t know if you know anything about human design, but I learned about human design.

I learned that I was a projector. And in the very first class that I took, I was told to take a nap in the middle of the day. And I was like, are you joking?

Like nap? I don’t even stop to eat lunch. Who’s going to take a nap.

And so I remember going to my husband’s office and his brother came into the office and they started making lunch plans. And I looked at him, I’m like, is this what you do all day at work? And he’s like, what do you mean?

And I’m like, you go to lunch. And he’s like, well, that’s how we eat. Chill.

He’s like, what do you think? And I’m like, you know, here I was, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 21 years old, but it was like, I didn’t allow myself to do things like that. I was very rigid and I was very strict with myself.

And so in the beginning, when I was told that I was a projector in human design, I poopooed that. I was like, nah, this human design stuff is not for me. But the more I kept hearing about it, the more I was like, well, let me try this.

And I remember the first time I took a bath at 11 AM and I literally was like looking over my shoulder and I’m like, am I allowed to do this? Am I allowed to take a bath at 11 o’clock in the morning? Like, shouldn’t I be working or doing something?

And so the time freedom is such a luxury and it’s something that people desire, but when they get it, they don’t even know what to do with it. Because when I retired as an acupuncturist, the reason why I did that is because I really wanted to focus on being a motivational speaker and an author and really being able to speak to groups of people. But what I did was I went into grieving and I started grieving the career that I had let go of and I was just trying to fill the time and I made myself very busy.

I started selling a brand called Pure Haven, which I still do. It’s a direct sales company. And what people don’t understand about direct sales and MLM is that if you want to be successful in those companies, you actually have to run it as a business.

And so running a business means that you put all of your time and effort and attention into that. And so I found myself working a business that I was making a very small profit on in comparison to the business I was running for myself. And all of a sudden I was busier than I was before having an acupuncture practice.

And I loved it because in that time I needed to fill the time and space. But the whole point of me giving up my acupuncture practice was that I was trying to create more time and space so that I could really do what I love doing and I desire doing, which is doing things like this. And so it gave me an outlet and it made me a lot of connections.

And so I’m so grateful for it and I love the product. So that’s why I still do it in my spare time, but it looks very different now. So I think that time freedom is something that I really took for granted because we all want it, but how many people actually give themselves the time to take a break unless they’re on vacation and they’re like, well, I don’t want to do anything.

And so now my whole life is a vacation when I’m working and when I’m home, I’m working and because it’s not work anymore, I enjoy it. And so if I saw this and I was sitting on a beach somewhere and you were looking for a podcast guest, I would have taken the podcast interview on vacation because this isn’t work. This is, this is what I love.

Oh, I cannot agree more. This fuels us. We want to help as much people as possible because we feel the gratitude in our own time freedom.

And I think to your point, I felt the same way. I worked way too hard in my twenties to the point of burnout. And my success and happiness was defined by more work.

It was defined by doing more and saying yes to more things. And only until really later in my thirties, did I learn that my success now depends on my ability to actually say no to things with confidence. Yeah.

That’s a beautiful thing, right? So success was always attached to doing, being, making money. And the thing is, is that money doesn’t buy you freedom.

People think that money buys everything. Money buys happiness. Money buys this money, but it doesn’t.

Going from food stamps to a wealthy woman, I can guarantee you that if you don’t do the inner work, the personal development, growing your emotional intelligence, most women are walking around as a child. You’re still a child inside of an adult body. And until you grow yourself up and you parent yourself, the money’s not going to matter.

It’s going to give you a short dopamine hit. You’re going to be happy for a minute, but you’re not going to live in complete happiness. Like I can truthfully say that I live on heaven on earth.

Like that is my existence now. And that doesn’t mean that my days are perfect. My days are far from perfect, but it’s just, I’ve learned to live in the duality of everything that’s happening.

And so no day is a bad day, but every year just keeps getting better than the rest. Because one of my mottos is it just keeps getting better. It just keeps getting better.

And so every year just keeps getting better and better and better. So when you start adapting these little things, you’re going to see a huge shift in your life. Thank you for all your wisdom.

And if you were having a bad day yourself, is there a favorite quote that you resort to?

Yeah.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world by Gandhi. That literally used to hang above my mirror when I was on food stamps. And in my very first book that I wrote, I wrote a thank you and put it in there because every day I would look at that quote and every day my goal would be to be better than I was yesterday.

I stopped thriving to compete with other people. And I started thriving to just compete with myself and to become the best version of me. And I truly feel that I’m doing that.

And that’s the best feeling in the world because there was a time where I was not such a good person and I did not say nice things and I did not do good in the world. And so becoming me, this version of me, I’m really proud of her. And I really love her.

And I’m really grateful that I was given this information and I was able to not only receive it, but to apply it to my life. And now in turn, be able to share the wisdom with others so that they can shift their life too.

Well, thank you again for being with us. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, connect with Sheila Mita. Her links are below.

Thanks again. 

Thank you.