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Gratitude had always eluded me. I understood it in theory, but not in practice. I felt like I was born and made to suffer. Truth be told, I was addicted to suffering. It was comfortable. Certain. It was the thing I knew how to do. When the familiar feeling of dread or anxiety flooded my body, I knew how to surrender to it and let the darkness wash over my body. I sat with it and allowed it to comfort me when things didn’t appear to be going the way I wanted or expected.
Gratitude, on the other hand, felt foreign. It felt like luxury. It was something for people with money, jobs they loved, in happy relationships or who did everything right in life. It was for all those spiritual people who tapped into something that I seemed to be on the verge of, but still missed because my brain just rejected the positive, loving way of life.
Everywhere I looked was evidence of why life sucked for me and others. I saw all the things I needed that refused to relieve my pain. I saw the absence of love and support. I felt the desperation of the gaps between my bank account and my bills. I was reminded of all the trips I wasn’t taking and the myriad of other ways I wasn’t enjoying my life.
All these things signaled reasons to suffer. Let’s be honest, you can build whole friendships based on complaining about what doesn’t make you happy. Try the opposite with others and they eventually find a way to avoid you. There was more of an emotional payoff in being miserable. There was more support and it felt less lonely. However, it took a toll.
One day, I realized that if I kept wallowing in the darkness, eventually it would drain me of everything that makes me who I am. I am more of a glass half full type of person.
How to Start Looking at What Isn’t.
Once I determined that the payoff from being miserable was actually robbing me of joy, I had to figure out how to see my life differently. The mind is heavily invested in what it is already doing and takes offense to you questioning its programming. It is keeping you safe, no matter how dysfunctional the process. The job is being done. It didn’t download the adult programming, and the kid programming is incompatible with the life you need to live.
It takes repetition and a commitment to see things differently. Unlike pressing an icon on your phone, filtering and re-framing what you see is not as simple. When it comes to the human brain, it takes 21 days of consistency to form a new habit. And, 90 days to form a new lifestyle.
Gratitude is a choice.
How to See Differently
There are two things that worked for me. First, was understanding that there exists an opposite to everything I see. For example, there are poor people, but rich people also exist. If my bank account is empty and that makes me sad, but there was a time that my bank account had lots of money in it and I felt content. If I feel sad, I am choosing to focus on the emptiness of the bank account and blocking out that it was once full of money and I was free to do what I wanted. One doesn’t cancel the other out, both conditions exist. Both are possibilities. In that moment, I can be really sad that I currently don’t have money or I can be grateful for all the times I had exactly what I needed when I needed it.
The second thing that worked for me was reframing. Reframing is a way to see a situation differently.
When things fall apart, we tend to look at it as if it is a negative attack or a confirmation of something we have done wrong. This perpetuates more bad feelings, guilt, and shame. Then you spiral into pity.
Albert Einstein said:
The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.
When reframing, I remind myself that I choose to see this life as friendly, helpful and conspiring to give me what I want. So, even when things look like they are going wrong, I assume something is in motion that I will eventually benefit from. I believe there are things behind the scenes that I can’t see and it is coming together for the greater good.
When I am able to look back and connect the dots, I often find what I thought was something horrible actually freed me for something I truly wanted. I have a habit of holding on to things for too long until they literally crumble in front of my face.
The Truth about Gratitude
Gratitude is a choice. It is your ability to see things in a way that makes you feel better about everything that happens in your life. The choice you have to make is whether you want to experience everything as if it is the most horrible, negative, punishing, harsh life, or to see that you have been able to endure all the hardships sent your way and not make that the main point or thing you should worry about. Instead, you can see how many wonderful things have also happened and how you were able to enjoy them.
Let’s say, you were given an all-expense paid trip to your favorite (or dream) place for a week. You stay in an amazing suite, full service and enjoy delicious food/entertainment/sights. You got to meet exciting people. On the way there and back, there was some rough turbulence, but you made it safely.
When you talk to someone about the trip, do you not mention all the wonderful things you did and how it cost you nothing, or focus and complain about the turbulence?
Or, do you chalk the turbulence up as an unfortunate, uncontrollable side effect of awesome and gush about all the beautiful things you were able to experience?
How you choose to see it is a decision between suffering or being grateful.
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