When It’s Hard to be Grateful

A rough year

It had been a rough year for me. Between an ongoing noise issue with a neighbor, feeling severely burned out with work and struggling with food sensitivities, I had been feeling overwhelmed and fatigued.

One day, at the height of my angst, I opened my gratitude journal. I noticed that my last entry was a full month prior. Seeing this took me aback. I prided myself on doing my gratitude journal almost every day. Had I really been that distracted?

We all hit times when it is hard to feel grateful. It’s hard for me to be grateful for anything when I’m in a standoff war with the neighbors and have barely slept in four days.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t written at all in that last month. I journaled frequently to clear my head. In fact, I had journaled more than usual lately. Then I realized why.

I couldn’t focus on gratitude until I acknowledged what was blocking it first.

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Self-fulfilling prophecy

In looking at my journal, I noticed that I often journaled about what I was feeling. However, I noticed that I had written a lot of statements like, “I am so burned out” or “I am so infuriated”.

I knew that any statement starting with “I am” is an affirmation that has the power to create and confirm my reality.

When we say, “I am…” we are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy — which can be great or awful depending on how we finish that sentence.

I took my journal and started writing. This time I was mindful to write statements that focused on the emotion I was experiencing.

I started writing about what I was feeling instead.

“I feel so overwhelmed…”

I feel taken for granted… unappreciated.“

I wrote until I exhausted the emotion — and then I was ready to shift my focus.

Only then could I write about what I wanted to experience moving forward, and the things I was grateful for.

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Creating the shift

I did more than write about the things I was grateful for, mostly because at that time, it was a very short list. I started writing about things that I will be grateful for once they happen.

And I wrote about them as if they had already occurred.

It’s one method of manifesting exactly what you want before it happens.

I love the concept of gratitude, but I recognize that we always have to honor our emotions first. Honor, acknowledge and accept what you are feeling, and give yourself permission to vent.

Be raw, uncensored and honest. Allow your emotions to have a voice.

Once the emotions are fully and authentically expressed, purged and cleared, the energy will shift. And then you’ll find it a bit easier to find those golden nuggets of gratitude in your world again.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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