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Adjust Your Attitude With Gratitude
What are you grateful for? If you were asked to write a list, would you struggle with it? Would you think of your grievances instead? All of the ways that you’ve been wronged by others or by the circumstances of your life?
This question came up a few years ago with a relative of mine. He and his wife were having problems and he was no longer living at home. I’d asked him if he had plans for Thanksgiving, and that if he’d like, he could spend it at our house. He rolled his eyes and said that Thanksgiving was a useless day. “What’s the point?
“I suppose,” I suggested,” that it’s about giving thanks.”
“I got nothing to be thankful for.” He ground out. And he meant it. No amount of pointing out all of the wonderful things in his life made any impression. He could only focus on the negative and that alone cancelled all else.
This trait, this inability to recognize and to feel gratitude poisoned his life. It’s a trait that he’s carried thorough out his life and one that has cost him. If your gratitude hangs on everything in your life being perfect, then your ability to feel happiness depends on everything in your life being perfect. You could spend a lot of your life being miserable waiting for everything to be perfect.
The problem with “everything has to be perfect” thinking is that it’s reactive. Gratitude is proactive. The proactive person has the ability to generate his own happiness. He has the ability to control his own internal weather. His happiness is not based on his “conditions”, but is instead based on his “decisions”. He is able to make the decision to be happy because he has made the decision to practice gratitude. Much like working a muscle, the more he practices gratitude, the stronger and easier it becomes to generate the feeling of gratitude. As a result, the stronger and easier it becomes to generate the feeling of happiness.
The reactive person is stuck in ego. He is unable to practice gratitude because he is never satisfied. He is unable to see that happiness is something self generated. Instead, he sees happiness as something external. Outside of himself. Happiness is something that happens to him. He does not control his own inner weather. Others control his inner weather, and as a result, his happiness or unhappiness is a result of his reaction to outside circumstances. His happiness depends on his conditions not his decisions. He is a puppet whose strings are beyond his control.
So, I pose the following exercise, consider all of the things that you are grateful for. Write them down .. Keep a daily journal of your “daily gratitudes.” This will get you into the habit of practicing gratitude as well as generating a sense of happiness and well being.
In time, you’ll find that you couldn’t possibly list all of your daily gratitudes.
But what about now? What if you’re staring at that white page and you draw a complete blank? You can’t think of a darn thing to be grateful for. In this case, you’re going to have to start with the small stuff. Start working out your gratitude muscles. You can start with – I’m grateful that I woke up on the right side of the dirt. I’m grateful that the sun came up and the universe is in working order. I’m grateful that I have eyes, and that I can read and see all of the things around me. Seriously. If you are really that stuck, or perhaps engulfed in sorrow, start small. And then gradually work your way up. Take the time to read and then re-read the entries in your journal. It’s uplifting. Take the time to feel happy. Take the time to feel grateful. Take the time to realize the strength and freedom that gratitude instills within the individual. Sometimes life’s circumstances are beyond our control. How we decide to think and feel are not.
I’ll finish with a famous quote by Viktor Frankl, the author of “Mans Search For Meaning” and a Nazi concentration camp survivor.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Article written and submitted by Leanne Hansen
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