Have you ever tried to find the silver lining where there just didn’t seem to be one? That feeling of trying to dig a lesson out of a truly bad situation can be demoralizing.
I have definitely experienced times when gratitude didn’t seem like an appropriate response.
Sometimes you simply can’t find the lesson to be learned, and you can’t find a feeling of gratitude amid tough times.
I’ll admit I’ve had moments in life where I thought, why on earth should I be grateful for THIS? It sucks. I don’t want to be grateful for the bad things, misfortune shouldn’t be something we appreciate!
Of course, I was missing the point and the essence of what gratitude is.
It is a tool, a coping strategy for raising your vibration when you’re feeling down. It doesn’t mean accepting bad experiences or condoning bad behavior; it means being able to get perspective on your life and find beauty in small things, or things you take for granted. That feeling of switching your focus to what’s going right is a way to control your own energy.
It’s an essential strategy for life.
Science tells us that being grateful can help us cope with trauma, balance our nervous systems and improve our well-being. It also has a positive impact on those around us. It’s kind of a win-win. If you practice a gratitude journal, according to a 2003 study by Emmons and McCullough, you’ll have better sleep, reduced physical pain, a greater sense of well-being, and a better ability to handle change.
Instead of seeing gratitude as a “cure-all” during particularly dark or challenging times, let’s see it as a tool that we can use to bring us back to center.
Like mindfulness, gratitude exists at the moment. Having a gratitude journal and making gratitude lists is a fantastic way to cultivate gratitude BUT you have to also find it in those small, seemingly mundane moments of life when you’re simply being.
- That first moment when you wake up in a warm bed after a great sleep.
- The shadows playing on the wall.
- The innocent and playful laugh of a child.
- The friendly cat that winds itself around your legs to be petted.
- The delicious lunch you shared with your friend while laughing so hard you cried.
- The sweet message from your loved one, just when you thought they’d forgotten.
- The freedom of a beautiful hike in the sunshine.
These are the kinds of things that make me feel grateful in each moment of every day.
I realize as time goes by that gratitude is inextricably linked to mindfulness.
If you are unable to practice mindfulness, it will be harder for you to find gratitude.
At the heart of gratitude is appreciation and the ability to notice what is beautiful, what is right and what is true.
It’s about being able to acknowledge that while you may have had a bad day at work, you’re enjoying an incredibly blessed life in many other ways. That doesn’t mean you disregard your emotions around having a bad day, it means you choose not to hover over those emotions and watch them get bigger as you add to your complaints.
Somebody once asked me, are you a collector of positivity or a collector of s**t?
If your roof starts to leak, do you freak out, raise your blood pressure and get in a panic about it before acting, or do you think, hey that really sucks, but I’ll call the roof people to come and fix it?
Obviously, the context is always relevant, but it made me think. How do I react under pressure?
The way you react at the moment to challenges says a lot about your ability to be mindful, and grateful. Being calm can really change the way you move through life and it’s inevitable challenges.
Stay grateful in the difficult moments and trying times of life with these simple strategies:
- Be kind to yourself – Find a reason to feel proud of yourself.
- Have a gratitude conversation – Tell someone else what you’re grateful for. Voicing out loud the things we appreciate has immense power, and can help someone else to feel positive too.
- Pay it Forward – Do something nice for someone else and preferably don’t tell anyone else about it. Make it something you simply do for this other person, either a friend or an anonymous person. Keep your ego out of it.
I find that these three simple steps go a long way in helping me cultivate a grateful attitude overall.
I use them to accompany my gratitude journaling and can turn to them when I’m having a bad day and want to turn it around.
I hope the same may work for you!
