In our pursuit of happiness, of finding the perfect job, relationship, house, and everything in between, it can be easy to fall into the trap of focusing on all the things we don’t yet have. In this mindset, everything seems to be going wrong, you can barely find the energy to get up in the morning, and things in your life just feel stale and uninspiring.
When you’ve lost your happiness, find your gratitude. It’s not just how you’ll unwind yourself from an emotional spiral. It’s also how you’ll create the life you want.
Gratitude is not about wishful thinking or focusing on the positive in order to ignore or drown out the negativity, pain, and suffering in life. It’s not about thinking nice thoughts and expecting good things. It is about emotional resiliency and not letting all of your external circumstances dictate your internal world. It is about cultivating the mental strength to be appreciative for all that you have even when faced with difficult challenges.
What you focus on grows
Focusing on the bad will not make you feel better. Treating irrational thoughts and fears as truth gives them more power. Instead think: This fear isn’t real. I am not my thoughts and I have the power to choose what I focus my energy on.
If I tell you to focus on the colour blue and look around your environment, all of a sudden it’s everywhere. The same is true of your thoughts; if you’re constantly thinking about what is wrong in your life, that is all you will see and you’ll find more and more to be angry about.
It also works the other way around. When you think about all that you have to be grateful for right now and the opportunities ahead of you, watch the opposite occur. These aspects will bloom and your life will transform.
Be conscientiously grateful
Make a conscious effort to list things you have to be grateful for. At first this practice can feel downright impossible. It’s hard to imagine expressing endless thanks for a life you aren’t happy with. And sitting there trying to list things off feels inauthentic and can actually make you feel worse.
The trick is to find little things that happened today or yesterday to be grateful for. Not the big, vague things like your family or friends - otherwise your list will be very repetitive. Instead list things like, your partner bringing you coffee in the morning, or a conversation with a coworker that made you feel particularly motivated, or how the clear weather during your afternoon walk made it extra enjoyable. Get specific.
You will find that this turns your mood around instantly. Overtime, it also rewires your brain to look for things to be grateful for in the moment. You’ll find your mental focus gravitating more and more toward the things that go right throughout the day.
You get to decide. You can remember the lady who let you go ahead of her at the coffee shop. Or you can dwell on the guy who cut you off on your drive to work. Choose wisely, because this will dictate the quality of your day, and ultimately the quality of your life.
If you always think you need more, then you’ll never have enough
Some people believe that the underlying dissatisfaction in their life is what will drive them to excel. If I’m happy with what I have now, won’t that make me complacent and block me from reaching my goals in the future? No. In fact, studies suggest the opposite is true. Gratitude not only doesn’t lead to complacency, it creates a sense of fulfillment and a desire to do more.
This is because people who practice gratitude feel more alive, awake, alert, and energetic. Successful people speak things into the present by being grateful for that which they do not yet have rather than dwelling on it. By saying “thank you” for even the tiniest successes you shift your energy from wanting to having.
You can be grateful for what you have now while still focusing on creating more for yourself and achieving your goals. The difference is you’ll actually get to enjoy the journey along the way.
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