I have noticed that people who have what they need are not always grateful for what they have been given. They often look at what they have as things they have earned just by being them. Or they have worked hard for everything that they have. The truth is that sometimes they have worked hard for what they have been given. Or they have been born into it, but, it can also easily be taken away. In the blink of an eye people have lost everything and been left with nothing. Being grateful for what you have lends to the fact that there is someone greater than yourself who has helped you attain what you have. You have not done it all by yourself. People who have little are usually grateful for everything they have because they realize how fast they can lose it. Gratitude is a healthy way to recognize that what you have is a gift, not a privilege. It is not something that everyone has and is something for which you should be thanking your God. Gratitude requires you being humble enough to acknowledge that there is someone greater than yourself who knows you exist and who you will return to when you leave this plain. Even if you don’t agree that there is anyone greater than yourself, you can still be grateful for what you have. It can be humbling, but, will eventually allow you to understand how quickly it can be gone. How quickly you can lose it. Being humble will mean letting of some hubris. Hubris is the downfall of a lot of things. Letting it go is a good thing. The following video will help you to do just that.
Tag: gratitude
Gratitude
Finding gratitude for anything when you have come from dysfunction is difficult. In the beginning of treatment I ask people what is going good for them. They cannot tell me, they struggle with finding anything positive about themselves or their world. Even if I suggest something that I have observed, they will qualify it with, what I call a “yeah buts”. “Yeah buts” are excuses for why something is not what it is. An example would be if I said “You have nice hair” as an offering for something positive. The yeah but would be “Yeah but it always takes me a long time to do because it is too curly.” Having nice curly hair is something a lot of people pay a lot of money for, it is something for which to be grateful. When you are in the middle of the pain from dysfunction, you cannot always see the positive in your life. You need someone to help you find it. That is an arduous task at times. Getting rid of the things that are standing in the way, seeing all of the things that we have that are positive, only comes when more of the negative is removed. Talking about the negative, writing about the negative, drawing about the negative will get it out of your head and to a place where you can see it objectively. It will take the power out of it and put you in control. Anything that stays in our head will take on a life of its own and gain momentum and become larger than life. Being able to see it objectively will put you in a place of deciding what you will do about it. It will also put you in place of finding the positive in your life. Being grateful for what you do have, instead of what you don’t. Finding those positive things in life becomes easy. It can be done daily and often. Negative things will always happen to us, but, they will never again be the only thing in our lives. We will even be able to see the positive in the negative. And laugh!
The video below will help you relax and get rid of the negative, so you can begin to see the positive that is already there in you life.
Gratitude
Having a feeling of gratitude sets us up for a positive feeling to start the day as well as one to continue with during the day. Being grateful for the things that we have as well as the things that happen to us during the day changes the way we see things. When bad things happen, if we are thanking God for the experience and asking to learn what we need to learn from it, then we will. If we are grumbling and complaining about what just happened then we are learning nothing. The sooner we get to the gratitude the sooner we learn what we need to learn and move on to the next challenge. That doesn’t mean it is easy. We learned somewhere along the line to complain to get what we want. We need to unlearn it and relearn the positive attitude of gratitude. Again it will take 3 weeks of constantly catching yourself complaining, stopping it and replacing it with gratitude to stop the behavior. It will take 3 more weeks to make that behavior a habit. No magic pill. Just hard work. You will need to be able to relax while you’re learning and making mistakes. The more mistakes the long the change will take. Be gentle with yourself. Here is my video to help you give it away and relax.
deb toomey 