Gratitude is a practice. You can’t just smear an “I’m so thankful,” on top of “I don’t want this,” and call it good.
Let me give you an example.
If your boss dumps a bunch of your coworker’s files on your desk and says, “Here, Joan is on vacation this week but these projects need to get done,” and walks away, you can immediately say to yourself, “I’m lucky I have a job so, really, I’m grateful to have this work to do,” before you start on the pile, but most likely you aren’t feeling grateful.
You’re probably feeling some combination of resentful, powerless, and pissed off.
You can get to feeling grateful from feeling resentful or powerless, but you can’t just flip a switch.
That’s why I’ve found it helpful to “practice” feeling grateful every day—when I’m not in the middle of a situation, conflict, or stressor.
I practice gratitude when I’m sitting quietly at my desk or when I’m in line at the grocery store or before I fall asleep at night. That’s when I have time to reflect on my day and really process how I’m feeling and notice all the things I’m grateful for. Sometimes I take the time to jot down 3 or 5 things I’m grateful for.
I used to keep a daily gratitude journal and that was a wonderful practice. It made me realize no matter how bad my day seemed, I could always find things to be grateful for.
I think I’ll start doing that again, as of today.
Today I’m grateful for…
• A safe car to drive my son and myself around in
• My siblings, who are my best friends
• The cup of coffee sitting at my elbow
• The bright flowers I see in my front garden (some might call them weeds, I like to call them flowers)
When we practice noticing what we are grateful for every day, we get better at noticing what there is to be grateful about in more challenging situations. We’ve created a pathway in our brains that takes us toward gratitude and away from negativity.
But it takes practice and it takes time.
If I tell myself I’m grateful when I’m really seething with resentment, I’m just pushing the resentment away, which makes the feeling even stronger, because now I resent the fact that I’m not even allowed to feel resentment!
Instead, I notice how resentful I feel and I allow the feeling to grow. I don’t say or do anything when I’m feeling this way, I’m just experiencing the emotion without trying to push it away.
Then, as the feeling ebbs, as it always does, I can start to notice what I’m truly grateful for.
In the example I used above about doing Joan’s work while she’s away, I might feel grateful that my friend and co-worker is getting her long-deserved vacation, or I might have to get a little more basic and notice that I’m grateful to be working in an air-conditioned office in the 90-degree weather.
When we are feeling negative emotions, it’s more difficult to think and plan. Once we’ve allowed the negative emotions and practiced a little gratitude, our brains are actually able to function better.
That’s when we might notice that not all the files contain projects that have to be done this week. Those can go back on Joan’s desk to await her return.
Or we might notice that we have two weeks worth of work to do in one week, and approach our boss to ask which projects she’d like us to put off, as we don’t have enough hours to do all our work and Joan’s.
Gratitude is a tool to feel better and suffer less. It is not a tool to stuff your feelings and suffer more.
Start a gratitude journal and/or commit to practicing gratitude in your quiet times. Your practice will help you bring gratitude into the rest of your busy, wonderful life.