I recently joined a group called The Gratitude Circle on Facebook. Now my page is flooded with posts by folks grateful for this, that, and the other thing. It is nice to have, because my mind still has a tendency to look for the negative and stop there. I get so many gratitude posts in my feed that there are now very few negative things coming up. But this is high-level gratitude, and a few years ago I would not have been able to appreciate The Gratitude Circle. Have you ever seen anyone just so happy that you couldn't relate at all? It's like that. When I'm in the pits of despair, perpetually happy people fill me with the desire to run away.
Gratitude is an important element of a healthy recovery. So how does one start being grateful? How does one start appreciating what one has when one (seemingly) has nothing? We start with what we don't have! A beginner's gratitude list might look like this:
- I'm grateful I didn't wake up in jail today.
- I'm grateful I didn't wake up sick today.
- I'm grateful that I don't have to buy drugs/alcohol today, because I've got no money to do so!
- I'm grateful I won't lose my job today.
After a while, we might become grateful for things we do have, such as:
- I'm grateful I have a roof over my head today.
- I'm grateful the heater in my car works.
- I'm grateful for the food I ate today.
- I'm grateful for the clothes I'm wearing.
If we continue with the practice of gratitude, it starts to look something like this:
- I'm grateful to be breathing today.
- I'm grateful for the people in my life.
- I'm grateful for sobriety/being clean.
- I'm grateful for the sunshine.
- I'm grateful for my health.
So we're starting to move from the head down into the heart a little bit, and our gratitude list could start looking like this:
- I'm grateful for the happiness I felt last night after my support group meeting.
- I'm grateful for peace of mind.
- I'm grateful that I like my job.
- I'm grateful that I can talk openly and honestly with people.
- I'm grateful for all of the experiences I'm having in recovery.
- I'm grateful that I can learn from my experiences.
And even deeper gratitude begins to look like this:
- I'm grateful that I'm an alcoholic/addict/person living with a mental health condition - it's actually given my life richness and meaning.
- I'm grateful that I'm beginning to see myself and others in a different light.
- I'm grateful that my values are changing.
- I'm grateful that I have purpose today.
- I'm grateful for hardships and challenges that make me grow.
And I don't know what the next level is (yet), but I'm fairly certain that there is one.
So what makes gratitude so powerful? On a very simplistic level, if one is thankful for what God has given, and says so, that makes God happy and He gives you more! (This never really worked well for me, as I never believed that my Higher Power operates in this manner). There is a universal principle at work here: Whatever we focus on grows and grows.
I can remember some of the darker times in my life when I would stay extremely depressed for weeks and months on end. Now I know that part of it is because I thought by focusing on it I could figure out how to get rid of it. Growing up, I used to lay awake at night thinking about my problems (this is called 'obsessive rumination', if you need a name for it. It's also called insomnia.). I did not realize, and probably would not have believed, that by focusing on my problems and the things I didn't like, I was actually compounding them.
The power in gratitude is that when we learn to focus on the things that make us feel good inside, we get more. When we focus on the things that touch our hearts, or even the things we know are ultimately good for us (like challenges and 'problems'), we get more. And we learn to not necessarily ignore the stuff we don't like, but to not put all of our energy into stuff we don't want.
When we start to become skillful at using the power of gratitude, we begin to get skillful at shaping our lives. Have you ever seen a happy cancer patient? I have! The person was able to see the good in their experience - the learning about their bodies that was taking place, the people they were meeting, the care their caregivers were giving, the love they were experiencing from their family and friends. One begins to realize that there are benefits to everything, and when we begin to look for the benefits, to look for the good, we will find it.
Another thing starts to happen when we become skillfully grateful - our vibration starts to rise. When I was in my deepest depression, the world had no color. Everything I saw was shades of dull gray. So, physically, I can tell how my mind is doing today by how rich are the colors in my life. Even on a snowy day, the white seems brighter if I'm not depressed.
The way I feel, my emotional state, is very important in gratitude. Looking at the examples above, one can see that the first couple of sets require no feeling - it's just commonsense stuff to be grateful for - "I'm grateful I'm not in pain." A big part of the power in gratitude comes from our emotional state, and that was bad news to me for a while, because I didn't know how to raise my emotional state, or my vibration. Time and patient practice along with a little hope have helped me, because it has taken a really (relatively) long time for my vibrational state to get to where it is today. I started with, "I know I should (there's that dirty s-word) feel good about being sober and alive," to "I know I probably could feel good about being sober and alive," to today, where it's "I'm starting to enjoy being alive."
In Matthew 13:12, Jesus said, "Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." At first, this sounds bad. It doesn't sound loving at all. But keep in mind that Jesus was trying to tell people how the Universe works, and it works in this way - If I focus on and appreciate what I have, I will have more. If I focus my attention on what I lack, I will have more lack, or become even more lacking.
And that's the power of gratitude - bringing what we want to see and experience in life by appreciating what we have.
Namaste,
Ken
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