July 11, 2005

Attitude of Gratitude

The last thing you want to hear when you're having a hard time is "Be grateful for what you've got." A feeling of anger may rise up in you at being reminded to be grateful, when all you seem to have is trouble. Why would we want to be grateful for trouble? Maybe we've lived with lack so long, that being grateful for the very little we have only points out the insufficiency.

There are three reasons why gratitude should be part of your arsenal of weapons against adversity.

1. Two sides of the coin
As much as we hate to admit it, trouble always brings along with it something positive. You've heard the old adage "every cloud has a silver lining". When the storm is raging, we're not particularly looking for that silver lining. We're just trying to keep from getting beaned by the baseball-sized hail coming out of that dark cloud! Yet the benefit is there to be found, when we get a quiet moment for reflection.

  • Perhaps coping with this adversity has forced us to develop new skills.
  • Perhaps we have encountered caring people and made new friends.
  • Perhaps we have learned something about ourselves, our strength of character, our level of resilience, our capacity for love, and our faith in the future.
  • Perhaps we have been an example to someone else, and touched one or more lives in ways we may never know or comprehend.
  • Perhaps we have been catapulted out of our comfort zone into an arena where forward progression is now possible, and the opportunity for a greater achievement is before us.

2. Law of Attraction
A feeling of gratitude for anything in our lives focuses our attention on the positive, rather than the negative.

  • It illuminates the victories, even though they may be microscopic.
  • It forces our minds to consider that the universe can deliver good, and keeps us from dwelling on the bad.
  • We look at the positive points in time, rather than the gaps between them.

The Law of Attraction is based on the principle that you get more of what you focus on. What truly makes the law of attraction work is the degree of emotion surrounding the thing you hold in your mind. When you are consumed by thoughts of lack, of trouble, of despair, you are bound to get more of the same. It is attracted to you as surely as iron filings to a magnet.

To break that cycle, it is necessary to think about what you want instead of adversity, and to suffuse that desire with positive emotion. Gratitude is the pathway by which you can stop the negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.

3. Replace Fear with Faith
Fear is a powerful emotion. Unfortunately, it is a much stronger emotion than faith. Just look at the physical effects fear can have on your body: your breathing becomes more rapid, you sweat, your stomach feels sick, you feel weak, you have trouble thinking. There is no question that fear can take over our bodies and our minds.

Some people think that the opposite of fear, is courage. That is not true. You can be fearful and courageous at the same time. Courage is doing what needs to be done despite one's fear. The true opposite of fear, is faith. You cannot have faith and be fearful at the same time. If you are experiencing fear, it is because you do not have the faith that you can overcome in this situation.

The only way to combat fear is to summon gratitude. Gratitude reconnects you to what is possible in your life. It reminds you that you CAN achieve, obtain, and overcome. Gratitude opens the door for God to kindle your faith. Remember, all you need is faith even as small as a mustard seed, or about the size of the period in this sentence. Fear cannot remain when faith takes hold. In the depths of fear, we may not be able to immediately overturn the fear and feel faith. That may be a leap that is too great in our desperate situation. But even immersed in fear, we can find one thing to be grateful for. And then another. And another.

All it takes is gratitude.

Being grateful that you can breathe. Being grateful that you have a mind in reasonable working order. Being grateful that your limbs and digits still work. Being grateful that you exist for one more minute. And even when you think that THAT is nothing to be grateful for, be grateful that in that one minute, there is the possibility that life can change. It can change in an instant.

Gratitude leads to hope, and hope leads to faith. Faith leads to change.

Begin NOW

Start now to make a list of all the things you are grateful for. The more serious your situation, the longer your list needs to be, to put a stop to your continual fear. Don't just mechanically make a laundry list of this and that. Consider each item you write, and feel -- FEEL -- the gratitude.

Do this every day. Then watch how quickly you begin to see positive change, even if only in small increments. Consistent gratitude for small things, will bring great rewards.


2 Comments:

At 8:53 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like your article on gratitude a lot. In fact I like it so much that I will recommend it to my students in the course I teach on the psychology of well-being.

While in fundamental agreement about the importance of gratitude, I have a different opinion about a couple of the points in your article.

My views on faith may differ somewhat from yours. I have no problem with faith as optimism. But I would not encourage faith as wishful thinking or reliance on God to intervene. That could lead to imprudent passivity.

The same goes for the Law of Attraction. There is truth in the idea that focusing on the negative will bring more of the same. But it is not because thoughts magically attract bad events. It is because negative thinking leads to poor choices with negative consequences. Breaking the cycle requires more than simply focusing on wants, because wishing by itself will not attract good things. To be happy we need to intelligently strive for good things while being willing to accept that we will not always achieve them.

Thank you again for the wonderful essay. Given your interests, you may enjoy a book by Timothy Miller, How to Want What You Have: Discovering the Magic and Grandeur of Ordinary Existence.

 
At 12:32 PM, Blogger Beth said...

Hi John,
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate your opinions.

Just to clarify for my readers, I don't think I implied that wishing, magical change, or expecting divine intervention were realistic.

Faith is not optimism, but a belief that what one is experiencing can be different. Without faith, there is no point even getting out of bed every day. We all must operate on some basic faith principle that we can act and see our actions have useful consequences.

Fear becomes paralyzing when it destroys our faith. Summoning up faith (whether in oneself, God, an abundant universe, a kindly force, or the goodwill of others) allows circumstances to begin to change -- often because we begin to take different actions.

You are right that change requires activity, not passivity.

As for Attraction, bad things can happen to us even if we have a positive mindset. But thoughts become things, whether we wish it or not. If we are immersed in negative thoughts, our responses to anything that happens to us will only maintain the situation or even make it worse. Changing our thoughts to positive ones helps us see the flowers among the ashes. That opens our minds and hearts to an array of options, creative solutions, inspired actions, and yes, better choices.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the ancestor of every action is a thought. Gratitude helps us change our thoughts. When we start looking at what we want, instead of what we've got, we can take the necessary actions to get it. Without that first fundamental change in thinking, no action is possible.

The right thoughts motivate to action. Wishing comes about when we can't or won't act. Fear turns our desires into mere wishes because it keeps us from taking any action.

Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll check it out.

 

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