“Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“Gratitude is a powerful catalyst for happiness. It’s the spark that lights a fire of joy in your soul.” – Amy Collette
In December of 2017, my little family and I immigrated from South Africa to Canada. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. To get myself through my first year in a foreign country, I accepted a gratitude challenge from a friend. I reasoned that “forcing” myself to find something I’m grateful for every day for a year would help me focus on what is good in my life, instead of on what is “wrong” with my life. I committed to sharing a daily gratitude post on Facebook.
Somehow sharing it publicly made it more real, and I felt accountable to continue the practice every day. There were some hard days where I really felt I wanted to give up the practice. Having made the commitment to share a daily post about what I’m grateful for however, meant I would continue to honour my commitment to myself.
365 days of gratitude turned out to be the most transformational thing I could have done that year. Not only did it help me navigate the most difficult year of my life, but it also helped me see things with new eyes. Before that year, I had never spent that much time looking for what was good about my life. To this day when I look back on it, that realisation saddens me. It took moving 16 000 km away from everything I loved to realise just how much I had actually loved my life.
In so many ways my life back in South Africa was perfect. It was beautiful. It was real. I keep thinking of the song by one of my favourite musicians, Stef Bos, where he sings:
“…Maar ik ben gelukkig
Ook al zie ik het niet
Teveel ontevreden met alles
Te weinig tevreden met niets…”
This translates into:
“But I’m happy,
Even if I don’t realise it.
Often dissatisfied with everything.
Seldom satisfied with nothing.”
In many ways, that was how I was living my life. I was chasing one thing after another; often finding reasons to complain about everything. However, if I had slowed down for long enough, and asked myself what I was grateful for, I would have been blown away by the beauty and abundance in my life. I simply wasn’t paying attention. I had bought into the lie of scarcity that Lynne Twist talks about in her book The Soul of Money. I kept telling myself that I didn’t have enough, or I wasn’t doing enough. So, I kept chasing more and more – more qualifications, more adventures, more travels, more work, more of everything.
There was so much abundance and beauty in my life and yet, I wasn’t living my life. Not really. My life was living me. I was so busy working and chasing the next thing, that I never slowed down enough to really soak it all up. To really notice. To really appreciate. To really say thank you.
And then I found myself on the other side of the world, and it was all gone. All of it. I had to start all over from scratch. The truth is that I had bought into the lie of scarcity, because I had believed another lie – the lie that I wasn’t enough. And that what I needed were things, achievements, experiences, and people to fill me up and tell me that I was enough.
Suddenly, I had to learn to rely only on myself. I could no longer turn to those around me to reassure me. And I had to find my own way and create a new life in a place that was foreign to me. It required doing some deep – and sometimes painful – inner work.
And every day, my gratitude practice was there to remind me that there is ALWAYS something to be grateful for; even on the darkest of days. Even on those days when I lay on the floor crying, feeling like I simply didn’t have the energy to keep going…
When I started my coaching practice here in Canada, I was introduced to the work of Joanna Macy. She talks of the spiral of work that reconnects. In the words of Macy, the spiral of work that reconnects “helps us experience first-hand that we are larger, stronger, more creative – and more deeply interconnected – than we know”.
The Spiral (as depicted below) starts with gratitude. Macy reasons that gratitude “quiets the frantic mind and brings us back to source, stimulating our empathy and confidence”. It helps us to be more fully present. And I have experienced this to be true; not only for me, but also for others. When I host workshops, I often start with gratitude, and it always shifts the energy somehow. It is very difficult to continue focusing on what is wrong or broken, when you have spent some time reflecting on what is good, beautiful, bountiful, plentiful. When you are grateful for what you have in your life, you find it difficult to hold on to the idea that you don’t have enough, or you don’t have what you need, because you recognise the untruth of that. The truth always sets you free.
And as Steve Chandler explains, it’s difficult to create anything new or different in your life when you are stuck in a mental space that is characterised by fear, anxiety, worry, anger, regret, despondency, frustration etc. One quick way to pull yourself out of that space, is to identify what you are grateful for, and to really slow down for a second and truly appreciate it. When you open your heart to gratitude, you elevate your mind to a space of creative appreciation and inspiration.
As Macy explains, starting with gratitude, does not mean that you don’t also recognise pain. In fact, it helps you really honour your pain in the world from a more authentic place. In owning and honouring our pain for the world, and daring to experience it, we learn the true meaning of compassion; which is to “suffer with”.
When we connect the abundance of our life, with the pain we might also be experiencing, we begin to know the “immensity of our heart-mind” as Macy would put it. What had isolated us in private anguish now opens us up into the wider reaches of our inter-existence. We are able to see that joy and pain can live in balance inside of us, and that we can acknowledge what is painful whilst appreciating that which brings us joy.
What I’ve learnt from Lynne Twist is that when you shift your attention to what you appreciate and what is working, it expands even more. Nothing rings so true as the simplicity of her statement “what you appreciate, appreciates”. When you start where you are and with what you have, it grows.
Think about it, you can’t ever really start anywhere else but where you are right now. You might want to imagine that you can leap from one point to another, but in reality, you always start where you are, and you take the first step. And then another. And then another. You create your life one small step at a time. You simply must be willing to start where you are and appreciate this moment and place in time. Where you are, is exactly where you need to be to start creating the life that you want.
You don’t have to be someone else. You don’t have to be different. You must simply acknowledge where you are and create from what you already have. For me, that has been the truth of it. I created this beautiful and abundant life I have now, from the wreckage of my previous life, from the tears and immense sorrow, from the depths of despair and the pain I was in. I created this life by honouring the pain I was in AND appreciating what was beautiful about every single day for 365 days.
And after a year of continuous gratitude, it felt as if I had had eye surgery. Something was different. The lens I was looking through had changed. And the world looked different. So, I kept going. I am now in my fourth year of daily gratitude practice.
When I started working with my coach, she challenged me to work especially hard at my gratitude practice on the days that felt the most difficult to me. She explained that it’s easy to be grateful when things are going your way. It’s harder when things are not going your way, and it feels like there is simply nothing good about your day. And she is absolutely right. On those days, you want to be extra vigilant. You want to ask yourself how the situation that you perceive to be “bad”, is actually happening FOR you. It’s the perfect opportunity to call forth your inner appreciator.
And after continued practice, I can now see the gift in almost every situation. Of course, I’m not perfect. I also have days where I feel sorry for myself, or where I struggle to see the gift in what is happening. However, whatever happens, I know I can slow down and appreciate what is. I know that there is always something to be grateful for if I’m willing to see it.
I’m reminded by this quote from Melody Beattie, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
So, dear reader, here is your challenge:
For the next two weeks, can you find one thing you are grateful for every day? The catch is, it’s got to be something different every day. See how creative you can be. Really pay attention to your day and try to notice something you wouldn’t normally have stopped to notice. Can you turn a simple meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend? Even if you find yourself in the deepest and darkest pit of despair right now, can you dig deep and find that one thing that is beautiful, special, or enough about your day? And then, if you want, after two weeks, let me know what’s different for you.
References:
- Bos, S. (2008). Gelukkig. Available online at: https://www.stefbos.nl/page/Liedteksten/detail/1667/Gelukkig
- Breytenbach, C. (2020). Cultivating Your Appreciator. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/cultivating_your_appreciator/
- Macy, J. The Spiral of the Work That Reconnects. Available online at: https://workthatreconnects.org/spiral/
- Twist, L. (2017). The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the wealth of our inner resources. New York: Norton.