Be Grateful, Mother Fucker!

I think I am entering menopause, otherwise known as feeling like I am going to go ape shit on you, but I don’t know why. Yesterday, I found myself feeling this way, but I was alone with no triggers. I did a mental run through. My family is healthy. I just had a few days off of work. I balanced my checkbook, and I have enough to pay the bills this month. There was no obvious reason to feel on the edge of rage. So, I told myself to MOMF. I then took a moment to review what is good in my life. I took a moment to be a grateful mother fucker.

Research in positive psychology clearly shows that people who take a moment to be thankful are happier, and by happier, I mean more content. If your goal is to go through life being on top of the world, ain’t gonna happen, mother fucker. Your brain isn’t wired to be euphoric all of the time; however, you can be more content. Contentment is being good with what you have. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want things or have goals. It just means you are fine even if you don’t have the other stuff. A lot of us take what we have for granted — not because we’re assholes — but because it takes effort. Being grateful for what we have means we have to practice thinking about it, and I’m telling you that it’s worth the effort. If you want to really go hog wild, journal, make a grateful list, or take a moment to say thank you/write a thank you note to someone who has made a difference in your life. That will give you a natural high.

Now, you may be saying to yourself that I don’t understand how your life sucks — that you hate your job or that your partner is cheating on you. In cases where you clearly have reason to feel down, you’re going to feel down. I can’t argue that, but let me tell you the story of Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a psychiatrist who, along with his family, was taken to the concentration camps during WWII. Most of his family, including his wife, were killed, but he survived. He later wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Taken from Man’s Search for Meaning)

We have a social disease in America where people don’t want to experience the entire range of human emotions, including sadness, grief, and embarrassment, but guess what, fucker, you’re human. Terrible things happen. You’re going to feel bad, but after you pick yourself up, ultimately, only you control your response. I am here to say that you can still feel grateful. Choosing to contemplate what is positive and hopeful in your life does help. I am not saying that you should try to convince yourself not to feel bad. Perhaps you can remind yourself that it isn’t all bad.

In his book, Letting Everything Become Your Teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “By taking responsibility for your own experience in this way, you are taking a profound and potentially transformative step toward both healing and genuine well-being and happiness, not in some better “future” that may never come, but in the only moment you ever have for living, for breathing, for loving, for being, namely this one.” Move on Mother Fucker.

Jodie Eckleberry-Hunt, Ph.D., A.B.P.P.

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Using mindfulness and profanity to feel better. For more fun, follow me on Twitter/Facebook@jeckleberryhunt jodieeckleberryhunt.com

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