The Most Important Time To Find Gratitude

Michael E Lee
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

We’re about to wrap up a new website that is going to launch here in the next couple of weeks for our basketball training company, Thrive3. And, the other night I was going through all of our old blog posts trying to clean up the site a little bit. What I found was pretty amazing. When you are so obsessed with building something your mind is always on the future or in the current moment. Very rarely are we in the past. And, while I don’t advocate looking back often, one reason I do think is great to look back is to find gratitude. For the experiences you’ve had, the people you’ve met and to see how far you actually have come. If you’re putting in the work on yourself and your craft everyday, looking back is a great exercise to give yourself perspective. To know that, despite what you may think, you’ve actually come a long way.

What I found were these gratitude posts I wrote on Thanksgiving from 2009, thanking all the people that had believed in us, helped us along the way or that we had developed relationships with through the game. From my parents, to old coaches to Luke’s wife, I tried to thank anyone and everyone I could think of. I was building a business doing something I loved and was filled with gratitude so many days.

I see gratitude as a practice or tool that we can use in a few different ways.

A Daily Practice

You can use this as daily practice either through something like a gratitude walk, that best-selling author and speak, Jon Gordon is a huge advocate of. This is simply a walk, thanking The Universe, Life or God for things that you are grateful for in your life. I find this practice amazing, especially when doing it in nature.

What Went Well Journal

This is a practice I learned from Joshua Medcalf and is pretty popular among CBT practitioners. In this you are simply writing out a list of things that went well for you each night before you go to sleep. When I’ve done this I fill up an entire page in the journal, which is about 20 lines. This might seem like a lot at first because we are used to scanning our environment for threats as a survival technique. Not seeking out the good in our lives. But, I’ve found that when I make commitment to filling up that page, things just seem to flow. There are always things to be grateful for.

Thank You Letters

This is one of the most powerful practices that I’ve done. It’s simply writing a handwritten note to someone who has impacted you in some way shape or form. There’s still something special about writing out an actual note, putting it in an envelope and putting stamp on it. The last time I did this, about 2 years ago (I know I need to do it more often) I started out with a list of about 10 people. And, as I started writing out the letters, more and more people just kept coming into my mind, and the list got longer and longer. I think that list of 10 ended up being about 40. I had to search the internet for addresses of people I hadn’t spoke to in years. But, I was filled with a tremendous amount of gratitude for all they had done for me. And, it’s a pretty special state to be in.

Gratitude Visualization

In this practice we are flooding our minds with thoughts, feelings, and sensations of gratitude. It’s important to do some exercises to settle the mind a bit, otherwise the effects of visualization — any type — are not as effective. When our minds are fragmented, reacting to, and getting hooked on, every thought that comes up, it’s extremely tough for the visualization to fully work.

  1. Find a comfortable seat where you are relaxed, yet alert
  2. Close your eyes and take 10 deep rounds of breath. In through your nose and out through your mouth is one round. After you complete 10 rounds, return to breathing in and out through your nose.
  3. Next, shift your attention to any sounds in your environment for 1 minute. Just be aware of them and let them come and go. Try to not seek them out.
  4. Now, starting at the top of your head, scan down, just creating awareness of anything you feel in your body from your head all the way through your toes. This should take about 45 seconds.
  5. Once you reach through the edge of your toes, move your attention back to your breath. Take 10 rounds of breath in and out of your nose.
  6. After you complete that, shift your attention to find something you are grateful for and try as best you can to take yourself back into that moment. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? What does it smell like or taste like? Spend 3 minutes just letting moments of gratitude — as many a you can — flood into your mind. When you’ve finished this you can go ahead and open your eyes. Feel your body filled with gratitude.

The Most Important Time To Find Gratitude

In my experience it’s easy to be grateful when things are going well for you. You’re business is rolling, things are great with your relationships and you’re happy in life. In this situation, I find it so easy to be filled with a tremendous amount of gratitude using some of these practices. When you’re in this place in life you can use gratitude to elevate your state even higher.

But, I think the most important time to find gratitude is when things aren’t going well. When business is tough, your relationships are struggling or you might be in a state of depression or anxiety about something in your life. It’s impossible for our minds to focus on two things are once. Which, is why when we focus on gratitude, and fully let something we are grateful for soak into the core of our being, it’s virtually impossible to be depressed or anxious. Yes, our minds can switch focus almost instantly — so fast that we don’t even know it — but we can’t be in both states at once. I’m not saying this is easy. I’ve battled with anxiety and depression for over 20 years, and at times I thought it was virtually impossible to find gratitude during seasons of depression. But, through meditation, mindfulness and cultivating a higher level of self-awareness, I’ve realized that this is definitely possible.

And, maybe even most important thing to find gratitude for is the struggle. For the challenges that have been placed in our life because they’ve molded you into the person that you are today. When we can take this perspective we start to see things as happening for us — our growth — and not to us. It’s the difference between adopting a growth mindset or victim mindset.

The more we seek out the good the more it starts to show up in our lives. It’s why Tony Robbins says, “What you focus on expands”. If you focus on feeling depressed or anxious you’re going to get more of that. These states are inevitable, and sometimes so overwhelming you have no idea how you’re going to get out. But, through mindfulness and awareness of our thinking patterns, we can catch our thoughts and make a conscious choice to refocus them, on something we are grateful for, in order to shift our state of mind.

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Michael E Lee

I teach organizations, brands and leaders how to optimize their mind for peak performance through the power of mindfulness. Keynote Speaker | Workshops

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