When It’s Hard to be Grateful
Do this first to shift the energy.
A rough year
It had been a rough year for me. Between an ongoing noise issue with a neighbor, feeling severely burned out with work and struggling with food sensitivities, I had been feeling overwhelmed and fatigued.
One day, at the height of my angst, I opened my gratitude journal. I noticed that my last entry was a full month prior. Seeing this took me aback. I prided myself on doing my gratitude journal almost every day. Had I really been that distracted?
We all hit times when it is hard to feel grateful. It’s hard for me to be grateful for anything when I’m in a standoff war with the neighbors and have barely slept in four days.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t written at all in that last month. I journaled frequently to clear my head. In fact, I had journaled more than usual lately. Then I realized why.
I couldn’t focus on gratitude until I acknowledged what was blocking it first.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
In looking at my journal, I noticed that I often journaled about what I was feeling. However, I noticed that I had written a lot of statements like, “I am so burned out” or “I am so…