How to Practice Gratitude and Why You Absolutely Need To
Gratitude training is a vital skill for the years to come.
I’ve been practicing gratitude for a while. A couple of years now.
In September 2018, my 4 year battle with depression, for all intents and purposes, ended. Immediately after that, my father had a heart attack.
We dealt with that, and for the next 6 months we were okay, but it was time for me to ramp up my career, so that I could take a larger role in my family’s financial well-being and my father could step back and take care of himself.
And then I got unceremoniously fired with little notice from my job of 5 years.
My depression started because of that job. It was my first full-time job after college. It was everything to me. I had tied my identity into it, even though it was slowly killing me. I was scared of losing it, afraid that I will never get another one. That sounds like a silly fear, but to me it was extremely real.
The day I got fired was predictably horrible. My first feeling when I woke up the next day? Relief. I was free.
I knew relief was coming, so the previous day when people around me were trying to comfort me, I told them to let me grieve. I needed to grieve because after grief comes release, and after release comes relief.
The last 2 months have been great. It would have been easy for me to collapse — “4 years of depression end and then these life-changing events happen? I should give up. I’m doomed to a horrible life.”
But I didn’t, and that is the power of gratitude. Gratitude for the good things in my life allows me to downplay the bad, and deal with it better without falling apart. It is something that is critical to leading a healthy, happy life.
What inspired me to write this short piece? It’s the second day of my new job (I got one, yay) and I’m feeling extremely nauseous as I write this.
It may be something to do with lunch, or it may be the fact that I’m back in an air-conditioned environment after not being in one for a while. I have a history of reacting poorly to extended temperature changes. The point is that I feel terrible.
Nausea is fairly common. Any number of reasons can cause it — from digestive issues, to pain, to moving too quickly. And it’s not something you can ignore. When you are nauseous, the only thing you want is to stop being nauseous.
When you do recover, normally you just go back to your life. But what would happen if you took a moment to be thankful that you’re no longer nauseous?
We aren’t nearly thankful enough for good health. We take it for granted. But if you recover from nausea, headaches, fever, a cold, or a litany of small issues, take a moment to be happy that that’s over. Be happy that you have good health again.
This is just mindfulness training. If you already know what mindfulness is, you can stop reading here. You get the idea already.
If you’re still reading, mindfulness is the act of being aware, being present in the moment. Mindfulness means noticing things. If you’ve never read about mindfulness before, take a moment right now to check with yourself. Do you have pain anywhere? Is your jaw clenched? Are your shoulders tense?
If you said yes to any of those, try focusing on that part of your body and relaxing it. You’ll be surprised by how much relief you feel.
STOP READING! REFOCUS.
READY? …CONTINUE.
Mindfulness is extremely important. When you are present and focused, you will find yourself with more time, more brain power, less stress, less brain fog, and a host of other benefits.
Without mindfulness, life is ephemeral. Moments and days will slip by like seeds from a dandelion. Years will pass and you will look back to say, “where did it all go?”
But mindfulness is difficult. We live in a fast age — with dozens of things demanding our attention. At such a time, it is easy to tune out, just to cope with it all.
Sickness that catches your attention, like nausea, is a great way to get jolted into mindfulness, and that allows you to build gratitude. Practising gratitude in these small moments adds up pretty quickly. Once you get into the flow of mindfulness, you’ll start doing it a lot more, and you’ll start being grateful a lot more.
Building up that habit leads to the power to deal with the really big things. 2 years of gratitude building allowed me to cope with my father’s heart attack and the loss of my job.
I believe that gratitude training is extremely powerful, and mindfulness in general will have a tremendous impact on your life. By reading this piece, you are currently in a mindful state (hopefully), so use this opportunity to be grateful for what you have in your life, big or little.
Thank you for reading.
Side note: I wonder if gratitude training can also help with dealing with the death of a loved one? Let’s hope I don’t have to test that anytime soon. I’m grateful for not having to deal with that at the moment.
It was gas. I had gas from lunch, and I quietly belched most of it out while writing this. I feel great. Life is great, isn’t it?
