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Essential Practice 1

GRATITUDE:

A Mind-altering Substance

‘When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.’

KRISTIN ARMSTRONG

Gratitude has the power to transform everything: our perceptions, our experiences and our state of mind.

A lot of us come to this journey with a mountain of disappointments and hurts. Feeling grateful may be the last thing you want when you’re unhappy, when you’re full of all the things you haven’t got, and all the things that have gone wrong. But – however low, angry or despondent you feel – you will start to feel the benefits of gratitude as soon as you allow this tool into your life.

A warning: like many of WE’s tools, gratitude may sound simple – way too simple and perhaps not quite complex enough for our sophisticated female brains. Don’t be deceived. Remember those connect-the-dot books you had when you were little, where you joined numbered dots together and a picture emerged? This is what we do every day of our lives: we join up events and assign them meaning so that we can interpret the world.

The problem is that very often we join up the wrong dots. As we go through life, many of us notice all the things that seem to go wrong rather than the things that are going right. We focus on the times we haven’t got what we wanted, when life has disappointed us, when we may have been ignored or slighted in some way. Like fortune-tellers, who are only capable of negative conclusions, we examine the tea leaves of our life and decide that life is unfair, that we’re just not destined to be happy, that we don’t have the good luck others seem to enjoy.

Not surprisingly, if you join up these dots, you end up with a depressing picture.

But stop right there. From this moment forward you are going to try a different approach.

‘I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practising gratitude.’

BRENÉ BROWN

EXERCISE: Daily Miracles

This exercise will begin a mind-altering process by showing you how to put the practice of gratitude into your daily life. Make yourself comfortable and close your eyes. Breathe in and out five times, as described here, until you feel centered and settled.

Take up your journal and write down ten things in your life right now that you’re grateful for. They can be as small or as big as you like. Notice if your mind leaps in and lodges an objection. It may claim that it can’t find anything at all to be thankful for, or it may want to remind you of all the disappointments, trials and losses you are experiencing.

Like a miner panning for gold, try to pick your way through the silt and mud that your mind kicks up to find the treasure that rests in its midst. Keep looking until you find something – anything at all – that you can be grateful for. Perhaps it’s that you’ve got a roof over your head or you have eyes to see your children with. Or perhaps it’s that you started your day with a warm cup of tea and have something to eat in your cupboard. The items on your list don’t need to be any more complicated than that. In fact, the most basic things are often the most powerful. Imagine what life would be like if you didn’t have them.

Your list might also include some of the simple daily events that we so often overlook because we take them for granted – yet if they were suddenly to disappear we’d be lost.

Keep writing until you’ve got ten. If you’ve got more than ten, that’s great too – you can keep writing until the flow naturally stops. Now read it back to yourself, or, for maximum effect, read it aloud and say, ‘Thank you for …’ each item on the list. It will likely feel awkward at the beginning, but the more often you do it, the easier it will get.

Gratitude lists will become a staple of your new life. We suggest writing a list daily while working through the remaining chapters. After that, it’s up to you, but it’s very possible you won’t want to stop.

What you’ll discover is that as you list the many little things for which you’re grateful, the picture you have of your life starts to change. Behind the gloom, a more positive image starts to emerge. One that is tender and full of wonder. One that existed the whole time, just beneath the surface. We’re not deceiving ourselves; we’re simply joining a different set of dots.

‘Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.’

MELODY BEATTIE

Gratitude is infectious. It creates its own virtuous circle. The more grateful you feel, the more you’ll have to be grateful for. Knowing that you’ll need to come up with a list of positive experiences each day means you’ll start to become more aware of them. When you’re on the lookout, miraculously they start to appear far more often.

It is as if your mind is a magnifying glass expanding whatever you choose to focus on. Suddenly you become aware of sources of gratitude that you’ve never noticed before. A fellow train passenger’s smile; the friend who’s agreed to mind your child for an hour to give you a much-needed break; the first shoots of spring pushing their way through the cold earth; the warmth of the bathwater we sink into at the end of a tiring day.

‘Thank you is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.’

ALICE WALKER

As the picture you paint of your life starts to change each day, miraculously so too does how you feel about your life. The situations you find yourself in somehow no longer seem so bad. There is some good in almost everything you discover.

And before long, other people start to notice the difference in you and in turn you’ll find that they are warmer and friendlier to you. This is the magic multiplier effect.

When you practise gratitude, you exercise a spiritual muscle. Ever wondered why some people seem to be cheerful no matter what is happening around them? It’s because of their attitude. Everything that you add to your list and every ‘thank you’ that you think or utter aloud changes your attitude. It has a profound impact on your mindset and, as a consequence, on your life and the people in it.

Gratitude can also be used as a shield to ward off negativity – either your own or other people’s. As you become more positive, those around you – whether they are colleagues, friends or family – may become confused. They may be so used to you despairing or complaining about your lot that they’re thrown and don’t know how to react to your new, more positive outlook. They may invite you to pick up your list of woes again. Try your very best to resist. Whatever you focus on grows, so keep your focus firmly on the good in your day.

Like any exercise, the more you practise the easier it gets. Before long you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

TIP: Keep a small notebook or space in your journal for your gratitude list. Experiment with what time of day you write it. Use it as a spiritual remedy to either kick-start your day or get a restful night’s sleep. And you can always refer to it halfway through your day if you need an instant hit of positivity.

I was very depressed when I first started this practice. I did it to people-please – as someone had told me to – not because I thought it would work. To my cynical intellect it seemed trite and insincere. For the first few days I struggled to find anything I felt grateful for. But somehow each day it got easier and now my list is so full of wonderful things that if I do it too late at night it can keep me awake through excitement. The more good I see in my life, the more good seems to come.

JN

I know it seems absolutely ludicrous with everything that I have that is good in my life, but I have a habit of complaining. I can’t believe I’m admitting that, but it’s true. I go through stages where I forbid myself to complain. The minute a negative thought is about to leave my lips, I force myself to say the opposite. ‘Thank you for getting me here safely,’ as opposed to ‘Oh my God, the traffic!’ The difference it makes in my life is huge. And yet before long, there I am again finding ways to complain through humour or storytelling. Obviously sometimes this has got to be OK – to find humour in the ridiculous – but I have to stay vigilant to make sure that it isn’t just another excuse to talk about what’s wrong as opposed to what’s right in my life. The more I keep up my gratitude lists the less likely I am to complain in a day; it’s as simple as that.

GA

Reflection

‘Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.’

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

It only takes a miniscule turn of the steering wheel to change the direction of an ocean liner. When I’m off-kilter or worrying about what I haven’t got, I use gratitude to redirect myself. It usually only takes a moment of pausing and thinking of something I have to be thankful for to get back on track. Whatever I focus on grows, so I make sure that I keep my gaze on what is good so that I can open myself up to joy.

Action: Today I will notice all the nice things that happen and I will say thank you.

Affirmation: I am lucky and I am blessed. My life is full of wonder.