Creating a Gratitude Practice
Recently I had a moment.
I was overcome with this feeling of how everything is right in my life. My home, my health, my kids, my love for myself, my love for others, my physical body, my abundance, my friends and family who completely support, love and encourage me.
How everything has worked out. It’s shocking. It’s shocking to sit here and say this.
because Years ago, I tried to offer gratitude and nothing worked.
It felt fake, inauthentic. Even though I had a home, friends, health, and love. I couldn’t see it because I wasn’t being true to myself.
So I had to Learn How to be grateful.
Try this exercise below.
Where does your eye go?
It’s like a circle with a part missing from it.
All you can focus on is that empty piece – the place where the lines should finish off the circle but it can’t, and you can’t figure out why. You know the space is there, but you just can’t quite figure out how to connect the lines together for the circle to be complete.
As you continue to do the work and try and finish off that circle - realistically, I’m not sure that it ever fully closes until we’re dead and the journey is over; but maybe the question is: how do we look at the opening?
In the Buddhist tradition, the circle is called an Enso - the opening signifies part of a greater good, where all things are impermanent and imperfect. How the self flows in and out while it stays centered. Once closed it implies permanence. Birth, death, rebirth.
Looking at the circle from the Buddhist eyes — how can you stay centered within the imperfection? Because, is everything perfect in my life? HELL NO.
And to be perfectly honest, two days before this gratitude fest?
I was crying because of how hard life seemed. Tomorrow? who knows… but I’m willing to be with all the emotions, even when I don’t want to be. I want to ride them out and feel them in order to get through them. Sometimes, someone is there to help talk me off the ledge, other times I talk to myself via tapping or writing, or sometimes it’s just a hot bath and an early night.
I am trying to choose how I want to be.
Do I get pissed at myself, or know that I could be doing more. Of course. But when I realize that, I try to return to being present in what’s here right now?
The work of Katie Byron can also be extremely helpful.
When you find yourself in a mind spiral, ask yourself these four questions of the belief/thoughts running through your head:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?
Once you get clear from those four questions, you can then create a new statement (affirmation?) that you choose to believe.
Let’s use my example of how I used these questions to dissect, how hard life is, right now:
Is it true? It feels pretty fucking true. I went through a separation in 2021 and have started the paperwork for divorce. Emotions are high for all parties and putting two teenager needs (wants? Emotional state? My guess?) first can be exhausting.
Can I absolutely know that it’s true? It’s a conversation for sure, but is anything collapsing in this moment? No. All are healthy and fine.
How do I react when I believe that thought? Emotionally. A feeling of lack of being able to control the situation or the parties outside of myself. Unsure of what the results will be. Fear of the unknown. Stuck in my own thoughts and fear spiral. Physically, sick to my stomach. Overwhelmed.
Who would I be without the thought? Present, kind, compassionate. Would still have the conversation but without adding on any elements that are not mine to own. Curious and thoughtful.
When I’m feeling like life is hard, how do I want to change the script?
Though I can not change anyone’s feelings, all I can do is be present, kind and compassionate. Hold my boundaries. And choose what is best for me and the highest good of my family.
By having the hard conversations and taking action - which for me, in this case, was asking for help from some friends, who fully showed up for me and shared their experiences and helped me to laugh and get to that clarity of “can I absolutely know that it’s true?”. I then able to shift to gratitude. Gratitude for all that I actually do have in the present moment.
If anyone were to walk around the corner the other morning during my gratitude practice, they would have seen me sitting in a chair, crying. Tears streamed down my face as I tapped on all the spots. Sometimes speaking in a whisper, mostly in my head.
Thanking myself - the god that is within me and all of us - for the beautiful life I have. For my home, my friends, even thanking money for helping me to create this life. For my trust and faith, my belief in the life that I created.
That I did this. I created this life.
Not by myself. We never do anything alone, but all the people all the mistakes, all the things, that helped me to get to this point.
I thanked myself for the hours that I have spent over the years; using tapping to release trauma and fears, writing in my journal, the meditations, breath work, shamans, trips, working through confrontations, therapy, masseuses, acupuncture, friends, all of it. That each time I went to something, I brought all of me – I brought the want to leave nothing on the table. I always want to understand, to feel, to get to the truth, the core, the depth of whatever I was meant to feel.
And sometimes it was easy. And sometimes it was so hard and what felt like soul crushing.
By no means am I done. After years of being the mediator, the optimist, putting others wants before my own. It’s still difficult for me to say what I want. To put myself out there vulnerably. But I am trying and I am a work in progress.
But I’m here. And I’m crying in gratitude. And after a (long) while of tapping, my thoughts started to shift to who I was 10 years ago.
In December of 2012, I was living in a foreign country (Quebec City) where I was unable to work. My daughter was just turning 3 and my son 6, when my husband lost his job. The rug was pulled out from underneath us – but it also wasn’t. My husband was an addict. I knew this, though I didn’t want to believe it.
In 2022, webster-dictionary just announced the most searched up word on the web was gaslighting. My sister told me this, and I know this word intimately. And if you have ever loved an addict, you probably do too.
Because they tell you what they think you want to hear. And you believe them, because you too want to believe it. Even when it’s crazy making, even when you think you are going nuts because you know that it’s not true, that something doesn’t add up or make sense. Everything they do is to make you believe that it is – because they need you to believe in them. They need to believe in themselves. So you do. Because that’s what you have always done.
Until you don’t. Until you start to learn to trust yourself.
But it still sometimes tears you apart. It makes you ten years later, question who you can trust, because you still aren’t so sure you can trust yourself.
But ten years ago, I held it together. I put our house up for sale, went out for breakfasts with friends, danced, laughed and acted like all the world would work out fine. Because it does and it did.
So I also cried for that girl. That girl who was so strong - who was doing everything in her power to get through that moment. I’m so proud of her - I’m so proud of me - I’m proud of us - I’m proud of my ex for choosing to get sober, for choosing our family .
I’m proud of where I am now.
Ten years later and I can say, we did this. You get through this and all you ever wanted to imagine in this life I have now. And here it is.
Here it is.
It’s not easy. No. There were many many many nights and days of doubt. But I didn't have a choice.
That circle’s opening was too glaring. Too much of my vital energy was pouring out of it, leaking in ways that I couldn’t see and couldn’t stop, but I could feel it.
All I could do was focus on me and those I love and the things I value. My soul, my light. Who I am meant to be. Because, I truly believe, each and every one of us has been put on this earth in order to fulfill a purpose. To go through trials and tribulations. The great heights of love and the deepest bottom of despair. To live. To feel. To be in a relationship with self and with others.
And I’m here for all of it.
Do I still have a wish list, desires of what can be better? Of course. I’m human, I’m growing. There is so much I still want for myself and my family. But I’m grateful for where we are today.
Recently, I was on a hike with my sister and she was telling me about an analogy she heard, of how life is like a piece of classical music; where the music lifts you up, builds to a crescendo and then gently brings you down, but it never really ends.
In a coaching session recently, I switched the analogy to EDM (electronic dance music). There is no start and no stop – especially if you have ever been to a Rave or a club that is EDM – it’s just relentless thumping, except for when you are in it, you can feel the ebbs, the flow, the tension, the release and then it starts all over again.
That’s how life is. One long EDM song or Beethoven that doesn’t end, but lets us ride on the crests, the waves, the swells, maybe even the tsunamis, but there always comes a time of rest, of calm. Of ease.
So wherever you are in your journey right now, I invite you to explore what’s going right… Maybe it’s a lot and maybe it’s just that you have a minute to yourself to read this. Even that is a win.
And if you can’t find the gratitude, if you are too deep in despair to not be able to see the light, know that you aren’t alone. Reach out and find your healing, find the people who will help you to trust yourself, reach out to me and I’m happy to have a conversation or put you in contact with others.
You are meant to be happy.
Really truly. And I promise it’s much better on this side.
Want to know more? Contact me to inquire about working together.
And if you’d like to schedule a 30 min call to gain clarity? You can do so here.