Gratitude

The importance of practicing daily gratitude.  Training your mind to see the good things is especially necessary when going through a dark season and negative things are shouting for your attention

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast, Working on Amazing.

As I said before, this podcast is specifically designed for women who are going through a divorce, going through a breakup, have lost their main person in their life, and you feel like you're starting over midlife.

If that's you, you're in the right place. You are not alone, and you're so welcome here. Now, like I said before, each of our episodes will fall under one of five main categories, right?

So we had spiritual health, mental health, physical health, financial health, and growth and goals. So today's episode, we're going to focus on the mental health aspect, and we're going to be talking about gratitude.

Gratitude is one of my favorite topics. I really, it has made such a huge impact in my life, and I'm really excited to share it with you.

And while I know that it is so deceptively simple, we hear about gratitude because we have this national holiday called Thanksgiving, which is great, right? We have a holiday where we are thankful as a nation.

We set aside, however, somehow, maybe that numbs us to how precious gratitude is. Maybe because I'm not sure. And I think when you live life day in and day out, it's easy to become numb.

You have to choose gratitude. But let's really talk about the daily practice of gratitude. Not once a year, not I'm just thankful, but really focusing on making it a priority and folding it into our daily lives and our daily routine.

It makes such an impact and such a difference. It made a massive difference in my life. And it's slow.

It's not like a light switch. Oh, I practice gratitude. Now my life is suddenly better.

It just slowly changes the trajectory of your thoughts. It slowly curves that back in a much better direction. So I'll tell you a little bit about my personal journey with gratitude.

I probably was just moving along through life. Yes, I'm thankful, but it wasn't necessarily a focus. And then I heard somebody talk about it probably 18 years ago.

It's about 18 years ago. And this man talked about gratitude. And it really just resonated with me.

I thought, I need to practice that. I need to really absorb and take in and do what this man is talking about. Because at that time in my life, I was a very young mother.

I had a three-year-old and a three-month-old. And we had just moved. And it wasn't a good move, if that makes sense.

Sometimes you move because it's, yay, we found a better job and a better house. And sometimes you move because you have to and it's sad. And this was a because we had to kind of thing.

And in my marriage had all these stress fractures in it. And I felt like I was doing everything to hold it together and hold on and make it work. And like I said, you've got the hormones of being a young mother to like three months old.

I mean, that was a small baby. So I had moved cities. I had moved away from my family and my friends to a brand new place.

So I was not in a great space mentally. I wasn't super happy and excited with my life. It felt like kind of a dark season.

And so when I heard gratitude, I knew when this guy spoke about it, it was just like, I knew that that's what I needed to focus on now because it was so dark. And because it did feel like everything was ichy, I had to focus on the positive.

So what he talked about meant so much to me that I went out and bought a special journal. And I started writing down the things I was thankful for. And I numbered them.

So if you grew up, anything like me, which there are all kinds of different ways, but I grew up in the South, Southern Baptist. So we sing this song, Count Your Blessings, Name Them One by One.

If you're familiar with that, that's what I started to do. I started to write out, number one, I'm thankful for, number two, number three.

And it was just this big challenge to me that I wanted to come up with a thousand things that I was thankful for.

Because if I could find a thousand things when it felt like my world kind of fell apart a little bit, it just, things did not go the way I wanted them to.

If I could find a thousand things in the middle of that mess, then that would encourage me later on in life that I had things to be thankful for. So I wrote in that journal very diligently, it mattered to me.

And then probably about a year after that, I read a book by Ann Voskamp. I totally recommend her book, 1000 Gifts, and she articulates gratitude so much better than me and talks about the things you find to be thankful for as gifts, right?

Like that sunset, I'm thankful for that. That is a gift. Look at how beautiful that flower is.

That is a gift. Whatever it is, and it's like you're taking the time to be grateful for it, and treat it like a gift, a gift that this thing is there and it has made you smile or whatever.

So, gratitude impacted my life, and those two things, the person I heard speak, which started me on the journey of writing things down, and then reading that book, 1000 Gifts, just made me realize and solidified my head how important it was, not just

once a year, not just one month out of the year, but just this daily practice of gratitude to incorporate that into my life, to fold it in, to begin or end every day with at least three things that I was thankful for. And it really did, over time,

change my perspective. It truly does. So that, today, is my challenge to you. The challenge is find three things every day that you're thankful for and write them down.

You can write them in a pretty journal. I love journals and pretty pens, and all that just makes my girly heart happy. But if you don't have time for that, use the notes up on your phone.

It doesn't matter where you do it, but it does matter that you take the time to write it down. And this is another thing I want you to think about as we're finding three things each day that we're thankful for.

If it's the sunset, let's say, that was a gorgeous sunset. I'm thankful for that, so I'm going to write that down. I want you to, okay, you write, beautiful sunset.

But in your head, I want you to take a minute to think about why you are thankful for that. I am thankful because the sky is ever changing. It's never the same twice.

And I saw a glimpse of artwork that nobody else will ever see again, unless we took a picture of it. But changing, moving, amazing artwork. And I just got to see that in a snapshot in time.

And when I see the sky, and it's so vast, and it's so big, and it's so beautiful, and it stretches so far, it makes me feel small. But small in a good way. Like, there's so much more out there than me, and everything isn't dependent on me.

Sometimes I can feel overly responsible for things, and overly needing to fix things and do things. And when I feel small in the whole grand scheme of things, it kind of is comforting to me. So the sky can make me feel that way.

So when you take a minute to think about why you are thankful for that thing, maybe you don't want to write it all down, maybe you do. I love words, so sometimes, if I have the time, I write it down.

If I don't have the time, I might just write, I am thankful for the sunset. But I take the mental practice of taking the time to think, why am I thankful for that?

And the reason you do that is as you remind yourself why you are thankful for that, not just that you are thankful for it, but you remind yourself why you are thankful for it. It encourages yourself.

Inside, it reminds yourself that you have good things in your life.

Even right now, especially when it feels like you are going through a dark night of the soul, you have lost your person, you are going through a divorce, you are going through a breakup, it feels heavy and it feels dark.

And reminding yourself of what you have to be thankful for is encouraging yourself in your innermost being. In the center of who you are, you are encouraging yourself. Sometimes we have to be our own cheerleader, right?

Sometimes we are the cheerleader for our kids and other people around us, but we don't always have a cheerleader. This is one way that you can be your own cheerleader. And it's just reminding yourself of what you have to be thankful for, right?

And why you are thankful for it. And it's just a practice that helps encourage yourself, right? And when things are dark, and when you're in a tough season emotionally, it's more important than ever to focus on things that are good, right?

And things that we're thankful for, and things that we're happy, because it's so easy to see the negative when you're in a dark season. Am I right? I mean, like, the negative just jumps out and demands attention.

Can you believe they did that to me? I can't believe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The negative is like the squeaky wheel.

It just is going to demand your time. It's going to demand your attention. Gratitude, you have to focus on.

And so when you're in this negative season, you have all these demands of this negative injustice that's going on, right? You have to choose to balance it out with the positive and the gratitude.

And I felt like when I was going through my divorce in that really dark season where it just felt like everything was bad, it kind of felt like I was covered, and this is going to sound ridiculous, I was covered in flypaper emotionally. Sticky.

And anything and everything just kind of stuck to it, whether it was an interaction in a retail setting, somebody said something at work, whatever. I was so quick, everything stuck to me. So quick to say, oh my gosh, that was wrong.

I can't believe they did that. I'll tell you, when I went through my divorce, I was so just in a state of aggravation all the time that up until then, I had never used my car horn.

And my kids would joke with me about it because they were in the backseat, and I would be like, oh my gosh, that person cut me off. Or I can't believe they did that.

And my kids, when they were little, they would be like, use your horn, use your horn. And I was like, no, it's not that big of a deal. But then I went through my divorce and I was angry.

And for some reason, I started using my horn in excess, right? So there are not more bad drivers on the road suddenly. No, it was where I was.

It was my state of being, right? Everything that happened just stuck. And it was like wrong.

And I was just so prickly. So I used my horn all the time in excess to the point that the fuse broke on my horn and it stopped working. And I joked with my kids then that I was in horn time out.

And I could not use my horn anymore because I'd overused it. But it's just an example of how when we're in a dark season, everything makes us angry a little bit, right? Everything feels offensive.

Everything feels just aggravating. And that's understandable. And that is okay.

That's where you are, right? But as a practice of mental health, we have to actively choose to seek out the positive because the negative is right there in our face yelling at us. We know that.

So we're going to choose to seek out the positive and just try to balance it out, okay? And seeking out the positive and looking for things to be thankful for and looking for the blessings and looking for the gifts every day that are there.

It's almost exactly like the way I was when I was driving. There weren't suddenly more bad drivers on the road. It was my perspective shifted.

I was in a bad mood, and suddenly I was just angry at everything, right? Well, when you start focusing on gratitude, the opposite happens. It's not that suddenly there are more things to be thankful for.

It's not suddenly that all these great things are happening to you. Now you see them. Now you make space and time and are aware of them.

The world did not magically change. Your view of it changed. What you chose to focus on changed, and that makes all the difference, right?

So as you're writing these things down, I will tell you, the first couple days are going to be pretty easy. You're going to write things like, I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful that I have a roof over my head.

I'm thankful that I have food to eat. That's great. Please write those down.

Those are huge things to be thankful for that other people in other parts of the world may not have. Yes, we are very thankful for those things. But as the days go on, you're going to have to start looking for other things, right?

And then it gets a little bit challenging when you don't have those first few things to check off the list. What do you write then? Well, that's when you need to start looking.

That's when you say, oh, my word, I caught the green light today. I normally stop at this red light, and it takes forever, but it was green today. Yay.

And then you're going to say, Tiffany, that is ridiculous. I'm going to write down that I'm thankful for a green light, and I'm going to say yes. Yes, write down that you're thankful for a green light.

I know it's simple. It is so trivial that we don't even notice it. Start noticing the little things.

There are red letter, big, huge things that happen. Yes, you have children that you love. Yes, you have a house.

Some days it might be that you got a promotion or a bonus at work. It could be that you paid off the car this month. Big things happen.

That's great. But focusing on the little things is important too. Focusing on things like catching the green light makes me think of pennies.

Is it worth it to stoop down and pick up a penny? Most people say no. But what happens when you have one of those big five-gallon jars full of pennies?

How much is that worth? Right? And so when you pick up all these little small things, somebody at the store, a random stranger, gave me a compliment.

We pick up all these little things and we say, I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for that. And we have this whole jar full of gratitude.

And some of them are little things. Some of them are big things. But that insulates us and helps buoy us when we have a bad day.

And I feel like when you're going through a rough season, you've gone going through a divorce, you're going through a breakup, you're going through a loss, it feels like you're in an ocean. And you're just fighting to stay above the waves, right?

And the gratitude, it's just like a little bit adding inflation to your life vest. It's helping you stay, keep your nose above the water. It doesn't solve the problem.

It doesn't take you out of the sea, but it helps lift you up until you make it to the other side and you get back on land again, right? Because we're going through the season and the emotions are just like waves. It really feels that way.

And eventually we make it to the other side and we can stand on our feet and hopefully we'll carry gratitude with us then. But even now, it's so important because it, like I said, it's like giving you air in that life vest.

It's just helping keep you afloat. It helps remind you it's not so bad, because our emotions can lie to us and play tricks on us. And it's so easy to sink under the water.

This bad thing happened, this bad thing happened, and they start piling up. And we have to make ourself. It's like mental exercises.

And exercises aren't fun, you know? Your muscles hurt, you kind of got to make yourself do it. But the end result is worth it, right?

You stay in shape, you feel good, you feel strong. This is a mental exercise, so it kind of feels weird at first, doesn't feel natural, that's okay. But the end result is worth it.

Just remind yourself of all the things that you have to be grateful for. Big, big things like, oh my gosh, my children, little things, I caught the green light. And once again, wax poetic.

In your heart, why are you grateful that you caught the green light? Like, let's expand on that.

Well, I'm grateful that I caught the green light because I got to work a little bit early, I was able to get my coffee and sit at my desk and just take a moment before I started my day. Like, whatever it is, like, just take a moment.

The random stranger gave me a compliment while I was at the store, and it reminded me that good people are still out there. It made me smile. I was like, yeah, I do like this shirt.

It encouraged me. It brought light and joy into my life. Whatever the thing is that you're grateful for, remember in your head, take a minute to watch Poetic About It, to come up with why you are grateful for that.

Not just that you're grateful, but why you are grateful. It's so encouraging. It takes time.

It really does. But my challenge to you is write three things a day that you're grateful for and try it for at least a month. Now, do you want to do it in the morning or do you want to do it at night?

That's up to you. And I would say on your hardest days, if you're really having a bad day, maybe you had to... Something triggered you.

Something just really... Maybe it was an interaction with your ex or you saw something or something came up that really just made it hard. And those days happen, right?

On those days, challenge yourself to write five things you're thankful for. Because on the hardest days, we need gratitude the most. On those days, it really is more of a lifeline than you realize.

Just take the time, take the exercise. I kind of think it's like vitamins. It's vitamins for your soul.

We take vitamins for our body and our physical health. Gratitude is one of those sayings that is like a vitamin for your mental health.

When my kids were little in elementary, middle school, even some when they were in high school, I learned that at the beginning of the year, they were more likely to get sick, that when school first started and they were re-exposed to a classroom

full of germs, they were more likely to end up coming down with something in the first couple weeks to a month of school starting. So what I started doing is I would get a bottle of these elderberry gummies, because elderberry is supposed to boost

your immune system. And every morning before we left the house, they got elderberry gummies.

It's like we got to boost your immune system, because I know that you're being exposed to all these germs and I'm trying to keep you from being sick, so we're taking the thing to help give you the immunity to block off getting sick, right?

Well, gratitude is like those elderberry gummies. It's going to give you some immunity. It's not going to prevent everything.

It's not a magic pill, but it does help you from sinking so bad, right? And just reminding yourself of how much there is. And, you know, recently I moved, and I found that journal that I had started 18 years ago.

And I had 2,587 things that I had written that I was thankful for. And it didn't encourage me. It really did.

I said at the time, if I can come up with a thousand things now, it will encourage me later on. And it truly, it did. And I looked back over it.

And I would encourage you to look back when you're struggling and read what you've written. It makes such a difference. And it's not easy.

Taking the time to say, this matters, I will be grateful. Taking the time to take a vitamin and say, this matters, I'm going to take these vitamins. It matters, but sometimes it doesn't feel completely natural.

It just, it's a new routine. It's a new thing to start. But it helps.

And I really feel like it's the most important when you're going through a difficult season, when you're going through a time that just feels overwhelming, right? And so many changes and so much injustice, and it just feels wrong.

That's the most important time to say, you know what, I'm going to focus on gratitude. And that's when it feels the most unnatural and the hardest, but that's when you get the biggest benefit from it. So that's what I encourage you to do today.

I encourage you to find the things you're thankful for. Look for little things and enjoy the big things. I mean, completely enjoy those big things when they come along.

That's awesome. That's amazing. High five.

That's great. But enjoy the little things, the simple things. A good cup of coffee, a good book, a walk outside, and remind yourself of why you're thankful for that and what that means to you.

And encourage yourself and see if it doesn't make an overall shift in your perspective over time. Daily practice. It's just kind of like vitamins.

If you don't take them every day, if you only take them once in a while, you're not going to notice the difference. But if you take them over time consistently, consistency is key. It makes a difference.

So that's what I encourage you to do today. That gratitude. Amazing.

I look forward to hearing your feedback and your comments about gratitude. I find it just one of the stealthy things. Everybody hears about gratitude, but it is deceptively simple.

So I hope that you come to love it the same way I do. I hope that it makes a difference in your life. Thank you for tuning in today, and we will see you next time.

Bye.