How Gratitude Can Preserve Your Joy

Keeping a gratitude journal and practice has helped me maintain a joyful spirit despite challenging situations and toxic people in my environment.

This blog is about stacking conditions under your favor with a practice that can be difficult initially and then automated by the end of the season.

When I started a gratitude journal, I experienced a paradigm shift in my marriage that rippled and affected my business and lifestyle. When you begin a gratitude practice, you realize it is a search for truth. To find truth in what you see in the negative situation about yourself. Finding the good is far opposite from “being positive.” On the contrary, I find myself and other people who quickly brush off their feelings to “I need to be more like Jesus” or “I need to be the better person,” numbing their opportunity for intimacy.

Healing can take time.

A new practice and habit also take time. We learn more about ourselves and our patterns in the process or journey. Discovering who we are in those painful moments of anger and blame-shifting on our partner can help you heal. In the process of finding and writing our gratitude, we begin building a vault. I used the word vault because it influences an image of securing treasure and value. Keyword, “Secure.”

It goes both ways

You can start a critical practice which then becomes a habit of yours. And what you’re “securing” is a mindset that quickly blames your partner, which can lead to bitterness, ungratefulness, and resentment. As I often mention in my blogs, words influence our feelings and the images we create for ourselves. In the midterm, these words turn into our stories. In the long term, the stories become our reality. And reality is what we make of it regardless of evidence, truth, or encouragement. For example, if you believe you’re fat, no trainer or partner can tell you the opposite.

What I am writing for you and me today, it’s how real our daily thoughts and actions can “secure” the outcome of our perspective. What we say to ourselves is as real as daily bread (sorry keto peeps, you know bread is delicious). So if anyone promises you a healing method you only do once, and you’re healed, or saved, think again. I get it; I’ve been guilty of saying and believing in ONE way, which society grooms us to think.

I prefer to continue to work the land.

The land is my mind, heart, and soul. If we continue to withdraw from our account without depositing, we will run out of money. So I work to deposit into my gratitude vault in writing because I get to read and share it aloud. A gratitude journal and practice stacks conditions in my favor because it preserves my joy in who I am. In a recent blog, I shared about affirmations with the word “learning”; the same is what we write as our gratitude practice. 

“I’m learning to be more grateful to my partner.”

That’s a great start and way better than, “he’s such an idiot!” or whatever you say. You keep going by asking better questions about yourself. For example, what did I learn today? “Today, I learned I get loud when angry, which shoots him down. Dag, I’m glad he doesn’t yell back at me. That would be an awful memory of my parents. I’m grateful he stays calm when we argue.” 

A gratitude practice is being proactive about my patterns vs. reactive about my triggers. 

Do you see how statements like “I need to be like Jesus” or “I need to be the bigger person” enables you to process? I’m learning that those statements are forced after being triggered because they react to the situation or circumstance. When I process my feelings with the tool of gratitude in mind, I am being proactive in learning my patterns. So with the example above, who said yelling is okay? Especially when you know your partner stays quiet because his father always yelled at him, and he swore not to lose his temper.

Gratitude is a choice.

The practice of gratitude, which is writing your appreciation on paper, is a choice. You get to read it back. You are gathering information, which gives you a better perspective. Writing this blog makes me even more grateful for Jimmy’s vulnerability in sharing a childhood memory encouraging intimacy. The other choice is to remain critical and point the finger, which creates a lack of trust and separation at the end of the day. Choose your vault.

Start today

And please stay away from “I’m grateful for ____” as your beginning point. Start with “Today I notice ___” or “I’m learning that ____” If you’re anything like me, when you’re upset and angry, and someone asks, what are you grateful for? You get even mad, and the response can be - NADA!! (Nothing) So use words that encourage curiosity, such as “notice” and “learning.”

Friend, I want to hear from you! What came up for you when you went through your gratitude practice? If you want more blogs like this one, let me know in the comments below. I’m going to be making a video soon.

As always, please share this blog with a friend and on social media with #ysuperstarsblog

Love,

Me.