Gratitude
Welcome to ATTUNEMENT, my monthly blog!
Each month we “tune into” a theme related to mindfulness
and explore a creative practice and tune based on this theme!
This month of July we’re TUNING INTO the frequency of:
Gratitude.
I've been reflecting on the importance of Gratitude lately.
Even though I speak on this topic to organizations and groups, I admit that I've been known to roll my eyes when scrolling by social media posts that instruct me to "practice gratitude."
I know my kids have rolled their eyes when I've encouraged them to remember all they have to be thankful for in response to them sharing feelings of jealousy or sadness about something unpleasant that's happened.
I think it's all about timing.
There's certainly a lot of research telling us that gratitude is helpful to our bodies, minds, and hearts, but we don't need to will ourselves to be grateful or force-feed gratitude practices to others.
We need to give ourselves time to pause, breathe, and acknowledge what's happening in the present moment.
When we do this, we'll find that various aspects of our present-moment circumstances are somewhere on the spectrum of very pleasant to very unpleasant.
Once we're aware of each aspect of our experience and its associated feeling tone (i.e. pleasant, neutral, unpleasant), we're practicing mindfulness.
And I've found that from mindfulness comes gratitude.
Here's a recent example from my own life:
A couple days I was out in my backyard pulling some weeds when I felt a blistering pinch just below my eye. I screamed in shock and pain... I had been stung by a bee. I ran up to the house crying and banged on the back door; my hubby instantly realized what had happened and met me with an ice pack and a hug.
In that moment I was awake ONLY to the unpleasantness of the sting and the frustration I felt that my eye would undoubtedly puff up and look like I had been socked in the face (and indeed it did). I allowed myself to feel those feelings. In other words, I had a tantrum! I anger-cried like a child, then I whined, then I sulked. Finally I settled down and watched a TV show on my phone while sitting on my bed with the an ice pack resting on my eye.
By allowing myself time to feel my feelings, I eventually realized that there were actually pleasant aspects of my experience I hadn't noticed--the kindness and responsiveness of my husband, my daughter's caring, concerned reaction when she saw what happened, and the privilege of going inside my home to fix myself a glass of iced tea, watch TV on my phone, and have a hot shower.
Then I looked in the mirror after the shower, saw my puffy eye, and growled in frustration once more. Minutes later, a couple more grateful realizations bubbled up; I was fortunate to have access to antihistamine meds and tylenol, and I still had two working eyes (on my body of fully-functioning organs!).
I know we can't all go around throwing tantrums when things don't go our way (although some former presidents--I won't name names--may disagree!). Our actions do have an effect on others, and we need to take responsibility for them.
But I think there's a middle way.
We can feel our feelings instead of stuffing them down or telling ourselves to "just think positive". And we can help those around us feel safe enough to feel their feelings instead of encouraging them to "being grateful" right away.
When we make room for the totality of our present moment experiences, we allow ourselves and others the time and space to feel both the unpleasant aspects AND the neutral and pleasant aspects. With more time and space comes greater insight and perspective-shifting, and gratitude tends to come online in its own time.
I said before that "from mindfulness comes gratitude," but the reverse is also true: From gratitude comes mindfulness. Meaning, when we proactively choose to focus on what we're grateful for in this moment, that engenders mindfulness! These two qualities are interconnected.
If you'd like a proactive way to practice gratitude (which is also a mindfulness practice), see below. Note: If the below suggestion makes you want to roll your eyes, feel free to ignore it :) Or just try it for a few days and see what happens... again, only if YOU want to!
Creative Mindfulness Practice: Quick List Activity
Write down three things you're grateful for IN THIS MOMENT. Feel free to add a drawing, painting, collage, or poem to illustrate these things.
Tip: Try to be specific and detailed as much as possible. Meaning, instead of writing, "The sun is out," you might write "I am grateful for the warm sun shining in the blue sky on this beautiful summer day." Or instead of writing "My dog," you could say, "I'm thankful for the comfort and unconditional love my dog provides as he nuzzles his nose on my lap while I'm curled up on the couch."
"Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we...allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world."
Pema Chodron
This Month's Tune
Each month I’ll share a tune that resonates with the newsletter theme.
For our July theme of GRATITUDE I’ve chosen "Beautiful Days" by Satsang. Listen to it on Spotify here or watch the live session video below.
