joeylittle
Sponsor
A thing about gratitude, for anyone reading this and wanting to give it a try - as far as anyone who has studied this knows, there's no real difference between 'big' ones and 'small' ones, so long as you let yourself have them - and writing them down seems to (maybe) help them, slightly.
When I was introduced to this concept, I thought that it was not going to help me, because being grateful for bigger things ended up contributing to me thinking I was shitty for not being more aware of these things in the first place. As in - I have a job, I can be grateful for my job - well, of course, what kind of asshole am I, feeling badly for myself when I have a job, and a roof over my head, etc...
But, when it was reframed for me that gratitude can be small, it became very useful. Right at this moment, I am grateful for the coffee in my cup. I try and be diligent about writing down three of them a day, and usually do it at night because that's my hardest time, emotionally. They are hardly ever very big. But they are personal to me, and they remind me that there were a small, small number of things that I can think of that are good, to me.
You don't have to be grateful you have blood in your veins, basically. You can be grateful for the piece of tissue in your pocket that you could use to stop a paper cut from bleeding.
Every thought - large or small - contributes to shaping how we think. And when we need to build new ways of thinking, ways that are less self-destructive, these small, new, thoughts are very important - even though they may not seem so in the moment. For all they don't know about the brain, one thing they are fairly sure about is that how it is used shapes how it works.
When I was introduced to this concept, I thought that it was not going to help me, because being grateful for bigger things ended up contributing to me thinking I was shitty for not being more aware of these things in the first place. As in - I have a job, I can be grateful for my job - well, of course, what kind of asshole am I, feeling badly for myself when I have a job, and a roof over my head, etc...
But, when it was reframed for me that gratitude can be small, it became very useful. Right at this moment, I am grateful for the coffee in my cup. I try and be diligent about writing down three of them a day, and usually do it at night because that's my hardest time, emotionally. They are hardly ever very big. But they are personal to me, and they remind me that there were a small, small number of things that I can think of that are good, to me.
You don't have to be grateful you have blood in your veins, basically. You can be grateful for the piece of tissue in your pocket that you could use to stop a paper cut from bleeding.
Every thought - large or small - contributes to shaping how we think. And when we need to build new ways of thinking, ways that are less self-destructive, these small, new, thoughts are very important - even though they may not seem so in the moment. For all they don't know about the brain, one thing they are fairly sure about is that how it is used shapes how it works.
