What Happens When We Make Gratitude Stickier?
In-Between Times Experiment #16
Hi, all,
Hope your Halloween was more treat than trick, and that you have a beautiful weekend planned!
November has arrived… The month, as we know it here in the United States, to be grateful.
If you’ve been reading along for awhile, you might remember I’ve got some issues with gratitude.
While I consider myself a gracious person, I don’t like being put on the spot by thankfulness bullies. Nothing makes me clam up more quickly than being cheerfully ordered to “Come up with 3 things to be grateful for!”
Ugh, now I have to think of something “original” to say! And of course, I need to be grateful for the best/right/most important things!
My friends, perfectionism runs deep and hits hard in this brain. Rationally, of course I know that practicing gratitude isn’t about being original or getting it “right.” It’s about gaining some much-needed perspective. When I’m able to let myself fully experience it, gratitude leaves me arm-in-arm with contentment—a feeling I crave daily.
A gratitude mindset can coax me into sitting back and taking in the abundant miracle of all that is, as opposed to my usual posture—constantly hunching forward, focused on fixing what isn’t.
The tricky thing is, in order for gratitude to give way to contentment, I’ve found I have really land in the feeling, letting it marinate for a few extra moments. A flip “gee, I’m so thankful” doesn’t get me the perspective shift I’m after.
It takes letting the grateful feeling linger over my heart a minute before it’s able to seep down and begin to peel away the voice that continuously whispers, “Never enough.”
This month my goal isn’t to be grateful for MORE things, but rather, to trick my brain into spending more time soaking up that feeling, to encourage my thank you’s to pool up until they overflow into contentment.
And, of course, making it a bit of a game might help me sidestep that perfectionistic pressure to be original or get gratefulness “right”!
So, here’s how I’ll be leveling up the “stickiness” of my gratitude this month (maybe you’d like to join me?):
Invisible People
Who are we grateful for in our lives? Can we stretch ourselves to be grateful for people we “forget” or maybe overlook? This month, I’m planning to spend time thinking about these “invisible people”—the ones I may never see or meet—who make my life more beautiful, more safe, or more interesting each day:
fellow drivers on the road making careful driving choices
the writers, directors, and camera operators bringing life-changing stories to podcasts and film and television
the workers who trim and clear the brush on the hillside I run each week that help prevent devastating future fires
I’m looking forward to time spent reflecting on the stamp so many unseen folks have had on my life.
Crafting a Gratitude Chain
So often it isn’t being grateful, but rather, staying grateful that’s hard. I’ve pretty much always got a complaint handy, ready to jump in and drag me back to negativity.
This month I’ll try prolonging my moments of gratitude by stretching one, single “thanks” into a chain of thank you’s.
Sometimes folks do this when they bless their food, thinking of the people and factors that are behind the food they see before them—the grocers, the farmers, the sun and critters in the soil, etc, that have enabled the food to get to their plate.
I tried this the other day when I it occurred to me to be grateful for shoelaces. I have no idea everything that goes into making shoelaces that keep my shoes comfortably on my feet, but my heart opened wider and wider as I cast my gratitude further and further—from the inventors, to the designers, factory workers, plastic chemists and cotton farmers that made it all happen.
Putting it On Repeat
Creating rituals can help us go deeper with our intentions. I don’t currently have a set gratitude ritual, so I’ll experiment this month to see what “sticks.” So far I’ve brainstormed Gratitude Dinners, Morning Appreciations over breakfast, and creating a gratitude playlist that will definitely include this song:
(Send me your ideas for any songs I should include, or gratitude rituals you like!)
Ultimately, the goal is just to get gratitude to linger long enough to let it go from something that’s up in my “head”—Intellectually I know I have a thing that is good—to something that lands more deeply in my heart.
Hey, wow. I don’t need to keep feeding the scarcity monster. There is so much loveliness already right here before me.1
And by “right here,” I mean you, who reads these words and keeps me company on this journey to learn how to live the in-between times of life with grace. For you, I’m truly grateful!