It’s
another new year. But just like any
other day or year, it arrives in a moment.
We can use this moment to approach the year with a grateful eye for all that we’ve been given.
I visited
an office, and a woman there who knew that my mother had passed away last year
immediately reassured me that this year was going to be a better one. We hugged and I was touched by this warm big-hearted person who was trying to make me feel better. The fact is though no one knows whether this
year is going to be better than last year.
What we do know is -- what we can do to make it better!
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| Drinking it in |
And one
way to enjoy the moment and the year is by growing our gratitude. If we paid close attention, we’d realize that
many things in our lives work out, fall into place, manifest, are realized, are enjoyed, function, turn on, and go smoothly. In other
words, more often than not things do go right for us. What blinds us to this fact, is our wish that
it should always and every single time go our way. Our tendency (negativity bias) is to focus on where we’ve failed
or how people and things have disappointed us. But only looking through the distorted lens of failure
or disappointment blinds us to how well things normally unfold.
In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, consider
experimenting with being grateful for the things that work out and for the
setbacks in your life. If we were to consider
just how much goes into each moment to help us function we’d be astounded. For instance:
right now I’m writing this article to share with you. I’m able to do
this with the help of a computer to capture my thoughts; the chair that helps
me sit upright to type; the home, provided by my husband’s job, in which I can
write; the food I ate to nourish my body and mind; the sun lighting up this
room; my cousin’s suggestion to write about gratitude and happiness; and the
list goes on. In any given moment, there’s
so much working to support us, and to help us be, experience, and participate. The desire to always have it be the same i.e.
everything always being as we wish it, causes us to overlook the contribution
and bounty right before our eyes.
Steps to Practicing Gratitude
The path
to growing our gratitude is through expanding our perspective and awareness. We do this by
paying attention. Noticing what’s happening in and around us and taking it all
in with the eyes of wonder. To actively
engage our curiosity we can ask ourselves these questions: “what are all the
things that are supporting me in this moment?” or “what am I receiving right
now?”
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| Appreciation |
Try not
to overlook the ordinary things. To illustrate: even a mundane activity like
making a cup of coffee requires the contribution of many energies and beings –
the coffee bean and grower, the soil the plant grew in, the water and sun, the
microbes in the ground, the store owner, the water company, the plumber who
laid the pipes in your home, the electricity to warm the water and so on. Through this kind of observation, we begin to
learn about interdependence and from it gratitude will begin to flow.
We can also practise gratitude by paying attention
to our feelings. The feelings we experience
when we are chilled and wrap a warm blanket around ourselves, or when a friend hugs
us in a difficult time, or the feel of cool grass under our feet on a hot day.
These experiences remind us of our ability to enjoy and receive. We’ll also begin to notice that, for many of
us, we tend to receive more than we give. This gentle nudge can move us to show more gratitude
to the people around us.
And as
hard as this may be to swallow, we can even learn to develop gratitude towards
unpleasant experiences, emotions and people.
Less than desirable situations
and emotions by their nature shake us out of our complacency. They throws us onto unfamiliar ground, which despite making us fractious and unhappy can also serve us. If we practice only being grateful for the things going right in our lives, we’ll
automatically disregard the value inherent in the encounters that challenge us. So be grateful to your friend who insists on
ripping the wool off your eyes, or the stab of fear you feel every time you
think of a undertaking a new experience, or when your colleague insists on something
that you disagree with.
These experiences are like a splash of cold
water – they can wake us up. They force
us out of our default operating mode, and try to broaden our perspective away
from “me and my desires” to a more expansive picture of the world and its
beings. In this light, we begin to recognize our interconnectedness with the world
around us, see our and others' contribution to our life experiences, and feel
empowered to contribute more to our and others enjoyment and happiness in life.
May you
experience many surprise moments of gratitude this year.
