Healing Through Gratitude

Live Class Recording: Do you believe that being grateful is “hard” sometimes and somewhat delusional? If so, please join me and learn how gratitude transforms not just your mindset, but your relationship — creating space for more joy and connection.

Transcript

Healing through gratitude and I have the feeling that gratitude is currently a big word and it gets thrown around a lot and it's also part of my philosophy.

I created a philosophy.

These are the three things that I noticed in those 10 years that I'm working with clients one-on-one that gratitude is one of the things they are lacking in order to be satisfied with themselves and their relationship.

So it is a big thing but I feel like it's getting out of hand and I want to use this opportunity to narrow it down and simplify it.

So before I get to what can you do,

We start with how does it look like.

How does it look like when you don't show or have gratitude in your relationship with yourself or with your partner.

And number one,

The first example I have here is that you only see the flaws and you probably do that with yourself.

You do that with your partner and I would take a wild guess that you do that with everything and everyone around you.

Not constantly,

I'm not saying that but you do it in a more or less justifying way.

I had a client today and he said that he has a lot of worth and when we talked about self-worth that he has a lot of appreciation and worth towards that particular guy who organizes the rave nights here in Xinjiang.

And I said so what would you have for him if he wouldn't do that,

If he wouldn't organize them,

If he wouldn't achieve stuff.

And then he said yeah probably I wouldn't have that.

But because he had the achievement that was important to him,

He could have the worth and the appreciation for the other person.

So my go-to sentence is in almost every situation that the relationship you have with yourself is a reflection of the relationship you have with your partner.

So let that sink in.

So do you see only flaws in your partner or if you don't see any flaws,

Do they come with a justification?

Do they come with oh they have done that so now I am grateful,

Now they deserve my thank.

Answer that question for yourself.

The other example is that you don't have an eye for small joys.

So the little things in life and I call them little for me they are little or very normal.

It's the little thing that when I hold my favorite cup like yeah favorite cup amazing.

It's the little joys.

It's having that coffee in the morning and having those 30 minutes for myself without any time pressure,

Without anyone wanting anything from me,

Knowing that the dogs will be fine.

I can just sit there and enjoy the coffee.

It can also be that you go outside and you say wow the sun is shining,

It's beautiful.

But it's the little things that you don't have an eye for.

You're either not used to it which is most often the case that you're just not used to seeing them.

You might have tried to work on your gratitude and then you go around and then you find all these things you spot them everywhere.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah I see them.

But you probably haven't felt them so you didn't went into them like I feel that gratitude.

It was more a practice that hasn't become second nature which is okay.

That's totally fine.

So we're not here to judge or to put anyone down.

It's a progress.

It's a process.

Yeah we're all on this journey together and everyone is at a different stage.

But usually from my personal and private personal and professional experience there is no training.

There hasn't been this training to see and stay with those little joys in life.

And that you're taking your daily life for granted.

That you wake up,

That you have a shower,

That you go to work,

That you have lunch,

That you have dinner,

That your family is there,

That your car is working.

So you take all of that for granted.

And I was scrolling on social media.

There was this guy with that video and he said I'm giving you 10 million dollars now.

Would you like it?

Of course I would.

What's the catch?

And he said the catch is that you won't wake up tomorrow.

And I said okay no no no no thank you.

Don't want your money.

Don't want your money.

But what this shows is that taking daily life for granted.

We take it for granted that we wake up in the morning.

We take it for granted that we can breathe,

That we can digest,

That we can walk.

But we only get the reminder and feel the gratitude when we're about to get when it's about to get taken away from us.

Yeah so we need that reminder every now and again to hey take that daily life not for granted because it can be gone within seconds.

We all know that but we forget it.

We forget it so easily.

And that goes is the same with the relationship.

You get so used to it.

You take it for granted.

Your partner for granted.

There might not even be a thank you or please anymore.

And when you look at them it's like of course of course they are there.

And what that leads to when you only see the flaws.

When you lose your eye for the small things and when you take things people events for granted is there might be this constant unsatisfaction inside you and not just in your brain.

In your brain it usually comes out that you find the flaws like on everyone and everything that you take things personally.

That you love to jump into victimhood because you take things personally.

Because you don't feel that gratitude for yourself.

Hence it's hard for you to give it to others.

Only if they achieve something or whatever your measure of deserving thanks deserving gratitude what that is.

It's different for everyone.

And like I said with my client for them it was that person that achieves something so he earns my gratitude.

If he wouldn't do it he wouldn't get the gratitude.

So think about what is your measure of when do people deserve gratitude?

When do you deserve gratitude?

And what it particularly does for your relationship is the emotional disconnect.

And when we talk about emotional disconnect when we talk about emotional what I talk about is it's the trust between you.

It's the knowing that you can be yourself.

It's the knowing that you can share your ideas and yeah they might look funny at you but they don't laugh at you.

They don't discredit you.

They listen and when you lose that or when you never had that it might be a reason because you don't see that gratitude.

And all of this it's mostly in your mind.

The emotional disconnect that's also the feeling how do you feel but it also comes down to your body.

Because when you are in a constant state of searching for the flaws,

Of moaning,

Being annoyed,

Being in victimhood that's a lot of pressure for your body.

And that's in the long run it's not good.

It's not good and it's not news that I'm telling you here.

We all know that.

You know that.

I know that it doesn't it's not helpful when your body and your mind are in constant stress.

So that leads us to the big question what do we do?

How do we heal through gratitude?

And I had a little search around for a definition for gratitude and what I found is gratitude is the application of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself.

So I repeat the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself.

Now we have here a variety of speculations on offer because what it tells me is that appreciation everyone appreciates different things to a different level at different moments.

And then valuable and meaningful again these are words that are so different for every single one of us.

And the word oneself means to you yeah whatever that means to you.

So in general you could say it's really up to you.

You can be thankful,

Grateful,

Show appreciation,

Feel appreciation for anything and everything.

No limits and no rules.

That's the beauty.

And now I've also written down my personal definition of gratitude and how I teach it to my clients and to my students.

So my definition is to see what's around me and within me and acknowledge its presence.

And what that means and I want to be very clear because I believe it's very very important that we know that appreciation,

Valuable,

Meaningful,

Acknowledging its presence.

There is no good,

There is no bad.

It's a neutral.

And that's what I like to convey to you.

Look at it as a neutral.

It's neutral.

It doesn't have to be good.

It doesn't have to be bad.

It's the meaning that you want to give it and I want to encourage you to make it neutral.

And yeah here neither good neither bad just neutral.

And you might also know it in this moment of awe.

Yeah there were studies made with people over 70s and they had all this very similar health conditions,

Mental conditions and circumstances.

And they sent half of the people,

I think there were about 40 or 50 in total,

Half of the people they sent into the woods and said look around you.

Look around you what you see.

How do the leaves look like?

How does the ground look like?

How do the trees look like?

Just look at what's around you.

Acknowledge its presence.

And the other part of the group they just send in.

Like just go through the woods.

And they did this now for I think the first time they came back was after two weeks.

And what they found is that mentally and physically the group that went into the woods with these acknowledging the presence and had these moments of awe.

Like wow look at the leaves.

Wow the grass is gone.

Significant improvement mentally and physically in comparison to the other group.

Just say so I want to show you with this that having that it's you don't have to walk around and just say I'm grateful for this.

I'm grateful for that.

I have to find the positive in everything around me because that's not what gratitude is.

It is to acknowledge what is there and find the value in it.

You can also if I look around so maybe you can we can do it together.

Look around what's around you.

And what caught my eye immediately is like wow my windows are so dirty.

A moment of awe with something that isn't you wouldn't classify it as a good thing.

You would probably say that that's bad.

They are so dirty.

So without the gratitude it would be like oh my windows are so dirty.

They definitely need a cleaner.

Oh I need to call the cleaner.

Stress physically emotionally but with a moment of awe wow they are so dirty.

We just leave it.

It's just this acknowledging acknowledgement of what is.

And you can decide if you want to use it in a positive way or negative way if you want to give it the meaning or if you just take it on and say ah this is what it is interesting.

I like to say that a lot like interesting.

It's the same as oh wow oh I'm grateful for.

It doesn't matter the words you use.

It matters the acknowledgement.

The appreciation that that comes to your presence that you in that moment of time appreciate see it acknowledge it that what it's about.

It's not the words.

And with that I finish my lecture for today.