Today I am talking about making room for gratitude.
And first I will briefly talk about why and then how.
So first,
Why would we even need to do this?
And like all mindfulness practices,
It is to correct an imbalance.
And to re-establish a more balanced view of life.
We have a very strong natural tendency to focus on what is bad,
What is dangerous,
What is a problem.
And to stay with that as opposed to what is good,
What is pleasant,
What is right in our lives.
When I put it this way,
It might seem totally weird and defective.
But if you think about it in terms of evolution,
It makes a lot of sense.
Think about those remote ancestors of ours walking in the wild.
If they didn't learn from experience about the dangers,
Then they probably would not survive.
Think about the phrase,
I've been burned.
You put your finger too close to a flame and it hurts.
And that memory lingers.
And so next time when you get close to a flame,
You are very careful.
You walk on ice and you slip and fall and the memory lingers.
And next time you walk on ice,
You are extra careful.
Even worrying,
Or at least the ancestor to worrying,
Has a high value.
If you are going to face a really tough situation,
One that you cannot really know for sure how it will turn out,
It makes a lot of sense to think about the possible things that may happen,
To plan for scenarios,
To rehearse.
That is really good worrying.
That is planning.
And it makes you ready for whatever happens.
All of this to say that our innate tendency to really remember what is bad and dwell on it has very powerful reasons to exist.
In fact,
We are here right now because these were powerful traits in our ancestors and they stayed with us.
Now,
Of course,
Those things that were wonderful ways to survive can have counterproductive uses in the way we live now.
For instance,
Our remote ancestors survived because they had a great capacity to store fat.
And that was wonderful at a time where food supplies were not always reliable.
So the ability to store fat in your body would enable you to survive.
In contemporary society,
For those of us who are lucky enough to not lack for food,
The capacity to store fat becomes a curse and we need to address it.
So,
Being mindful,
Being proactive,
Is to be aware of how our natural tendencies evolved from a set of circumstances which is no longer the way we live now.
And to have the intention to take corrective action in order to adapt better to the world we live in.
And so it goes for bad news and good news.
If we keep in mind that we have this built-in tendency to dwell on what is not working,
Then it gives us an incentive to take corrective action and spend more time intentionally on what is good.
Now,
This is not a neutral activity.
We're human beings and we're driven by emotions.
Just about everything we do has some sort of emotional value.
Some emotions are stronger than others,
Some are pretty mild,
But essentially we encounter the world through our emotions.
So,
When we're talking about things that are dangerous or problematic,
We have emotions such as fear that are very strong.
When we are talking about good things,
There's appreciation,
There's gratitude.
And that's why this talk is about gratitude.
It's not just a listing of what's good in our lives in order to have a columns of good and bad,
Pros and cons.
And so,
How do we make it possible for ourselves to enjoy that?
You notice I use the word enjoy.
I'm talking here about finding a mindfulness practice called a gratitude practice.
But I prefer to think of it in terms of making room and enjoyment rather than just emphasize the word practice because for some people the word practice implies effort and a sense of a grim determination to achieve a result.
And so,
Just think about what it's like when you're in an attitude of grim determination.
Your body is tense.
There is probably shallow breathing as opposed to deep relaxed breathing.
So,
That's really not something that is conducive to an experience of enjoyment.
So,
What we're talking about is something that's much more effortless.
It's creating the conditions that are going to be conducive to our relaxing into a sense of enjoying what is good for us.
And getting that natural sense of appreciation that comes from the relaxing into feeling that we're safe,
Good,
Feeling really good and letting a smile come up naturally from that sense of feeling safe and good.
And so,
We don't do that by forcing ourselves to list things that we should be grateful about.
But very gently we ask ourselves,
What is it that is working pretty well in my life right now?
It doesn't have to be earth shattering.
It can be very ordinary.
What is it that actually I'm pretty contented about?
To foster this attitude of gentle curiosity,
It's good to remind ourselves that we have a natural bias to focus and linger on what is not working well.
So,
We can remind ourselves,
Hey,
You know,
This is going to come up more naturally.
What's not good?
What's a problem?
So,
I expect it.
But I want to just gently push it aside,
Not negate it,
Not say it doesn't exist,
Not say there's nothing bad,
But simply curious to make room for the possibility that there is actually something good or even something not as bad in my life right now.
And so,
I'm inviting you to spend just a few minutes a day with that question.
Also remembering that you don't have to come up with something to be grateful about.
The idea of this practice is simply to give you a chance to make room for whatever comes up.
And so,
You will tell me,
Okay,
You do it,
You do it,
And nothing comes up.
What do you do?
Well,
Give it a few days,
Give it a week.
Spend a few minutes every day for a week.
And if you notice that nothing comes up at all that's even remotely okay,
Then I suggest for the following week you change your approach.
And this time your gentle curiosity is about what is it that I could do to make my life a little better today?
Again,
The key word here is gentle curiosity.
You don't have to come up with results,
And certainly the results don't have to be earth-shattering.
It can be little things.
This is just an opportunity for you to give yourself some time to pay attention to who you are and what you need.
It is possible that after doing this you come up with some things,
Maybe even very minor things,
And you follow these ideas and you actually say,
Oh wow,
Yeah,
This kind of works.
And then you have something to appreciate.
But let's say you spend a week asking yourself what could I do to make my life a little better,
And you can't come up with anything.
Okay,
So spend the following week back into the gentle curiosity about what is it that might be working well.
So in this case you will be coming off a week of asking yourself what could I do to make my life a little better,
And you don't find anything.
So does it mean that after all there is something that might be good?
Just check.
Give yourself some time to see if anything comes up.
Of course,
It is quite possible that nothing comes up that is positive,
And it is unfortunately possible that you might be having so many intractable problems that it is really impossible for you to feel any kind of gratitude.
So,
Yes,
Having a mindfulness practice is not a magical way to change life.
It is simply giving yourself a chance to see what it is that might be good,
Provided there is something.
For most people,
There can be something,
Even a tiny bit,
That is worth hanging on to in order to see the full picture and not just what goes badly.
In any case,
I believe you will find a great value in taking these few moments to pause with an attitude of gentle curiosity and take stock of who you are,
What you want,
And what you might be able to do about it.
So,
Make room for gratitude.
