A Revolutionary Reframe Of Your Gratitude Practice

What if you were to give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that were going to happen? - And what if you used that question to reframe your gratitude practice into the future? In this session we contemplate this concept and suggest how it could be adapted to reduce anxiety and increase positivity and presence, both now and into the future.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the session.

I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable.

You can close down the eyes if you wish and take a deep slow breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.

In this session we are going to be working with gratitude but we're going to be working with it in a way that I've not yet seen expressed elsewhere.

Well it has been expressed elsewhere but we're going to reframe our gratitude as a future-based,

Anti-anxiety,

Anti-worry practice.

And the reframe is this,

Comes in the form of a question.

What if you gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

What if you gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

Let's just take a moment or two to just sit with the resonance of that question,

To consider what it evokes,

To allow it to wash over us and to bask in the possibility that it is awakening in us.

What if you were to give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

The truth is that every range of human experience is possible.

The good,

The bad,

The unknown.

And we have a tendency to try and grasp,

Try and crave for things,

Push other things away.

And that mental pushing and pulling,

That tension could be argued to be one of the fundamental causes of internal suffering.

Something happens,

Then we apply meaning to it,

Then we suffer.

Something else happens,

We apply meaning to it,

We feel joy.

This is the nature of the human experience,

Or at least the human experience prior to a meditation practice,

Prior to mindfulness,

Prior to introspection,

Prior to breathwork even.

What I want to suggest with this idea,

Giving thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen,

Is that we acknowledge that with or without that grasping,

With or without that pushing,

Good things will happen in our futures.

That's pretty much an undeniable fact,

Because we can parcel out what is constituted as wonderful or good,

Right down to something as small and free as sunshine,

Or the feel of rain on our skin,

Or seeing the beauty of a flower,

The smile of a child.

These are wonderful things that are going to happen in your life,

Things that you can cause to happen,

Like the taste of coffee in the morning,

The feelings of satiation after eating food.

These are all quite small things,

Yes,

But they are going to happen.

What if we were to bring our gratitude practice into the future,

Thanking the future for these small joys?

What would that cause us to do when they arise?

For me,

It's the idea of being fully present for them.

If my children,

My partner,

My friends or family are around me,

That's a joy,

That's a wonderful thing,

And I want to be there for them,

Because I've already given thanks for this moment,

And now it's here.

It brings me into the moment with them,

Makes me want to live it fully,

And of course there will be bigger things,

Bigger wins,

Bigger successes that will arise over time,

Moving forward.

We may not know exactly how or when or where those big wins will come,

But they will,

And the way you know this is that you have had you have had big good things happen in the past,

But once again,

Were you present for them?

Were you feeling them as they arose?

Were you able to bask in the joy they evoked?

Was there a part of you that instantly,

Reactively even,

Accepted it and moved on?

We have an amazing ability to adapt to good things,

The presence of running water,

Electricity,

Machines that can clean our dishes and our clothes,

Cook our food,

Clean the house,

Mow the lawn,

Drive us to work.

All of these things are taken for granted,

And until they disappear,

It's just seen as an aspect of life,

Something as ubiquitous as the weather.

But really,

Almost everything in modern day life is tremendously,

Almost ridiculously unheard of.

There's a quote that suggests that if technology advances enough,

It seems like magic,

And it can almost feel that way.

Without the technological knowledge of how the device you're using picks up the signals to be able to hear my voice right now,

You could almost reframe this experience as telepathy.

Now,

This is an interesting concept to consider,

But within this context,

You know,

A wonderful thing that will happen,

Perhaps,

Is that you communicate with someone digitally today.

That really is a wonderful thing when you strip it back 20,

30,

50 years in the past,

A hundred years in the past,

A thousand years in the past,

And our ability to connect and grow and learn was significantly stripped back.

What if we were to give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

What if we were to give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

This idea,

This giving thanks in advance,

Is an acknowledgement that good things will arise,

Despite the bad.

When a human thinks of the future,

They often think of the negative.

We are primed to do so.

We've evolved to do so.

It's a biological incentive to look out for danger and to preemptively address it if we want to survive.

But unfortunately,

That can make us quite anxious,

Quite nervous,

Quite neurotic,

Because there is an infinite number of things that could go wrong.

And once again,

The dark side of the communication technology we have is we are exposed to different things happening around the world all of the time.

This is known,

But we can combat that.

We can plant a point of focus into the future.

We can give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen,

The things we know that are going to happen,

As well as putting a flag in the ground to be aware,

To be appreciative,

And to be mindful,

To be present for the good things that arise spontaneously,

That just occur,

Because wonderful things will happen in the future.

And if you are so caught up in that anxiety,

And the rumination,

And the worry,

And all of these things,

You will miss those moments,

And the entirety of your future that you experience in the now will itself just be seen as a wall of sorrow.

But what if you gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen now?

Then when they do arise,

You are there and ready to receive them.

So you've been invited to a party,

A social gathering,

A wedding.

There is anxiety around that.

There's awkwardness,

There's annoyance,

There's confusion,

There's obligation.

But what about the wonderful things that are going to happen?

The joy,

The love,

The experience,

The festivities,

All of those things.

Can you sit in that space?

Okay,

There's a chance you've lost your job,

Or that you will,

But you will find a space moving forward where you will have another job that will bring you a different sort of joy,

New people to connect with,

New challenges to achieve.

Can you sit in that space?

So when it comes,

You're not only just processing the stress of life,

But you're feeling the joy as well.

What if you give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

Yes,

People will pass,

And get sick,

And leave.

But what about the people that are going to be there for you?

They're with you later today,

Tomorrow,

This month,

This year.

Can we give thanks in advance for those wonderful things?

So let's sit together in silence for a few minutes,

And just give thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen.

So,

You can take this practice in a few ways.

Repeating this guided meditation,

Sitting and evoking to yourself the question,

What if I gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?

Or just sitting with the idea of gratitude into the future,

Either as a formal practice,

Or as a response to internal negativity and anxiety.

Something arises,

And then you replace that with the thought of positivity towards the future that will come.

And when things do arise,

Remember to take a pause,

To sit with it,

To be mindful,

To actually feel the good feelings before your brain bounces to the next thing.

So as we come to the end of this session,

I want to let you know that this concept,

This concept,

This question,

What if you gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen,

Was the first question that I used in my course,

Discover Your Divine Purpose,

Here on Insight Dharma.

We explore that question and nine others there,

As well as in the follow up course,

Questions to Heal Your Soul,

We do another 10 questions.

We contemplate them,

We introspect on them,

We allow them to unfold.

So if you resonated with this session,

I encourage you to check those out.

And I also encourage you to,

To sit in the knowledge that wonderful things are going to happen.

Reviews

As always, your meditation and insights are curious. Can’t say I’ve ever thought of doing gratitude forward. It’s a great concept, and I am going to implement it immediately. It does bring a measure of curiosity in that if we are being grateful for all the good things to come , are we assuming that everything that is to come is positive and good in our life? Or are we being grateful for everything? Curiosity my friend. Namaste 🙏