Power in Gratitude

First: update on the 'Say it Out Loud' challenge: it's going really well! I have managed to tell someone every day since I began, and I feel great about it. I called my sister just to say "I love you" and she said it made her day just to hear it. That small act of reaching out reflected back and felt great. It's been much the same with everyone I've shown my love to. So, if you didn't take up the challenge last time, I recommend taking it now. I think I'm going to expand it into a daily practice.

Ok, now that's been done, on to my new topic, the power of gratitude. There's a reason that giving thanks is a part of every major religion, and there's a reason it makes your life better: it changes your attitude. It's all there in the word itself: gratitude. When you feel grateful for something, you think about it differently, cherish it, respect it, use it appropriately, and you behave differently towards it. Giving thanks, genuine, sincere thanks, brings loving reverent energy into your life. If there's one thing that can give you an instant attitude adjustment and mood boost, it's realizing how many wonderful things you have going for you and being grateful. And if you haven't figured it out by now, the nicest, most important thing you can do for yourself, is to stop the negative thought loops in your existence and replace them with positive ones.

This isn't about lying to yourself or "making lemonade" it's about choosing to focus on what's going right more than you focus of what's going wrong; it's about taking responsibility for your life and your feelings and either accepting things that are out of your control, or taking action to change them. Practicing gratitude is an excellent way to re-frame negativity. Don't like your roommate? Thank them for challenging your patience. Don't like your body? Thank it for all the things it CAN do: read this blog, let you enjoy the world through your senses, give you a home base for all your brainy endeavors, whatever.

Letting go of conflict with your world is in your power. It isn't about throwing up your hand in defeat, it's about engaging with the world AS IT IS, and making things better MOMENT BY MOMENT. There is a place for conflict, but it shouldn't be the focus of your whole life. Gratitude is one step you can take to change both your world and yourself for the better.

Try this: close your eyes, and picture something that makes you really happy, maybe a person, a place, a pet, a memory. Think about it really hard. Feel all the good things that come up. Send it gratitude. Now, think of someone you know who you aren't so close with, and send them gratitude, love, good wishes for health, etc. Then, think of someone or something that is causing you pain, frustration, someone you don't get along with. Try sending them love, thank them for the challenges they represent for you, thank them for giving you a place to grow.

If you do this with intention, it just might change how you see that person, that conflict, and that negativity. Giving thanks for your challenges is just as important as giving thanks for the things that bring you joy.

Thank you, reader. You're enriching my life!

Say it out loud!

My resolution for the new year was to "love more deeply and freely myself and others" and I've been thinking this past week, as we creep up on Valentine's Day, about how to make measurable progress on this particular goal. Supposedly tomorrow is the day when people declare their love for each other and somehow rainbows and magic springs forth forever. But what if we always told the people in our lives how much we love and appreciate them? What if instead of 'love' being a word heavily associated with romance and sex it was actually a word expressing meaningful connection between people. Totally revolutionary, right? It might mean that you've been saying it to people you don't really know well enough to love, which might be a painful realization, but it's also likely that there are people you love who don't know it because you've never said it.

Anyway, I think sometimes we forget the healing power of love and of expressing love to the world around you. It feels really good to love someone/something, and it feels even better to let those people know they are loved. So this post is a challenge to you and to me: tell someone you love them, tell at least one person you love that you haven't told yet, and tell someone you love them every day for the rest of the month, and see if that doesn't make your life just a little bit richer!

Do Something Nice For Someone Else

Yes, yes, a cheap play on the title of the blog. But seriously, everyone knows it feels good to be nice to people, do nice things, go a little out of your way for someone else. It doesn't have to be big, even letting someone ahead of you in line, or sending a short email to a friend you have been meaning to catch up with can make your day. A friend of mine recently moved and I knew this person was moving on the first of the month, so I sent them a text wishing them a happy first day in their new place, and you know what? Even that seven-word text made me feel good. Well, maybe it was also the bike ride and the coffee, but still. . . .

Criteria for measuring your nice-to-others doings:

1. Do you enjoy doing it?

2. Is is fun, kind, interesting, or helpful to the other person?

If you answered yes to both these questions, you're a master of do-gooding. Stop reading lest you be bored. If you answered no to one or both of them, consider doing something else, and please read on.

It's common knowledge that it feels good to make other people feel good. That's the nature of being social creatures : people need to interact positively with other people (even independent introverts like myself). One of my favorite ways of getting out of the downward spiral funk is to immerse myself in doing something nice for someone else. Maybe I make a phone call, maybe I write a letter, maybe I bake cookies and surprise someone, it doesn't really matter as long as I actually get off my ass and do it. Works like a charm, too!

Being nice to people does have its pitfalls though, like:

Expecting others to notice and praise you for your consideration. Just don't do this, it makes you seem like an ass. If you can't give joyfully and without expectation, you should probably try to feel good some other way, like, for instance, masturbating. You want a pat on the butt, join a sports team.

Giving too much. This can be hard to avoid if you're naturally a people-pleaser. Set reasonable expectations about your own time and obligations, and DON'T COMMIT to more than you can handle stress-free. The point is to do somehting nice for someone, not to make yourself into a martyr or make the person feel guilty about being a burden to you.

Believing that being nice to people can lead to being a pushover. FALSE: doing nice things for people doesn't mean trampling over your own needs, quite the contrary. It is absolutely essential that you be assertive and clear about what your boundaries are, and only do things that affirm your own self-love. It's absolutely ok to say no. If someone tries to guilt you into a favor, it's not freely given or joyful for you, which is the point here. Plus, that person is behaving in icky manipulative ways.

Story time: Once I was dating a person who had boundary issues. This person thought that because I was independent and liked to cuddle with people outside our relationship I was going to cheat and/or disappear. In trying to be 'nice' to this partner, I made an effort to keep them informed about my whereabouts and company and I agreed to stop cuddling with other people. The result was that I traded my own personal needs for a very temporary relief of jealousy, which returned shortly when I tried to spend more time alone. Honestly, I should have taken the whole thing as a red flag and dumped that human, but I was trying to be nice. If it weren't for the sex I probably would have. Moral of the story: being nice means doing things you really want to do for people, not doing things people guilt you into.

WARNING:

Doing nice stuff for people might become a habit. If this happens, don't panic, it probably means you've found something that makes you feel really good about yourself. This is a sure sign you should keep doing whatever it is as long as it remains sustainable for you to do so.