Tell me to be grateful one more time..

With personal growth becoming a maassive trend recently - well, actually a while now - there has been an abundance of advice being thrown out there. I'm one of those people who's all too eager to jump on the bandwagon, and to be truthful, most of them were pretty good. Most.  

 

One that I've always struggled with, however, is gratitude. And influencers in the wellness world just looove to use this word. 'Be grateful', 'have gratitude', etc. The general advice on this is to write down 3 things your grateful for daily every morning before you get out of bed. It sounds easy, should really take about 10 seconds.  

 

So I tried it.  

 

Holy shit, the stress it would induce.. "only three things??" , "omg I can't think even think of one", "am I not grateful for anything?", "am I ungrateful?" so  after about 10 minutes I'd give up and write something like "family, health, accidental vegan food" (moment of appreciation for Oreos) and it wouldn't really mean a lot to me. In fact it would start my day off with ridiculous levels of cortisol and an instant grump that hung around the rest of the day.  

 

So I gave up. 

 

But tonight, I found something I was truly grateful for, well, someone actually. Someone who I was holding a little resentment and anger towards, but after writing out everything I felt I had to say to this person, I realised a couple of things I've learnt from said ass person; that podcasts are an awesome way to learn both really random and really important things (I now know why Namibia is struggling so much economically, and so, so much about frogs); and also that I love to draw. 

 

Yes, these things might be a little trivial, and I probably would have figured them out eventually, but I like that now these little things have a bit of meaning to me - a bit of back story, if you will. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a little sour about it, but taking a moment to appreciate, and be grateful for learning these things helped me feel a little forgiveness, and find a bit of meaning as to why this person came into my life, however brief. 

 

 

So yeah,  I do think that sometimes just going through the motions of things is alright while you're trying to create a habit. But forcing it til it stresses you out isn't necessary, and actually does the complete opposite of what it's supposed to. Be patient, try to take a step back and look from a distant sometimes. And one day, you'll realise that what you're feeling is gratitude, you just didn't have a name for it.