Every once in a while I get a glimpse of the inner mental misery that most people seem to subject themselves to on a day by day, moment by moment basis. And lately, when I get these glimpses, it takes me by surprise- and I realize how much less I seem to drown in negative self-talk than the average bear.
So I get curious - why is it that I don’t spend quite as much energy as the average person in self-flagellation or victimization stories? Is it meditation? Maybe, but let’s be honest, I don’t actually meditate very often. For me lying in bed in the morning between snooze alarms is usually my best effort in a day. Was it the healing sessions, the therapy, the women’s retreats and myriad rites of passage ceremonies and workshops? Sure, they all played their part. As I’ve written about before, I’ve done most everything in the personal growth junkie menu of options.
But what really stands out for me when I reflect on my “path of transformation” is a subtle, simple and often overlooked practice - gratitude. It began in early 2007, when I joined a monthly class with meditation teacher James Baraz called “Awakening Joy”. The course combined traditional meditation practices with modern neuroscience research and, it turns out, a deep foundational orientation around gratitude. The first note I jotted down in my journal for the course was a set of questions: What am I grateful for? What brought me joy today? Where do I feel satisfied?
Our first exercise was to create a “nourishment list”, writing down everything we felt nourished by in our lives for two minutes straight. Don’t filter, just write it down. Do this over time, and notice what sorts of things recur on your list. We were also to notice what we made time for on a regular basis, and what we didn’t. And of course we were invited to make time for those things for which we tend to feel grateful.
Then we spent an entire month practicing recognizing and expressing gratitude in our life. At the level of neuroscience, I learned, gratitude practice leads to creative and flexible thinking, it increases awareness of resources, it helps you live longer, and it is better for your health than exercise (in that those who practice gratitude take better care of themselves than those who don't). At the more philosophical level, James pointed out that gratitude is a way of saying yes to life - a way to pray, a way to say thank you for the gift of being. And gratitude is actually the only thing that can satisfy desire - the recognition that we already have enough, that we are already enough, and complete, here, now, in this abundant moment.
I still have my journal full of these early gratitude lists. I remember the recurrence of simple things like tea, plums, dried apricots, and sunshine through the kitchen window. I see also, looking through these old journals, how actively I struggled with self love, compassion, and focusing on things other than my fears. And yet all the while, amidst the struggle, there was the gratitude practice, too. A page about my fears, and the next page gratitudes for things like the silence of the late evening or the morning crows outside my window. Slowly, steadily, this practice was facilitating a deep reorientation in my life, paving the way for a total re-wiring in my brain.
Not too long after the course ended, a friend turned me on to a gratitude email group he was part of. Every month or so, we were partnered with new people with whom we shared our daily list of what we were grateful for. I was thrilled to have social support in continuing this practice that I had lost track of since the Awakening Joy course had ended. Not everyone in the email group was as responsive though, and one month my partner Katherine and I and some other devotees of the practice began our own ongoing gratitude super pod. I have been sharing regular gratitudes with this group of eight for the last five years.
I have never met Katherine. But I have watched her life unfold in the most beautiful way through this email group. She fell in love, she got pregnant, she got married, she gave birth. She has been through ups and downs in work and relationship, and she has shared her gratitudes about it all through her emails. When her infant son was hospitalized with serious burns, for example, she shared her gratitudes about the kind doctors, the loving support of family, and the strength of her love for her son.
Slowly and subtly over time, this practice has deeply changed my life. Here’s a recent example: there’s a touching body image campaign video going around social media lately where women share how they feel about their bodies. Watching this video, it broke my heart to hear all these women describing their bodies as disgusting, ugly, fat, lumpy, all sorts of creative self-loathing terms. And what was interesting was that I recognized this mindset - but it was a recognition that came from memory, not current reality. As a teen-ager I spent a lot of time contemplating cutting my stomach out with a knife because it wasn’t flat enough, battling eating disorders, and generally drowning in a sea of shame and disgust for my own appearance just like these women. But these days, I simply don’t have those thoughts anymore. Even when my belly feels a bit softer than usual, my brain might notice that, but before a negative thought can arise I find my attention immediately re-oriented toward focusing on the beauty of my curves and my soft womanly form. As I've begun to develop wrinkles around my eyes, I look at them and I feel grateful that I’ve smiled enough to create them. I love my body. I am grateful for my curves, my soft belly, my aging skin. Any remnants of self-hatred have been replaced by an automatic re-orientation toward gratitude.
When I do find myself in a funk and revisiting old negative thought patterns, I know it’s time to sit down for some gratitudes. I have leaned into this practice through heart break, career change, the death of friends. The practice has given me strength and helped me stay connected to love and joy even in the hardest times I have faced in my life. Often, the tougher a time I am having, the more I write. Sometimes multiple times a day. And of course some days it feels like a stretch - some days I’m just grateful for my local coffee shop’s lattes again (that’s probably the top recurring item on my list these days...they’re really good…), for having a flexible work schedule so I can lie in bed and cry, or for having friends to lean on when I’m struggling.
But the key thing is - those gratitudes, though they may seem small or indicative of an imperfect life, are incredibly powerful. The feeling of appreciation is genuine, and the chemical effects are real. And the re-orientation I feel toward focusing on the beauty all around me is often just what I need to shift my mood. And then, there's even more to be grateful for. Sometimes, there’s so much joy and gratitude bursting from my heart I don’t even know how to capture it in words. But I love the practice of trying.
And after years of regular practice, I know what really matters in my life. I know I can be happy even when I lose things that I love. I know that life itself - the miracle of perception - is truly something to be grateful for every single day.
I’m not that big on telling people what they should do to be happier. But this practice for me has been powerful enough to warrant a rare moment of direct advice: try it. It may feel awkward at first, you may notice it’s actually hard to do if you are used to focusing on the negative. But just give it a shot. Set a timer for 2 minutes a day and write down things you feel grateful for. Start an email group with some friends. Or just lie in bed at night and think of 3 enjoyable things from your day. Trust me, you'll be grateful ;)
--
I wrote this post because I felt so inspired watching a friend who struggles with negative self-talk get excited about beginning a regular gratitude practice, and I wanted to share my love of the practice more broadly. And I decided to re-ignite an old twitter feed I created years ago — @gratitood. I stopped writing when I realized people were following what I thought was a private twitter feed :) But today feeling the potency of this practice, I’m up for the vulnerability of sharing regularly in that public forum. So if you feel inspired, follow my gratitoods on twitter, share your own, and enjoy the ride.
So I get curious - why is it that I don’t spend quite as much energy as the average person in self-flagellation or victimization stories? Is it meditation? Maybe, but let’s be honest, I don’t actually meditate very often. For me lying in bed in the morning between snooze alarms is usually my best effort in a day. Was it the healing sessions, the therapy, the women’s retreats and myriad rites of passage ceremonies and workshops? Sure, they all played their part. As I’ve written about before, I’ve done most everything in the personal growth junkie menu of options.
But what really stands out for me when I reflect on my “path of transformation” is a subtle, simple and often overlooked practice - gratitude. It began in early 2007, when I joined a monthly class with meditation teacher James Baraz called “Awakening Joy”. The course combined traditional meditation practices with modern neuroscience research and, it turns out, a deep foundational orientation around gratitude. The first note I jotted down in my journal for the course was a set of questions: What am I grateful for? What brought me joy today? Where do I feel satisfied?
Our first exercise was to create a “nourishment list”, writing down everything we felt nourished by in our lives for two minutes straight. Don’t filter, just write it down. Do this over time, and notice what sorts of things recur on your list. We were also to notice what we made time for on a regular basis, and what we didn’t. And of course we were invited to make time for those things for which we tend to feel grateful.
Then we spent an entire month practicing recognizing and expressing gratitude in our life. At the level of neuroscience, I learned, gratitude practice leads to creative and flexible thinking, it increases awareness of resources, it helps you live longer, and it is better for your health than exercise (in that those who practice gratitude take better care of themselves than those who don't). At the more philosophical level, James pointed out that gratitude is a way of saying yes to life - a way to pray, a way to say thank you for the gift of being. And gratitude is actually the only thing that can satisfy desire - the recognition that we already have enough, that we are already enough, and complete, here, now, in this abundant moment.
I still have my journal full of these early gratitude lists. I remember the recurrence of simple things like tea, plums, dried apricots, and sunshine through the kitchen window. I see also, looking through these old journals, how actively I struggled with self love, compassion, and focusing on things other than my fears. And yet all the while, amidst the struggle, there was the gratitude practice, too. A page about my fears, and the next page gratitudes for things like the silence of the late evening or the morning crows outside my window. Slowly, steadily, this practice was facilitating a deep reorientation in my life, paving the way for a total re-wiring in my brain.
Not too long after the course ended, a friend turned me on to a gratitude email group he was part of. Every month or so, we were partnered with new people with whom we shared our daily list of what we were grateful for. I was thrilled to have social support in continuing this practice that I had lost track of since the Awakening Joy course had ended. Not everyone in the email group was as responsive though, and one month my partner Katherine and I and some other devotees of the practice began our own ongoing gratitude super pod. I have been sharing regular gratitudes with this group of eight for the last five years.
I have never met Katherine. But I have watched her life unfold in the most beautiful way through this email group. She fell in love, she got pregnant, she got married, she gave birth. She has been through ups and downs in work and relationship, and she has shared her gratitudes about it all through her emails. When her infant son was hospitalized with serious burns, for example, she shared her gratitudes about the kind doctors, the loving support of family, and the strength of her love for her son.
Slowly and subtly over time, this practice has deeply changed my life. Here’s a recent example: there’s a touching body image campaign video going around social media lately where women share how they feel about their bodies. Watching this video, it broke my heart to hear all these women describing their bodies as disgusting, ugly, fat, lumpy, all sorts of creative self-loathing terms. And what was interesting was that I recognized this mindset - but it was a recognition that came from memory, not current reality. As a teen-ager I spent a lot of time contemplating cutting my stomach out with a knife because it wasn’t flat enough, battling eating disorders, and generally drowning in a sea of shame and disgust for my own appearance just like these women. But these days, I simply don’t have those thoughts anymore. Even when my belly feels a bit softer than usual, my brain might notice that, but before a negative thought can arise I find my attention immediately re-oriented toward focusing on the beauty of my curves and my soft womanly form. As I've begun to develop wrinkles around my eyes, I look at them and I feel grateful that I’ve smiled enough to create them. I love my body. I am grateful for my curves, my soft belly, my aging skin. Any remnants of self-hatred have been replaced by an automatic re-orientation toward gratitude.
When I do find myself in a funk and revisiting old negative thought patterns, I know it’s time to sit down for some gratitudes. I have leaned into this practice through heart break, career change, the death of friends. The practice has given me strength and helped me stay connected to love and joy even in the hardest times I have faced in my life. Often, the tougher a time I am having, the more I write. Sometimes multiple times a day. And of course some days it feels like a stretch - some days I’m just grateful for my local coffee shop’s lattes again (that’s probably the top recurring item on my list these days...they’re really good…), for having a flexible work schedule so I can lie in bed and cry, or for having friends to lean on when I’m struggling.
But the key thing is - those gratitudes, though they may seem small or indicative of an imperfect life, are incredibly powerful. The feeling of appreciation is genuine, and the chemical effects are real. And the re-orientation I feel toward focusing on the beauty all around me is often just what I need to shift my mood. And then, there's even more to be grateful for. Sometimes, there’s so much joy and gratitude bursting from my heart I don’t even know how to capture it in words. But I love the practice of trying.
And after years of regular practice, I know what really matters in my life. I know I can be happy even when I lose things that I love. I know that life itself - the miracle of perception - is truly something to be grateful for every single day.
I’m not that big on telling people what they should do to be happier. But this practice for me has been powerful enough to warrant a rare moment of direct advice: try it. It may feel awkward at first, you may notice it’s actually hard to do if you are used to focusing on the negative. But just give it a shot. Set a timer for 2 minutes a day and write down things you feel grateful for. Start an email group with some friends. Or just lie in bed at night and think of 3 enjoyable things from your day. Trust me, you'll be grateful ;)
--
I wrote this post because I felt so inspired watching a friend who struggles with negative self-talk get excited about beginning a regular gratitude practice, and I wanted to share my love of the practice more broadly. And I decided to re-ignite an old twitter feed I created years ago — @gratitood. I stopped writing when I realized people were following what I thought was a private twitter feed :) But today feeling the potency of this practice, I’m up for the vulnerability of sharing regularly in that public forum. So if you feel inspired, follow my gratitoods on twitter, share your own, and enjoy the ride.