Well, hello there!
Welcome to the part of your day where you get to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee (or your favorite alternative beverage) and read about something that isn’t going to dry your brain out or make you hesitant to attend your next family reunion.
Thank you abundantly for finding your way here – I do hope you decide to stay a bit longer and click around.
Niceties exchanged, let’s dive in, shall we?
Shifting Your Perspective
More often than not, life is an uphill battle. Each day we wake up and we fight our own demons inside and out, only to get back into bed the following night and do it all over again.
It’s so depleting when we have the weight of all of it just looming.
Of course I have a terrible attitude. Some guy cut me off in traffic earlier and that made the car behind me run into the back end of my car so I spent all morning dealing with that which made me late for my doctors appointment so they had no choice but to reschedule me for next week even though I desperately need to be seen for this ingrown toe-nail that I have because my shoes are too small because I’m gaining weight because it’s too cold to go outside and honestly everything just kinda sucks, you know?
I HEAR YOU. I get it. It’s haaaaaaaard.
Life is hard.
We are sentient and self-aware and experience really dreadful emotions. Some of us more than others, some of us not enough!
And sometimes……. Sometimes it’s really difficult to find the good in any of it.
But, you wouldn’t be here if you wanted to read my ramblings about the awfulness in life now, would you?
Exactly.
Allow me to get to the good part.
Because yes, dear reader, there are good parts to it all.
This post was initially titled “Tell Me Something Good” because that’s really where this concept started for me.
Some time ago, I was over it.
Like …….. really, really over it. All of it.
I’d just landed a part time job working as a server at a pizzeria after I was fired from what I thought at the time was my dream gig.
My first night at this pizzeria though, I go in and the team is getting prepped up for the dinner rush when the manager on duty pulls everyone (front and back of house staff) into a circle. She gathered up and said “alright guys, we’re kicking off the night right, okay? Tell me something good, let’s go.” One by one everyone was required to note 1 celebration for the evening. Anything big or small.
Anything that caused a positive shift in your day was allowed into the Tell Me Something Good circle.
And this process stuck with me like a thick bandaid on a freshly shaven forearm.
I don’t even remember what my Tell Me Something Good was that night. I just know that when people hesitated to answer because they felt as though they didn’t have anything to celebrate, our manager would pull something positive from the other things they’d say.
“You’re here, tonight. You got out of bed and your legs are working. You have a team of people who are happy to be working beside you.”
My point here, which is what I believe my manager’s point at that time was,
Finding the ‘something good’ is about perspective.
Your perspective on the world you live in and the life around you will determine so much more for you than you’d imagine.
This, dear reader, is the importance of gratitude.
Make gratitude a part of your daily life. Make it a habit. A mental ritual.
I’d like to break things down a little further.
Breaking things down into more digestible chunks is exactly how we’re going to incorporate gratitude into our everyday lives; we’re going to take every little moment and smash it into tiny little fractals and examine them closely in the sunlight (or moonlight, if you’re into that).
We break our day into small steps, and we break those steps down into questions.
This process involves 3 steps.
Assess
Express
Address
These steps are designed to guide you through a daily practice of gratitude and mindfulness.
First, assess the situation and circumstances. Outline the moment.
Express the things that you’re grateful for within that moment.
And then, we’ll address what’s missing (and make changes, if applicable.)
Let’s look at an example.
Before I sat down to write this article, I had a morning cup of coffee.
EXAMPLE: MORNING COFFEE
Assess: I’m having a cup of coffee first in the morning. My mug is hot. My coffee is sweet.
Express, or apply gratitude for the things that are present and valued.
Translation: add the words “I am grateful” to the things you noted in your assessment.
I am grateful I have coffee. I am grateful I woke up in time to enjoy a cup of coffee. I am grateful for the warmth of the mug. I am grateful I had a mug available to fill with coffee.
This is the part where you can have fun with it. Really get into the nitty gritty of what components make the most of your time. Take it further than just “I have coffee.”
“I am grateful that I have coffee to brew” instead of being upset because “I have to brew my coffee before I can enjoy it.”
“I am grateful I have soap and water to wash this mug” instead of “I had to wash a mug before I was able to drink my coffee this morning.”
When we’re expressive, I want to issue a super important reminder:
Say these things to yourself, out loud. OR write them down.
You HAVE to breathe your gratitude to life. You have to implement some sort of exercise for that ‘muscle’ in order to help it grow and develop.
Again, friends, it’s about perspective.
It’s about shifting the way we look at our world and think about things.
After expressive, we –
Address: What’s not there?
** This can be an object, or even an emotion.
I’m angry = I’m missing a calm emotion.
So, for me, what isn’t there in this moment? In my example.
That’s what I ask myself at this point in the equation.
“I am missing whipped cream for my coffee”
Now, this next part of step 3 is crucial.
Is this a need or a want?
Now, okay, this is where I lose a lot of people because this example starts to feel really trivial and almost silly to some readers.
But here’s the kicker: I am NOT asking “is whipped cream a need or a want” objectively.
This question, be it anything from whipped cream to major surgery, is YOURS TO ANSWER.
Yours, and yours alone. No one else can decide if I need whipped cream on my coffee but me. No one can decide if you need whipped cream on your coffee or not but you.
Maybe, just maybe you’ve had the worst possible week and just woke up from the most petrifying night terrors and if you don’t get whipped cream atop your latte, you just might have a total breakdown.
Guess what, friend?
That’s your call to make. No one else’s discretion matters.
How do you know if it’s a need or a want, though?
Well, the simplest way I have found to address what’s missing in my life is by asking myself this,
Am I okay without it?
I want to emphasize once more that this is not a question that anyone else can answer.
This is your assessment because this is your life.
We’re just living in it. 😉
If you give this 3 step process a try in your day to day, leave a comment below and let me know how it did or didn’t help. I’m always open to feedback.
Feel free to reach out to [email protected] with questions.