CHAPTER 44


You + Gratitude = Always Enough

The term “gratitude” gets thrown around a lot lately. It’s like the trendy personal development topic du jour. And I really only have one thing to say about that:

Hell yes.

I have yet to meet a person who lives her life in complete joy, fulfillment, and abundance but doesn’t practice gratitude. If there was only one thing in my life I was able to do in terms of personal development, it would hands down be gratitude. It is my go-to tool to make me feel better any time, in any situation. And every time I feel like things aren’t going well in my life and I don’t generally feel good mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, I realize that I’ve slacked off on my gratitude practice. Getting back to gratitude always helps.

I remember the moment gratitude changed my life. I had just found out my boyfriend of nine months had not only cheated on me but had lied about everything in our relationship. I was lying on the floor of my packed-up bedroom in the fetal position (said boyfriend and I were going to move in together so I had gotten out of my apartment lease and quit my awesome job), sobbing my eyes out. I thought I had hit rock bottom ten months before when my marriage ended, but this was below rock bottom. I felt like a loser. I could see no light at the end of the tunnel and I was officially hopeless.

I remembered hearing about gratitude and that it could help. I was desperate. Begrudgingly, I got out a piece of paper and wrote down ten things I was grateful for at that moment. Things such as physical health, my education, my family, and the clothes on my back. That was the first step of many I took to healing and becoming the woman I am today, way on the other side. That’s how powerful gratitude can be.

Let’s start from the beginning. What are the benefits of being grateful, anyway?

• Many scientific studies show that people who practice gratitude regularly are happier and experience less bouts of depression.
• Gratitude brings humility. Ain’t nothing wrong with being humble, right?
• Gratitude opens our hearts, brings us more awareness, and opens us up to give more love and receive more love. And, after all, that’s what we’re here for, y’all.
• Practicing gratitude can attract more of the things you are grateful for into your life.
• Gratitude makes everything we are enough and everything we have enough.

Practicing gratitude by no means has to be complicated or involved. The most common exercise is listing what you’re grateful for every morning or night. I’d like to take it a step further and suggest more ways to embrace gratitude. But, the first thing you need to do is commit to the practice. If you’ve never tried this, commit to at least thirty days of gratitude.

1. First up is the actual practice. Create a daily ritual where you write down your gratitudes. Commit to doing it a certain time of day — maybe it’s while you drink your morning coffee, or while you exercise, or first thing when you get to work. Write at least three things, but if you have more, by all means write them down. While it’s fine to have repeats day after day, try your best to think of new things to be grateful for. I often challenge my clients to make a list of 100 things.
2. Now for the coming attractions. It’s easy to quickly take inventory of what you have now, the obvious ones, for example: health, happiness, home, and loved ones. Next, try to add on things that you are grateful that are coming to you. If you’re in a rough place, be grateful now that soon you will be on the other side of this. If you know exactly what you want, be grateful for the fact that it’s on its way.
3. Try this one on for size: Practice gratitude for the hard stuff. Instead of thinking of difficult situations or decisions you’ve made and regret and beating yourself up for it, try thinking about how that situation has made you a better you. What did you learn from it? How will it shape you going forward? What are you grateful it showed you?
4. Another way to practice gratitude is to specifically thank people who aren’t expecting it. Write a letter to your parents. E-mail a former teacher. Put a Post-It in your mailbox for your letter carrier. Send a postcard to your spouse’s work. Text your kids’ teachers and tell them thanks for what they do. With all the business of life, we often forget and take for granted the people we love and appreciate the most. Don’t let that happen.
5. Finally, when you’re out at places like the grocery store or getting a cup of coffee, thank the person who helped you and look him or her in the eye when you do so. Connecting on a human level and expressing gratitude at the same time is powerful.

If you have children, teaching them the practice of gratitude is a major life lesson they can take with them for the rest of their lives. In our house at the dinner table we do, “What makes you happy?” We started this when our kids were five and three years old, so to make it age appropriate we made the question simple. Of course, my son started out saying what made him happy were things like Legos and fire trucks, but I’ll never forget the second day when he said, “You! You and daddy make me happy!”

Don’t stop once you start seeing results. Gratitude picks up momentum and just keeps getting better with time.