The Attitude of Gratitude

Why Gratitude?

    Having an attitude of gratitude can take you a long way because it is essential to having a positive perspective and outlook in your life. To practice gratitude successfully you need to be grateful for what you have consistently, constantly, and daily. This is very useful when you are facing tough times, when it is difficult to count your blessings and the negativity is in the forefront blocking your ability to see the good things you have in life.

    Being able to hold an attitude of gratitude will help you be optimistic instead of falling into the trap of being pessimistic. You will be able to get through the day with the cup half full instead of half empty mindset. Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong. This law is known and recognized by many, it has a great deal of significance and is a very wise and powerful law. I do not want to undermine this law or reduce any of its significance. However I have an altered variation for Murphy's Law, my variation states anything that can go right will go right. I tell myself this constantly and I like to start my day by reminding myself about this. Especially in my self-talk early in the morning when I get up and am getting ready to begin my day. This helps me get up out of bed in the mornings and look forward to the day.

How to Show and feel Gratitude? 

    Gratitude can also be shown in the form of showing appreciation for others in your life, also for the circumstances in your life. If you have people in your life looking out for you, supporting you to become better and they have been there for you when no one else has. It’s time to return the kindness they have shared with you so that you can show them how important they are to you, this will allow you to continue to have them in your life.

    Being kind in all relationships is important. If you pick and choose and are selective with the people you chose to be kind to, it will not work as effectively. If you unconditionally show kindness to everyone it will improve your habit tenfold. If this is an attitude you want to instill and master I suggest you to interact with everyone this way even with the less informed people, who at times are difficult people to deal with.

    Thankfulness is another term that can coincide with gratitude. Being grateful and thankful for people in your life, and for the circumstances in your life. Instead of thinking about your circumstances such as your income or the neighborhood you live in as a limiting factor that is keeping you limited. You instead choose to be grateful and thankful for what you have because these are the exact things keeping your life going. Thinking in this way will help you make the best of what you have.

    Also remember to be thankful for life and for having a conscious, being alive today breathing, living life and experiencing it in the moment. To be optimistic, it is important to think of every day as an opportunity to change your circumstances if you choose to change. So if you desire to increase your income or move to a better neighborhood you are blessed with a new day to try and work on achieving your goals.

My Lack of Gratitude

    I was not a very grateful person, I was very fixated on having nice materialistic possessions. Instead of being grateful for the things I did have in my life, I thought more about the things I did not have and the things I wanted, sometimes didn't even need. Every time I thought about the materialistic things I was missing in my life, I was making myself feel unfulfilled. I did not realize this at that time and this was a very negative thought cycle I was caught up in.

    Instead of appreciating the things I did have and counting my blessings which would have led to positive thoughts and constructive thoughts. The positive thoughts would have made me feel better about myself and would have most definitely helped me to be in a positive mindset and manifest it into reality.

    I made the mistake of wasting my time, energy and my physical and mental resources focusing on materialistic items and living what I call the consumer lifestyle. I was the perfect target for advertising campaigns from big corporations trying to sell a bunch of nonsense to make a profit. I was being dependent on materialistic products to feel instant gratification, it was a trick to make me feel like I am achieving success and progression in life. This was a very negative illusion and misconception I had. It caused me to not value the things that I did have in my life, more importantly the people in my life. I was a fool just trying to keep up with the Jones.

    The sad part about me trying to keep up with the Jones was that the generation I grew up in saw a great deal of technology updates. In my transition over the years I’ve seen it go from flip phones to blackberries, sidekicks to the iPhone. Now every year you have Apple releasing a brand new model so by the time you’re done paying one off you have a new one to buy. This is just ridiculous but if you think about how important these things are in our lives it’s sad to see how important they are and how dependent we are on them. I remember times when I would go out to hang out with friends, instead of talking to one another with interest, everyone was plugged into their phones, physically we were together but mentally we were all somewhere else.

    I was not grateful for the people in my life and things they did for me. After my car accident in 2014 I was hospitalized, I had surgery on my left leg because I had fractured my femur. The strongest bone in my body was fractured and I had to get a surgical correction in order to let the bone heal. I had to build myself up to be able to walk again. This was a very difficult time for me and it was very hard for me to be grateful because I had a broken leg. I couldn’t walk and I was on a wheelchair.

    I remember I had to go to school because I was taking college classes at the time and one of my teachers did not believe me and told me that I could not miss the test. If I missed the test I would fail the class and would have to retake the course. My parents were very supportive during this time and my mother helped wheel me into school. My classmate saw me and took over and helped me into our class.

    This was a very embarrassing and emotional time for me, I hated all the feelings and thoughts that were going through my head at the time. My self-talk was like “man everyone must be feeling pity for me and laughing at me behind my back”, “damn everyone’s going to be talking about this.”

    I am thankful for my parents and my classmate for helping me. Without them I would have not been able to make it to my class and pass the test. That was the only class which made it difficult for me during this time, especially because I had to face all my friends and all the other students in school. During this time I was very grateful for my family, they supported me through this and many other difficult times and I am blessed to have such a great family.

The Lesson I learned

    I lost a lot of so-called “friends” during this time, they say that when you need help and are not in a favorable light in life you realize some of your so-called friends were really not your friends. I know now that if I focus on the blessings in my life instead of my injuries and losses I will come out stronger and better when I face setbacks.

    I was very grateful and lucky for having the support of my family, I really appreciate them for this reason. However I did not ever tell them or give back the respect or love to my loved ones, I did not return the same help they had showered me with when I was in need. I never said thank you and never spent the time with them to let them know how valuable they are to me. I appreciated them, I felt the need to return the love they had shown me. However just thinking about them and thanking them was not enough, I had to take action because actions speak louder than words.

    I noticed that I only spent my time with others that benefited me. The least I could have done for these people was show them how important they were for me but I failed to do that. I did not praise these people enough and did not shower my gratitude and appreciation towards them through my actions or my words. Possibly that’s why I did not have many people around me after my accident. The worst part about the situation is that I overlooked my chances to change.

    Every day I woke up to a new blessed day instead of thinking about the change that I could make to better myself so that I can have more meaningful relationships or take care of and nurture the positive relationships I did have in my life.

Key Points to Walk away with  

    Practicing gratitude daily will contribute to your overall success and help you become an optimistic and positive constructive thinker. Giving back your time and support to others is important because courtesy is contagious. Every time you perform an act of courtesy you influence and encourage others to do the same. It creates sort of a domino effect of courtesy. Now imagine if you started this effect at home with your family and then with your neighbors and your coworkers. Behaving this way you can create a bigger impact and make the community around you a better place because now others are also following the positive trend that you have set. You could potentially turn your neighborhood into a great place to live or your workplace into a great place to work and your home into your heaven.

    Sometimes all people want or need is a little support and appreciation in their lives. You can encourage them to be better and feel worthy. This will not only help you build a better relationship with others, it can cause a positive ripple effect into their life and the others in their lives. Knowing this now I would like to encourage everyone to give thanks to your team members and people who support you. I encourage you to give recognition to others so that people know that they have done something right. I believe that after you have given thanks and recognition to the people in your life, they will be more willing to deal with you and be around knowing you will acknowledge their importance and respect what they provide to you.

    Being grateful for being alive on this planet and in your own shoes is the key to a more meaningful life that is filled with positive emotions. Use your time, resources, energy to help yourself, help others, grow, and learn. After my tragic life-threatening accident I was left physically damaged with a broken leg and damage to my rotator cuff in my shoulder. I was mentally damaged and left with negative emotions and trauma. I had felt guilty for putting my family through the negative emotions of almost losing my life and the burden of having to support me when in return I did not listen to them and give them the time of day because I was carrying around this baggage of resentment, anger, guilt and shame.

    Looking back now, if I was more focused on being grateful towards them and thought about how lucky I was for surviving this tragic accident and for still being alive I could have made this setback into a more meaningful life lesson and positive wake up call. During this time I did spend more time than I usually did with my family, despite being handicap I did my best to support them to the best of my abilities. However, if I had a more tentative and focused attitude of gratitude I would have had a more positive outlook on my life and taken advantage of the opportunities to change. I could have built more positive habits, which would have led to a more successful recovery. This would have also allowed me to eliminate and cut down my negative emotions.

    Although I gained this knowledge after experiencing some major setbacks in life, I'm glad I have this knowledge now. I can use it today to make sure the future is better.