Starting the Habit of Gratitude

Growing up, one of my dad's favorite responses when I complained about something was to ask me: "Got a roof over your head? Clothes on your back? Food on the table? Then quit your bellyaching." And it was an effective response, because I did indeed feel grateful for the roof, clothes, and food, as well as for a host of other blessings in my life.

But over the past couple of years, I've noticed that sense of gratitude slipping away. The past 18 months have been particularly challenging as my husband and I have been faced with a scare concerning my health, the potential loss of our only income, and a close family member's serious illness. Instead of feeling grateful for the good things in my life, or even for the proverbial roof, clothes, and food, I felt entitled to those things. It was as if a switch had flipped, and I no longer felt capable of gratitude. And just as bad as not being able to feel gratitude, I felt anger, resentment, and entitlement taking residence inside me, using my energy to fuel their growth and leaving me with little energy for the things I really wanted to accomplish.

One day, on a whim, I thought that perhaps I ought to focus on what I do have, instead of what's going wrong or things that I don't have. So I wrote a journal entry detailing the things that I did feel grateful for, in that very moment. They weren't big things; in fact, they were very small. But they reminded me that even when life is difficult, there are indeed things to feel grateful for, and that reminder energized me. So the next day, I tried again, asking myself "What am I grateful for today? Not what do I think I should be grateful for, but what am I actually feeling grateful for this day?" I came up with a list that looked something like this:

I am grateful for the gorgeous pie crust I made yesterday, and for the people and animals that produced the lard and butter that made it so beautiful and delicious.

I am grateful for the sound of my son singing "You Are My Sunshine" to an empty room.

I am grateful for cooking a pot roast that smelled like home, the almost forgotten scent of family dinners at my grandmother's house long ago, when there was still a big crowd of us to gather together.

Small things, all of them. But enough to energize me and fuel my sense of gratitude for the good things that happened during the day that followed, which helped me to not focus so much on what wasn't going well. And thus began my experiment in focusing on the gratitude of each day.

If I try to look big picture, I’ll lose my mind, because I’ll see all the things that have changed, what I used to be grateful for but no longer have, or what is slipping away. But when I narrow the focus to each day, when I start to look at the small things, I see that there is so much to be grateful for, and it’s the gratitude for the small things that gives me energy and motivation.

I invite you to join me in a creating a habit of gratitude and share what you feel grateful for today, in this very moment, because as I'm learning, gratitude is contagious!