UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF GRATITUDE

AND HOW TO PRACTICE BEING GRATEFUL IN YOUR DAILY LIFE

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” ~ Melody Beattie ~

Despite the fact I am filled with gratitude most days, I still struggle with wanting more, looking outside for validation, and using comparison to steal my joy.  There’s a fantastic song by the Avett Brothers titled, Ill With Want. It’s a slightly somber, yet beautiful song filled with longing, a simple melody, and profound lyrics….

Think about those last lines again, “I’m almost where I need to be, if only I could get a little more…”  I imagine the cartoon dangling carrot, always slightly out of reach, taunting and teasing us.  If we could just get one bite of that damn carrot we’d have all we want. And yet even if we were to reach it, we’d continually want more and more and more.  Money, opportunity, recognition, affection, shoes….why is enough never enough?  When did we become bottomless pits of want and need never feeling quite satisfied?

For years, my parents struggled financially. When I was a kid, we were damn poor.  My dad worked a job he hated to support his family on a measly $6 an hour.  Some of my earliest memories are waiting in line for WIC assistance, my mom paying for groceries with food stamps, and my dad budgeting every penny to make ends meet.  Aftwards, half jokingly he’d proclaim, “we get to keep the house another month!”  My sister and I will never forget the time our car’s heater went out on the way home from visiting our grandparents in Chicago, the windows cracked in January to keep the windshield from steaming up and us in the back seat, crying and hiding under pillows because we were getting rained on.  We didn’t take vacations, we never went out to eat, and our clothes were 100% hand me downs.

I knew we weren’t rich. Sure, I drooled over the Sears Wishbook each holiday season and longed to go to Disneyland, but I was happy…genuinely, completely, and totally happy.  My parents couldn’t give me everything I wanted, but they gave me more than I needed.  Despite having so little for so many years, we were rich in love. We would wrap ourselves in blankets on our old porch, watching the stars and sing songs as a family. We made homemade pizza and watched movies every Friday, spent summers around giant bonfires, and holidays with family.  We grilled out and spent lazy afternoons running around the yard.  The smell of charcoal grill and freshly cut grass will always remind me of my childhood. We had little; it was more than enough

COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY

I can’t exactly pinpoint when I transited from feeling supremely content to utterly lacking, but it definitely got worse at the start of junior high.  Our small school of 30 kids closed and annexed with the neighboring community. I started 6th grade with new peers; pretty girls with perfect clothes, McMansions and daddy’s generous wallet (at least that’s how I perceived them).  They were nice and welcoming, but I felt so profoundly unworthy and uncomfortable in every way.  All of my shortcomings became glaringly obvious.

I began looking outside for direction and validation. I started measuring my worth and value against every one and everything around me.  You would think 25 years later I’d have outgrown this adolescent game but the reality is, I still struggle.  It amazes me how easily and unconsciously I slip into comparison and want, followed by the familiar pangs of longing.

Besides making you feel like shit, the biggest problem with comparing ourselves to others is that we think we’re comparing apples to apples when in reality, we rarely see the entire picture.  We’re so quick to assume the worst in ourselves (and the best in others).  We discredit a person’s entire history when we make snap judgements and assumptions. My sister tells a story of the time she was at a Weight Watchers meeting as a teenager. She noticed a very thin girl her age come in and sit down. My sister instantly starting comparing herself, thinking “jeez, this girl thinks she’s fat? She doesn’t know what it’s like to be fat.”  The meeting started.  After a time, to my sister’s amazement and surprise, the leader singled out the thin girl and asked her to stand and share her story of losing 100 pounds.

We assume other’s have it easier than us. We feel our fate is doomed. We are heat seeking missiles of negativity and comparison, always looking to validate our belief that other people have it better and easier than we do.

Often we compare our lives to some dreamed up, fantastical ideal about what success and happiness should look like.  Of course we feel bad, we’ve spent years “should-ing” all over ourselves. Comparison turns our joy and contentment off in an instant. It reminds us whatever we have isn’t enough.

Conditional happiness is a losing game because there will always, always be something better and shinier around the next corner.  Spoiled children can never be happy because they don’t learn to appreciate what they have.  We are spoiling ourselves by constantly giving in to the idea that this this next thing will bring us more happiness and that what we have isn’t sufficient.  We continue to be ill with want because you can never get enough of what you don’t need.

WE HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH