Monday #5 - Gratitude

Hello all,

Welcome back to one Monday at a time! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. The holidays can be a stressful time of year for many, so I feel very lucky that my family is as close as we are. It might be a bit cliché to write about gratitude after Thanksgiving, after all, that is the point of the holiday. However, I think I've been challenged in the past couple weeks with the concept of gratitude, and I've struggled to remain appreciative for things in my everyday life. It has helped to be cognizant of when I start to drift off into negative wishful thinking, and instead, make a conscious effort to stay in the present. 

Counting my blessings is hard though, I tend to get repetitive, always starting with friends and family and expanding to the several items I can see around my room. From there, I start to think about concepts and feelings, like comfort or safety. In this way, it has felt more redundant than revitalizing to count my blessings, and almost a bit dull. I've found that by internalizing my gratitude and centering it in my own feelings of contentment, I am able to displace my gratefulness from outside factors to those that are more personal to me. For example, I could say that I'm grateful for my vinyl collection, or I could say that I'm grateful for my love of music. In one, the focus is the item, and in the other, the focus is my personality. Of course, counting your blessings is important, but this helps me to stay more present in my gratefulness. So I ask the question...

If all my "blessings" disappeared, and I was left with nothing except the clothes on my back and the shoes on my feet, would I still be grateful to be me?

I think that practicing internal gratitude has allowed me to be thankful for the influence that other people have had on me. The influence that makes me hardworking, independent, humorous, and, most of all, unique. Being grateful for how I interact in the world, and reminding myself of how blessed I am to simply exist as myself has augmented the way that I view gratitude. This Thanksgiving, when we all went around the table and said what we were thankful for, I said I was thankful for peace. Most importantly, for my own peace and settlement of mind over the past couple of months. I think that taking time for mindfulness and taking risks has pushed me past my comfort zone, but it has also allowed me to feel more comfortable in my skin. For that, I am grateful. 

Woah, this is a long one, didn't really think I'd have much to say when I started writing but I guess those are always the ones you run with! I hope you take time to be grateful for yourself, and appreciate the individual traits that make you unique. I've learned that all it takes is some reframing of thought. Until the next one!

one Monday at a time,

Ethan