Last time, I blogged about what it means to practice being present as part of our own healing and recovery path for 2025. Before moving on to the topic of what it takes to practice being grateful, I wanted to add a footnote about the practice of being present...
Many of us find it challenging to practice being present because we are dissatisfied with the current status of our life generally speaking. Whatever it is or was that happened, we are deeply unhappy and lonely as a result.
In these types of scenarios, the practice of "being present" may seem ridiculous because we are already acutely aware of our "present" day reality and it, in a word, stinks! When this is the case, we need to recognize, at the very least, what it is we genuinely "hope" for and want to see change in this new year ahead. Then, at the very most, we need to do what we need to do in order to live in the middle of that hope during the time we have to facilitate the change(s) we seek. For example, someone who truly seeks a primary love relationship is NOT living in the middle of that hope by staying home most of the time and overthinking "everything" as has been the usual habit for them for the past XX weeks/months/years/decades. Overthinking only leads to sadness and self-incriminations. Period. At the other extreme end of that spectrum are those who go out with "everybody" without any firm boundaries in place. If you don't know the difference between what you will and will not tolerate, you just set yourself up for standing for nothing because you fall for anything....
It's one thing to take anti-depressant medication to feel "better"; it's another to do the work, every single day, to place oneself in new or existing situations and circumstances where networking and/or getting to know other people better becomes a lifestyle. Medication can work to give us the "Oomph!" (as one of my clients put it!) to get up, dress up, and show up for our own lives. The quality of our life and social interactions, after we do that, is genuinely up to us. And if you need help with that, that's what we psychotherapists and self-help/support/therapy groups are for. So do it. It IS for you...not for anybody else BUT you to do and practice on an ongoing basis...
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Now, on to the practice of how to be grateful. Being grateful means focusing in on what you do have rather than what you want but don't have---or fear you'll never have. What I have found about the practice of gratitude is that it changes the way you fundamentally think about "everything" and everyone. How does this happen? Well, it happens as we practice being present, for one thing. Some of us are so conditioned to function on autopilot, we miss out on all kinds of "glimmers" (positive cues and observances) as they occur in real time. Instead of searching for that prowling lion wherever we are or go, adopting an attitude of gratitude genuinely changes our brain function to be more open and willing to experience new things and people without fear and/or negative judgment(s) attached.
As an example, some people really do fear and negatively judge people who are assertive communicators. How does this happen? It happens because people who are not assertive communicators themselves will confuse assertiveness with aggressiveness. Not a good thing to do. People who practice saying what they mean, mean what they say, don't say it mean, and say it in a timely manner are NOT being aggressive. They are being appropriately assertive. End of. "Why" we negatively judge assertive communicators is often due to the fact that these folks know how to comfortably say "No thanks!" or "Not now thank you." or "I'll have to think about that and get back with you." OR "I don't know the answer to that...so I'm not the person to ask." And then there is us. Those of us who do not know or definitely struggle with saying any of these things because we are people pleasing "Yes of course!" kind of folks even when we don't want to do that which we are being asked to do by someone else! So now you know.
A friend and I were just chatting this morning about this very issue. How does an attempt to be understood by someone else, in an appropriate manner, translate to being perceived as aggressive? To be an aggressive communicator is to overtly or covertly manipulate, push, actively gaslight and/or threaten another person to bend to the speaker's will. This is NOT the same as assertive communication. HOWEVER, as I just alluded to in the previous paragraph, those who struggle with the inability to comfortably say "No" to others' requests---can very easily confuse assertiveness with aggressiveness. When we practice being present and being grateful, we actually learn how to experience what we see and hear more objectively than subjectively (with that false positive spin attached!). When my friend asked "What do I do when someone responds to me being assertive as if I am being aggressive?"....I suggested she neutralize the situation by saying something like "I notice you seem offended by what I just shared; can you help me understand what's going on right now?"
Often, this is all we need to say to clarify for the other person how we want to achieve mutual understanding between both parties as our primary goal....
Practicing gratitude puts us in a mental space and place where we are more neutral about what is going on around us than tilted towards being more subjectively negative about our own life's experiences. For example, can you recall when a stranger has approached you anywhere in public....and your first thought was "What do YOU want?!" I know I have. And then when I heard statements like "Oh, I love your coat.." or some other random compliment---those moments served as reminders to me that not "everyone" who is a stranger to me is as bad as I believe(d) them to be generally speaking! How about you? Has an inabillity to practice being grateful prevented you from seeing life and your relationships more neutrally than negatively? Perhaps now is the time to think about that and what you really do have to be thankful for each and every day!
Nex time, what the practice of being "real" means and how we can learn to be more comfortable showing the people around us who we genuinely are....unless we are a hot mess in need of serious intervention. That's another issue, but I'll still address it somewhat in my next post. :-P
Until then....