Week 6: Gratitude
It’s easy to get grumpy.
We live in a culture of “get more!” and “look good” and “get more likes on Instagram!” When we’re in a hustle-hustle life, we can often feel like we’re constantly falling short. Our culture’s cult of celebrity and the shininess of social media makes it harder than to stay grounded reality. After all, how easy is it to feel happy in our own less than perfect lives when we are inundated with images of vibrant, healthy couples oozing romance while on an exotic vacation? Or – for the yogis out there – when we see image after image of sunk-kissed, windswept yogis performing impossible arm balances on a beach?
We start to believe that we are lacking something that everyone else seems to have.
First of all, friends, let’s start by understanding that the perfect lives on social media are a fabrication. Now, I know we know this in our minds. We are smart critters. But even though we intellectually understand that social media is often “life advertising,” there’s an emotional part of our brain that doesn’t register this intellectual insight. Social media targets our emotional center, where we can be susceptible to feelings of unworthiness, loneliness, and isolation. So if you’re wondering why Instagram is making you feel bad (even when you know better), know that you’re not alone…and that’s kind of what it’s designed to do.
But lucky for us, there is an antidote. It’s super simple, and it’s free.
It’s gratitude.
When we start focusing on what we have, rather than what we don’t, our emotional perspective almost instantaneously shifts. It’s like one of those negative space drawings, where all of a sudden you see two faces rather than a vase. Although our situation hasn’t changed, we can see it from a different perspective. And all the good stuff that we have suddenly comes into view.
I was reading the Yoga Sutra earlier, and there is a niyama (guidelines for living) that resonates: santosha, or contentment. Patanjali writes that, “By contentment, supreme joy is gained.” (Translation: Swami Satchidananda). Practicing gratitude is a radical act of self-care and self-validation.
“By contentment, supreme joy is gained.”
Translation by Swami Satchidananda
This week, your task: Create a daily gratitude practice.
For me, I do this practice by writing out at least five things for which I’m grateful before bed. It can be simple: I have been grateful for my breath, grateful for my morning coffee, and grateful that I live in an era of antibiotics.
You may choose to do your practice when you first get up, or to put things for which you are grateful on sticky notes and put them around the house to be reminded of them throughout the day. It may be a simple meditation, in which you reflect on your gratitude list internally. However you decide to do it, the idea is to spend at least two minutes to bring all the good stuff in your life into the light.
Ready…and….Go!
As a treat, here is my non-Instaglamourous morning face 😉
