I had a completely different post typed up and ready to go for today but then I had a moment that struck me yesterday so I decided I wanted to circle back to gratefulness this week (if you missed my first post, Everyday Gratitude, click over and read that now!) The moment that refocused me was a reminder that gratitude can be hard, fleeting, and difficult to maintain. When I hear people talk about gratefulness, I rarely hear them discuss this part of the equation. Unfortunately, I think these tough realities are why people often give up when trying to develop a grateful mindset. It’s not being grateful that’s challenging, it’s maintaining it.

Yesterday was a long day. On Tuesdays, my daughter has no activities scheduled. No school, no swim lessons, and this week, no playdates. My husband has been on the road for work so it was just me and her… all day. And, don’t get me wrong, I adore my daughter and know that I am beyond blessed to be able to spend so much time with her during such a special moment in our lives. However, almost 2-year olds are no joke… especially mine. She has developed a serious attitude and has the lungs to back it up. On top of that, we have moved into a little sleep regression this week which means napping has been spotty at best.

On days like today, that leaves Mom with a total of 1.5 hours to herself. While I know there are Moms out there that would give their left leg for 1.5 hours, everything is relative and my to-do list was way too long to be squeezed into that small of a window. Given all that, by 4 pm I felt short-tempered, exhausted, stressed, and ready to call it quits on this whole Mom thing.

I most certainly did NOT feel grateful.

This IG post completely defined my mood:

So, I packed up my little lady and took a drive to the lake. We just sat… well, I sat and she climbed on and over me… and looked at the water for a bit. I had music playing in the background and a song came on that caught my attention. I hadn’t heard it in years, but it struck me because it took me back to a totally different time in my life. I was dating a guy who was a less than stellar boyfriend, I was finishing up my graduate training, and I was completely unsure of what I was going to do next.

It got me thinking about the tremendous ways in which my life has changed since then and it immediately shifted me into a more grateful mindset and here’s why…

I got married later than most women, which means I had a LONG time to spend in the dating scene and that means I’ve dated a lot of toads (frog sounds like too nice of a description, ha!). I remember terrible heartbreak and loneliness very, very well. I remember feeling like I’d absolutely never find the person I was meant to spend my life with. I, for sure, had settled on the notion that I may never get married and may never have children.

Once I figured out that the person I was supposed to be with had been my friend since second grade, there was a whole new set of hurdles to overcome. In the relatively short time my husband and I have been dating/married, we have faced an incredible amount of challenges. There were times I wasn’t sure how we’d make it and I most certainly never dreamed we’d stumble into the opportunities we have. I definitely could not have imagined the future we are living today.

So, it struck me as I sat looking at my daughter who was now sweetly playing, but had driven me half crazy all day, just how incredible my life currently is. And I realized I could have never imagined this life, my marriage, my children, or this happiness when I was that young 20-something listening to this song. And instantly, my whole perspective changed.

Things that seemed annoying and draining didn’t feel that way anymore and my daughter, who was close to stepping on my last nerve, now made me smile with the same behavior that made me want to scream 10 minutes earlier.

Sometimes, when we are in the thick of things, it’s so easy to forget just how much we are blessed with. We get busy… with work deadlines, kid’s activities, doctor appointments, hearing your name being called 850 times a day, and all the other silly little things that take up our days and make us feel overwhelmed. In the midst of all of that, we forget just how beautiful this life we have actually is… we forget to practice gratitude.

Often people set out with the intention to be more grateful or mindful. They tell themselves that they need to slow down and appreciate life more. And then somewhere on that journey, they find that the demands of life have overridden their gratefulness and they give up and let their gratitude practice slide.

But it is precisely on those days… the ones when you feel anything but grateful, that it’s most important to continue the journey.

Building a consistent gratitude mindset doesn’t come from practicing gratitude on the days when the sun is shining and the world looks beautiful. Getting there requires you to dig down deep on the days when its pouring outside, your kid is screaming, you just got a big bill in the mail you don’t know how to pay, and your dinner is burning on the stove. It’s in those moments of challenge, disappointment, and frustration that we truly get to practice gratefulness and build our dedication to finding and acknowledging the blessings that are part of our life… even on the bad days.

So I wanted to share a few tips to help you to either keep going with your gratitude practice or start anew with developing a grateful mindset:

1. Perfection is not the goal: Nobody is ALWAYS grateful. Despite what you may see on people’s Instagram accounts, no one spends 24 hours a day, every day, feeling full of gratefulness for every little part of their day. If you are judging yourself for not doing this whole gratefulness thing, perfectly, please stop. Perfection doesn’t exist and is not the goal. Practice and progress should be what you are aiming for.
2. Practice the return: The beauty of falling off the gratefulness wagon is that it gives you an opportunity to practice getting back on and that is really what we all need to master. Gratefulness is less about the attainment of something than it is about learning to return to something when we have gotten off track. When you find yourself in a negative space, practice gently reminding yourself of something small that you are grateful for. It may simply be that you are still able to take a breath. Whatever it is, keep working on bringing your mind back to it over and over again until you can feel yourself shift into a more grateful place.
3. Remind yourself to focus on gratitude: Achieving any goal often takes some accountability. In my last post about gratefulness, I linked to the Five-Minute Journal which is a great tool to help you practice gratefulness daily. If you are using this or some other form of gratefulness journaling, then you may need to set a reminder to go back and read your journal once or twice during the day. You may need to recommit to writing in it each day. Or maybe you need to set a reminder to mentally identify things you are grateful for 2-3 times per day. We all have our phones strapped to us day in and day out… why not make it work for us? Set a recurring appointment for yourself to mentally review what you are grateful for throughout your day. No snoozing buttons allowed!
4. Be gentle with yourself: And finally, you may have a voice in your head that is similar to mine. You find yourself feeling stressed and grumpy about the little things that happened in your day and once you notice it, you compound that with internally berating yourself for how ungrateful you are. I encourage you to consider that there are virtually no straight paths to any of the goals we have in life. Generally speaking, we achieve things with a two steps forward, one step back progression. You are not “ungrateful” if you have one bad day. In fact, if you are able to catch yourself spiraling and address it, you are doing better than most.

Hopefully some of these tips will come in handy for you as you continue on your journey of building an attitude of gratitude! I posted some great products for practicing gratefulness in this recent post as well!

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As always, Stay Healthy as Heck, KH