Stuck? Try Gratitude

Poor, poor pitiful me
Poor, poor pitiful me
All these boys won't let me be
Lord have mercy on me
Woe is me
(from a Linda Ronstadt song)

Long, long, ago, in a galaxy far, far, away.... well, not really that far or that long ago but it has been a while... I lived through a difficult situation for many years. During that time, it was easy to feel sorry for myself, constantly keeping track of what was wrong or missing in my situation. It was darn near impossible to count my blessings.

Here's what I did: I recalled words from Desiderata, a poem that says "there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself" and realized that somewhere out there was someone who was in a worse condition. In fact, I'll bet that for every life there are at least a dozen people somewhere in the world who would give up almost anything in order to have what you have. Maybe you can breathe without an oxygen tank. Maybe you can walk on your own two feet. Maybe you have at least one family member who cares about you. Plenty of others don’t have these gifts.

I decided that I would be the person who most appreciated my life - no matter what was missing or painful or going wrong at the time. That doesn't mean I ignored my problems, or celebrated the misbehavior of others or accepted abuse, only that I found a way to identify and appreciate the areas in which I was blessed within my difficult situation.

Eventually that situation ended and things got better. You would think it would be easy-breezy to count my blessings now! And yes, it is easier, but my human nature still there, still wants to focus on everything that is missing or broken. The difference is that after all those years of disciplining myself to focus on the good, counting my blessings now comes much more naturally. It doesn't come naturally because the situation has changed - it comes naturally primarily because I have changed.

Stepping outside our own circumstances and looking at our situation from the point of view of someone who is much worse off helps us to quickly identify our blessings. You simply assume that there is someone out there who would love to trade places with you and try to imagine who that might be. Then you say "thank you" for at least one area where you are better off than those who have no home, no health, no friends, no family, no job, no dreams, no future. Gratitude is a powerful thing and can be the starting point for getting unstuck and un-miserable.

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