Reframe Your Perspective, Benefit From Gratitude

Gratitude is considered by many to be the real key to happiness and seems an appropriate topic the week of American Thanksgiving. By focusing on what you have in your life rather than what you have not and the lessons learned about yourself in any situation rather than just the hardship endured, you’re more likely to achieve a sense of peace and joy consistent with what we tend to think of as “happiness.” Sometimes you have to reframe your perspective to get there.

Years ago I attended a wellness retreat for the first time, heard someone give a talk about the power of gratitude, felt inspired and bought each of my teenage daughters a gratitude journal. I instructed them to write three things they were grateful for every evening before bed. I told them they could be grateful for family members, including our dog, only once each and had to notice the world and be present each day to come up with three entries. Two years ago, when I was moving, I packed up their childhood home and found all three notebooks untouched. I had to laugh. Gratitude loses its power when it’s forced. It has no power at all when your mother prescribes it. What was I thinking?! In addition to the fact that the gratitude journal project was doomed from the start, I now understand what a gift it is to reframe your perspective in a way that generates recognition of goodness in your life, goodness for which you can feel gratitude.

Reframe Your Perspective Doesn’t Mean Always Look on the Bright Side

Gratitude is sometimes confused with always searching for the bright side. But they’re not the same. A constant positive spin, especially in the most challenging circumstances, can be invalidating. Some things, some people just suck. Gratitude is not meant to replace grief. It is not about making excuses or replacing hurt with silver linings. Being grateful does not mean you ignore problems or pretend things are great if they aren’t. If it’s not authentic gratitude then it doesn’t serve much of a purpose. You didn’t succeed in your chosen career because you were bullied as a teen or by a former boss so you don’t need to feel grateful to your bully. You did not find yourself or become strong because a former partner mistreated you so it’s not necessary to feel or express gratitude to that person.

And when it comes to grief, there are no shortcuts or replacements. We all have space to hold both grief and gratitude at the same time. We owe it to ourselves to cultivate and protect that space. There’s no value in invalidating our true feelings and experiences by denying pain.

This doesn’t mean bullying, mistreatment or grief are devoid of lessons. You can be grateful for the lessons you learn about yourself while accepting the reality that unjustified, inexplicable crap happens. Learning you can move forward even when it seems impossible is incredibly powerful. Learning what truly motivates you can help you with that forward movement.

Reframing Thoughts

A route that I have found helpful is seeing gratitude through the lens of reframing. You may think negative thoughts about yourself, you may feel unlucky and have examples to bolster your claim. There is still room for a reframe. Reframing requires taking a pause and noticing what’s happening, what you’re thinking and feeling. That’s always a good thing. When you reframe negative thoughts, you can start by focusing on the facts in front of you.

You put off a thing that needs to get done and write yourself off as lazy. When prompted, though, you can probably summon a list of all the things you’ve done this year, month, week, day or hour. Laziness is most likely not your defining characteristic. And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with feeling lazy and doing nothing sometimes (cue The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars and take a look at my earlier blog post on doing nothing). But maybe you can’t push yourself to do the thing because you’re tired. Your body and brain might telling you they need a rest. Or maybe you just really don’t want to do the thing and you’re simply unmotivated because the task at hand is difficult, boring, annoying or simply unappealing. A reframe would look like: “Sometimes I have to do things I don’t want to do and it takes me a while to get those things done. I’m grateful that I’m human and not a robot. I’m grateful that I’m able to get other things done and that my track record is as good as it is.”

Reframing Perspective

Sometimes it’s our perspective on an event or incident that benefits from a reframe. I don’t think you need to find the good in every situation but I do think it’s helpful to seek out and learn the lesson. You may get fired from a job or dumped in a relationship, fail an exam or crash your car. These are all rough situations that leave you feeling lousy. They’re all situations where you might feel like your world is crashing down. Yet, the world, your world, goes on.

When you reframe your perspective, you do so by looking at the complexities within you. Humans are resilient. No matter where you’re at in life, at this point your track record for survival is 100%. Those odds are only possible with inner strength, capability, and skill. It feels right to be grateful for that strength and thankful that you’re so capable. Nobody else’s wrongdoing made you that way. Rather, you survived the wrongdoing because of who you are and always have been. That’s a lesson worth learning.

There’s always a lesson. Life is a reservoir of lessons, ripe for the taking. The lesson is nearly always a lesson about ourselves. Understanding ourselves is always a gift worthy of gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving!

Musical Playlist While You Ponder This Post

Gratitude by Earth, Wind & Fire, I Want to Thank You by Otis Redding, Thank You for Being a Friend –  The Golden Girls theme song, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) by Sly & The Family Stone, Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande, Thank You for the Music by Abba

Thinking and Trying

Something to think about: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy

Something to try: A Gratitude Journal? If that doesn’t work for you, consider taking a look at Dr. Joel Wong’s List of Questions to Generate Gratitude.

Coaching Can Help

If you want to try reframing your negative thoughts or some of the things that happen in life and you’re feeling stuck, consider working with a coach. I’d be happy to hop on a 15-minute Zoom session with you to talk about coaching and see if we might want to work together. Schedule your free session here.