Use your problems to find gratitude
The lopsided scale
There's a very good chance that your thinking is skewed on the side of non-gratitude when you’re in a divorce-connected family.
Just like the news, a car wreck on the side of the road, or gossip — it's the drama, chaos and conflict that rivets our attention in our dual-family households.
Our brains are attuned to problems because we're attempting to learn more about either resolving them — or heading them off in the future. But if you're like me and most other humans, there's a good chance your life is mostly focused on problems.
The things yet to be done.
The things done poorly.
The things currently going wrong.
The stuff likely to go wrong.
It's like we're all walking around with not only one piano hanging over our heads by a thinning string, but hundreds of them. How're they're being strung up and by whom, I do not know, but they're there!
And yet...
The absence of pianos
There are probably many more things going right in your life than there are going wrong.
You've just stopped seeing that.
You have a computer or a mobile phone. You can read. You are currently not under attack by incoming missiles. You are most likely inside, in a building protecting you from the elements. You have food in your cupboard.
However peaceful or not your relationships, you are still connected to people.
They're there, which is a lot more than lonely people can say who rarely talk to anyone.
Just think: if the opposite of any of those situations above were the case for you, you'd probably give almost anything to trade up to where you are now. Remember what it's like to have a problem so agonizing that you'd practically die to make it go away?
Where you are now is probably pretty damned good, now that you think about it, wouldn't you say?
Spend a second asking yourself
Who loves you? Who do you love? What brings you joy? What about being yourself do you actually savor and appreciate? Where are your efforts making a difference in the world, even in the tiniest of ways?
What have you forgiven recently? How have you changed for the better?
It's easiest to see in hindsight, but life is always continuing on as it is; a rambling, raucous, ever-widening, messy parade of both good and bad. We know it's true, because when we look backwards, we can see that both elements are always there.
So why must we be so focused on what's going wrong - when the predictable, the reliable, the nurturing aspects of life and the ones we can count on are also ever present?
Sometimes it takes thinking about what you don’t have to be grateful for what you do.
