Acting As If
Today I am grateful for the early morning quiet and time to reflect. I am also grateful for the prayer and meditation I start my day with.
Practicing an attitude of gratitude daily doesn't mean that I'm always happy. I'm human. Quite human. And it's not the empty "positive thinking" that Barbara Ehrenreich decries in her book Brightsided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. (An intriguing book if you haven't read it.) There's nothing empty about practicing gratitude. Gratitude builds a comforting and stable structure around us, far from empty.
I admit that there are days all I can do is "act as if" I am grateful. Being tired, rebounding from a disappointment, and being worried about a loved one are all examples of things that might leave me "acting as if." But even on such days, acting as if is better than succumbing to "poor me."
If you don't believe me, try it. That's the beauty of creating and nurturing a gratitude habit; we build a stockpile that is available on those days when we aren't able to produce much.
Practicing an attitude of gratitude daily doesn't mean that I'm always happy. I'm human. Quite human. And it's not the empty "positive thinking" that Barbara Ehrenreich decries in her book Brightsided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. (An intriguing book if you haven't read it.) There's nothing empty about practicing gratitude. Gratitude builds a comforting and stable structure around us, far from empty.
I admit that there are days all I can do is "act as if" I am grateful. Being tired, rebounding from a disappointment, and being worried about a loved one are all examples of things that might leave me "acting as if." But even on such days, acting as if is better than succumbing to "poor me."
If you don't believe me, try it. That's the beauty of creating and nurturing a gratitude habit; we build a stockpile that is available on those days when we aren't able to produce much.
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