Gratitude makes the heart strong

For many a day, in my past, I’ve woken up with a weight on my shoulders that seemed to envelope me like a cloud. I hated my alarm. I didn’t want to get out of bed. The world seemed heavy and real peace was out of reach. “Why is life so hard?” I would ask myself, reinforcing the dark cloud above my head. I often would think about all the things that had gone wrong in my life and filter my frustrations through my half glass empty, pessimistic view.

I struggled with major depression three times in my twenties and even though in my thirties I made a valiant effort to cut depression out of my life, there was an all too familiar pathway in my brain of dwelling on the negative. Even though I wasn’t medically diagnosed in my thirties as I had been in my twenties, it was an on and off battle to fight the blues.

I married young and my desire to be a wife and mother had been strong in my childhood. After meeting a handsome helicopter pilot in the Army and a few months of dating, we decided to get married. We had two sons within a few years and our family went through a yearlong deployment where my husband was overseas. Life was busy and full. But a deep trouble had settled into our relationship.

After another deployment and our 3rd son birth, our 18-year marriage was over. My husband had, over time, become an alcoholic and emotional abuse was its sister. I don’t feel the details of that season are important for me to write here and I’m sure just by reading my last sentence you can put together pieces in your mind of what my possible life might have looked like. It was hard. Every day.

In my late thirties, I found myself with three children, broke, and on my own. Life was still very hard!

Now that you have some context, let’s go back to the beginning of this writing.  I have had many days where I woke up and honestly, just didn’t want to face the day. I had shown up for my marriage, my family, my finances, and my beautiful home. What did life give me back? Nothing in comparison to the effort I had given. I found it easy to wallow. To sit in my frustration and I often did. I did not want to live in a victim mentality, but I honestly didn’t know how NOT to!

Throughout my journey of divorce and struggle, I started to recognize that there was this little voice inside me that would raise her hand to be heard and she would gently say things like:

“You are more than this!”

“Your past does not define you!”

“Are you going to just succumb to the outcome of betrayal?”

“It’s okay to be sad, but do you really want to just stay here?”

“Do you like waking up every day not wanting to get out of bed?”

Thoughts like this would swirl my mind. And then more thoughts would come that had similar messages like:

“My kids are hurting so bad, will they ever be okay?”

“Did I do this to them?”

“How can I raise strong healthy kids, even with all the dysfunction around them?”

“How can I create healthy bonds with them that last into adulthood?”

“What if I’ve screwed up beyond repair?”

I remember this one particular day when I was walking around my house, tending to my plants, which had become a therapeutic activity for me. The little voice was whispering, and I remember just pausing and choosing to sit in that moment and listen. I allowed space for her questions to rise and sit in my heart.

Then I started asking myself:

“What are the things I need to do differently to let this little voice become louder?”

“How can I draw from her strength and enable myself to move through the dark times to a better place?”

“How can I leave the dark cloud in my past?”

I took some time to continue to contemplate what would help make that shift for me.

I remember as a little girl, I was always very optimistic. I danced and lived with the fairies. Built treehouses, sang and wrote songs with the birds, and played in the creeks with the bugs and fish. I moved through my childhood almost like I lived in a daydream. As an adult, I had definitely been smacked around and pulled out of the clouds with an extreme reality check of how harsh the world was around me. I longed to go back. Not necessarily to my childhood but to the truest version of myself. I felt that if I could tap back into that generously beautiful and whimsical me that I would somehow be able to center myself back to a place where the darkness that haunted me was behind me.

And then, it hit me. Lying in bed one day, staring at the ceiling, my imagination catapulted into a vision. I saw the most beautiful, detailed, and colorful butterfly gently flying and dancing above my head. On its wings was the delicately etched word “gratitude.” Seeing this beautiful creature in all its magical glory, I embraced the message and let it rest on my heart. With a deep sigh, I inhaled the word and let the magic of gratitude take flight into my being. I instantly felt calm and peaceful. There was no darkness. Just light and beauty.

From that day on, I’ve practiced being a person of gratitude. I inhale gratitude and I exhale fear.

I inhale gratitude and I exhale fear!

I allow myself to be in the process of enveloping gratitude. I walk along a journey of letting gratitude become apart of me. One day at a time I practice.

Through my practices I have found several things to be true. One, how I wake up in the morning is greatly affected by what I choose to meditate on at night when I’m going to bed. Taking a few minutes to think about my dreams, visualize myself as if those things were a reality, and listing all the beautiful things that happened that day and being thankful for them, is what sets my mind at ease as I sleep and allows me to subconsciously move throughout my sleep with gratitude and hope. When I wake up in the morning, I am already mentally geared toward seeing the good all around me.

You see, your brain wants to solve problems. It is always working on your behalf and there is a much science behind the fact that what you think about before you go to bed will stay with you throughout the night in your subconscious mind. In knowing that fact, it should help us make a simple decision to focus on the good and be embedded with gratitude during your hours of sleep. It’s a drastic way to compound your efforts to change your perspective, which in turn changes your reality.

A 10 minute gratitude exercise before bed = 6-8 hours of subconscious work in renewing your thoughts. How’s that for compounding huge rates of return for your efforts!

These gratitude practices have changed my life. People who now meet me have no idea what struggles I’ve walked through. They just see joy and confidence. It’s a beautiful gift I’ve given to myself and to the world. You can have that too!

How To Steps:

10 min. gratitude exercise before sleep.

•   Close your eyes.

•   Think about your day and recall one at a time the good things that happened that day.

•   Say out loud or in your mind what that good thing was and how you are thankful for it.

•   Find and list at least 10 things about that day that you are thankful for. (Once you start practicing this it will become easy to find 10 things. If it’s hard at first, keep going and do it anyways. It will get easier with time.)

•   Take note of the sensation in your body and how you FEEL differently in your body after you are done.

• If you are still negative or cranky. Repeat the exercise.

• Got to sleep and rest.

•   When you wake up, take notice of how your outlook on life is like.

•   Tip for an elevated experience:

  •   Before you hop into bed, shower first. A clean body is loving to your heart.

  •   Have a bed you love to crawl into. Give attention to your sheets, blankets, pillows, headboard, and bedside table lamps, etc. Pick out things you LOVE! Hopping into a beautiful space helps even the weariest of souls feel tended to. You can find many treasures at Goodwill or Offer Up to spend very little money and still be able to create a bedroom that holds you while you sleep.

  • Journal your experience. You can write out your list of things you’re thankful for in the evening. Then in the morning, write how you feel.

I will be hard to wake up with gloom and doom, even under extreme life situations if your mind is programed for gratitude.

Gratitude becomes a source of fuel to get through hard times.

Gratitude makes the heart stronger.

The product of gratitude is peace, perspective, and hope.

Gratitude makes YOU a better person.

Gratitude makes YOU an attractive person.

There is no substitute for gratitude.

Gratitude makes your face light up.

Gratitude makes a happy and peaceful disposition.

Gratitude attracts more good things.

I hope you have been encouraged and inspired to go be your most amazing, beautiful, and grateful self. There is only one YOU and I hope with all my heart that you can see how incredible you are. There is hope for your future and we can get stuck on sinking ships with things that go wrong in our lives and yet the power of gratitude is the purest and truest way of finding strength and lifting ourselves above our circumstances and giving us a foundation to build upon that brings real joy and peace.

Blessings to you, my friend! Feel free to reach out and share your journey with me!

Hugs,

Angela

P.S. Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash