gratitude adjustment
Gratitude - the art of finding something good and being thankful for it. That’s my definitaion for it anyway, regardless of what anyone or anything else says. I’ve needed one for a little while now, and I can tell when I need one because I’m unhappy at work more than usual. The past couple of days I’ve been a pretty anti-social creature, and very unhappy with things at work. Not surprisingly, I haven’t been thankful for anything, except for coming home from work. And last night, while finishing an article, it occurred to me that I haven’t been grateful.
Gratitude is something that has the ability to quickjly alter an attitude, at least it does for me, and for the better, which cannot be said of many things. So yeah, some days I am unhappy at work. Bad decisions by customers and management, burdensome processes, uncooperative teams, tedious and unproductive work - I think most people have had work like that before, regardless of the type of work being done. I have days where it seems like that’s the only thing at work. But then I remember gratitude, and start to practice it and remember why I still work where I do - flexibility in hours, I come and go largely when I please or need to, as long as I get my work done and time in, I get to work with and talk to my friends everyday, I get to play with a pc for large amounts of time ( a concession to my geeky side), I get to work on a wide variety of things, and my immediate supervisor may be the best guy I’ve ever worked for. Looking outside work, I’ve got good friends for the first time in a long time, I have a good car, a nice house to live in, 1 dog and 3 cats, all healthy, to greet me when I get home, a great room to meditate in, lots of music to listen to or movies to watch, a comfortable place to sleep, and the list goes on and on.
I’m working on putting gratitude back into my daily routine. For a while I had a morning routine that really worked for me, and I started it again this morning, and my day went much better. After I get up and wake up, I look out my back window and offer a prayer to Great Spirit, thanking it for everything I can think of to be thankful for, and asking it aloud for anything I think I need or want. Once I’ve done that, it’s into the meditation room. Light the candles on my altar, then recite the Esoteric Principles of Judo. After that, I get out my zabuton, zafu, and seiza bench. I do 10 minutes or so of Zen meditation, sitting on the seiza bench, then 10 minutes of Reiki, sitting on the zafu. The whole thing takes about 30 - 35 minutes, but I find it very refreshing and a great way to start my day.
I’ve found another trick that helps me stay connected to my gratitude as well. once I read something that advised me that every day for a week, I should write in a journal the things I was grateful for. Well, I decided to try an experiment, and took the notebook with me to work, and every hour I tried to take just a moment and write one thing I was grateful for, even if it was just that 5:00 was an hour closer. It was one of the best ideas I ever had. Yes, I had a couple times where I really did put down that I was grateful 5 was and hour closer, but not very often. And I was pretty happy most of the time to boot. I’m going to do it again for a bit I think, I need the adjustment.
On a side note, I find it interesting that almost every book that talks about improving your life, certainly those that deal with improving your financial situation, always bring up the subject of gratitude. Inductively, I conclude that being grateful is a universal law for success, one of those ’secret’ actions that anyone can perform and which few do. But I can say from personal experience, the results are astounding. I love the profound yet simple things people can do to significantly alter their lives for the better, because they’re so obvious most of us overlook them.
Overlooked or not, thank you for reading this entry.
Namaste.