Gratitude: It's Your Choice

I have a friend who is about to receive an adopted baby for the second time. The first one passed away. She is understandably nervous about the prospect of bringing home a newborn. But what is sad is she’s gotten herself into a place in her mind where she is gripped with fear.

It occurred to me that like many of us when we encounter a problem, there is a choice we can make about how we choose to see and deal with it. When faced with a problem, I know this is going to sound weird, but if you are grateful for it, you are able to see it differently. And if you are in a place of gratefulness, there is no room for fear.

Take my friend’s issue, for instance, she is fearful about obtaining a new baby that another tragedy could happen, or that she will be reminded of the old feelings she felt when the first baby died.

But, if she flipped it, and thought, “Thank you, God, for another opportunity to receive a baby, thank you for another chance, thank you for allowing me to be a mother again” – the focus is then put on these thoughts and there isn’t room for the fearful thoughts to enter simultaneously.

It’s difficult, I know. It feels strange, and there is even evidence that your brain is so accustomed to processing information in the same way, that when new thoughts like these enter, they are sometimes unrecognizable to your brain.

It is work to change the thought patterns in your head, no doubt about it. I know from my own experience trying to do this with my issues, that it just feels so normal to retreat to my old way of thinking, that even though I know it causes me more grief, I think in the old way rather than working towards seeing the problem in a new light.

But with awareness, comes change. When you start to become aware of the thought patterns in your head, and then a problem arises, you take a step back, decide how you will choose to react to it, either fearfully or gratefully, and then watch as it unfolds. The more often you make the choice of being grateful for the issue in front of you, the better at it you will become.

Then in times of stress, rather than reverting back to your old ingrained habits of being frightened and resisting the problem, you will have trained your brain to find the silver lining within the issue - it is there if you look for it!

It’s almost like working out muscles in the gym. You try a spinning class, and even though you know it will help you lose weight faster, it makes muscles you never even knew you had HURT, so you go back to your aerobic class. But if you keep at the spinning class, pretty soon you tighten up those new found muscles and you enjoy the fact that you’re keeping up now with the other people in the class.

In the same way, the process of gratefulness is working out the muscles in your brain through your thought patterns. And just like sweating through spinning class, the pay off is worth it!