Give Away – 3 Gratitude Journals for Newsletter Subscribers
A Painful identity – renuka dhinakaran
Gratitude — What Holocaust survivors can teach us
One of the common themes in any story written about or by survivors of the Nazi concentration camps is gratitude. Almost all of them express their gratitude to something or someone — from their faith that kept them going to the kindness of strangers that kept them alive.
They even speak about their gratitude while still imprisoned in those dreadful camps, just for living to see another day or getting a piece of bread to eat. As Lale Sokolov, an Auschwitz survivor told Heather Morris (who wrote the book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz based on his life), “If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day”.
This feeling of gratitude appears to have played a big role in keeping their spirits up as they suffered through one of the worst crimes in human history.
Challenging our brains’ negativity bias — how can gratitude help?
When we are in the middle of a storm, it seems like we are never going to get out of it. Our brains, which are hardwired with a negativity bias, prevent us from looking at the good around us. We are therefore entrenched in a vicious circle of worries, depression, and negativity. The solution is not always, as the cat memes would have you believe, pumping yourself with positive, inspirational quotes.
It is to practice gratitude. It is to take a step back from our miseries and objectively look at what we have in our lives that we should be grateful for. It is to get down to specific things — not just clean air or water, a loving partner (although those are also things to be grateful for). For instance, even when you are really ill, you can be grateful that you have access to a good medical system. When you don’t have that access, you can be grateful that you have friends and family who are willing to pitch in.
On really bad days, when you feel like nothing is worth living for, trying to come up with things that you are grateful for can seem like a humongous task. The truth, however, is that once you start writing, you will not be able to stop. There are days when I have been in bed with the worst possible pain imaginable and not being able to eat a morsel or throwing up every bit I had painstakingly eaten, I could write at least seven things I was grateful for.
How gratitude has transformed my life and can transform yours too
Practicing gratitude has helped me immensely.
- First, it instantly puts me in a better mood than I was a minute before I started writing in my gratitude journal and I will take that any day!
- Second, it challenges the negative bias that is entrenched in my brain. It shows me that on what I thought was a painful or horrible day, I still had many comforts that I took for granted.
- Third, it helps me zoom out and see the big picture, while at the same time zooming into the small things that make that picture colorful.
- Fourth, and this is the most important change that I have noticed ever since starting the gratitude practice, is that I am more accepting of any difficult situation as I am now hyper-aware of how it could actually be worse.
Final Thoughts
Over time, at least after four weeks, practicing gratitude will become a habit. It has for me, at least, and for my friends who have tried it. When my brain now points out something that has made my day miserable or painful, it immediately comes up with something that is also good at the same time.
This balance has helped me improve my mental health. It has given me hope even when it looks like there is nothing to be hopeful about. It has taught me that no matter how much in pain I am, there will always be something to be grateful for and therefore, always something to be hopeful for. In the least, as I said, practicing gratitude can put you in a good mood for a few minutes a day and that is worth something during the strange times that we now live in, isn’t it?
Buy a simple, re-useable Gratitude Journal here
Head over to Etsy to buy my inexpensive Gratitude Journal. I created a a simple, straightforward gratitude journal to use over and over again. You can start it at any time and day of the year. Set aside five minutes every day for four weeks and write at least three to five things that you are grateful for. You can use the prompts in the journal to start with. Try to focus on the events of the day in particular and try not to skip any days. At the end of four weeks, write down an overview of what you are grateful for, how this practice has helped you and commit yourself to making this into a life long practice.
Give Away
I am giving away 3 Gratitude Journals (instant download on Etsy) for my newsletter subscribers. If you have not subscribed already, do so by the end of this month and I will announce, in the next month’s newsletter the 3 lucky winners (from a draw). You can subscribe to my newsletter here – apainfulidentity.com/signup .
Further Reading
If you are interested in reading more about the science behind gratitude practice, here are some interesting links:
Here is to serenity and feeling grounded!
I am a burned out international lawyer & mother with Fibromyalgia and anxiety, trying to re-discover my identity.
