Going through something that’s challenging in your life, like a divorce, makes everything around you seem consumed by that challenge. It can become really easy to think that everything is surrounded by hurt, negativity, and spiraling overwhelm. You may have to work harder to find the goodness in life.
Using thankfulness and gratitude as a grounding practice to help you recognize what is good about your life can be a powerful practice. In this episode you'll learn my top 5 there is power in gratitude and how developing a practice of gratitude, if only for moments here and there, will help you have a more full, expansive life.
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I know what it feels like to second guess every decision, even small ones like what to have for dinner. I've been that mom who cries herself to sleep after divorce because I'm so worried that I've made terrible decisions that have ruined my kids' lives and that I just don't have the capability to know what are the 'right' decisions and what are the 'wrong' ones. If you can relate to this, then you need to come work with me. Since my divorce six years ago I've learned the tools and techniques needed to make decisions confidently and to trust myself to know what's best for me and my kids. I can teach you how to build that confidence in yourself as well, so being confused about what to do in your life will be something that you used to do. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
I’m your host, Karin Nelson and you’re listening to Becoming You Again, episode number 72.
Welcome to becoming You Again. The podcast to help you with your mental and emotional wellbeing during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the trauma of your divorce by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so your life will be even better than when you were married. I’m your host Karin Nelson.
Welcome back to the podcast. Since this week in America it’s the week of Thanksgiving, I thought that I’d do a podcast episode about the power of gratitude. Being thankful is something that we’re taught from the time we are little kids. Right? One thing that every little kid learns is to say thank you when someone gives them a gift or does something for them. Please remember to say thank you. Let’s write a thank you note. Let’s make sure and say thank you. Right. And I remember growing up my parents teaching that we should be thankful for what we have. My parents really worked very hard to provide for us and we didn’t have like an overabundance of things or an overabundance of money when I was growing up. But we did have a house that I felt safe in. We always had what we needed. Sometimes we had the things that we wanted that were important us. Growing up I always had a sense of sufficiency that I would always have everything that I needed and I was taught to be grateful for that and I think that was a beautiful thing that my parents instilled in me.
I think when we go through something challenging in our life, like a divorce, it can become really easy to be consumed with that challenge. It can become really easy to think that we are only surrounding by hurt, and negativity, and spiraling overwhelm and when we are in those moments, when that is really where most of our focus is, you might have to work a little harder to find the goodness in your life. But this is what I really want to teach you with this podcast in general is that being intentional about where you put your mental focus, it really is important. And that maybe when you’re going through something challenging that’s when you need the intentionality in thoughts the very most.
And using thankfulness and gratitude as a way to ground yourself in the present is a really great way of being intentional with your thoughts. Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that you have to stay constantly in positivity or you should never feel negative emotion. Or if you are going through something heart you should always look on the bright side. That is not at all what I am saying because I think when we try and do that with our lives, when we try to put a Band-Aid of positivity over something that really is negative and challenging that that is quickly becoming toxic positivity in our lives and that is not at all what I want you to be learning or taking from this podcast episode where we are talking about gratitude and we are talking about thankfulness. It’s like trying to put a spin on something that is so difficult and you just pretend like you’re being positive. Like I said it’s like putting a Band-Aid over something that really needs more focused and more attention to create the healing around it. That’s not what we are trying to do when it comes to gratitude and thankfulness.
So what I hope that you’ll take from this episode is this idea that gratitude is a practice and it’s a state of mind that you can get better at. If you can begin to adopt this practice of gratitude in your life, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day or only a few minutes of week, your life will be impacted in a beautiful way.
It’s not a secret that there is something very powerful about gratitude and about being thankful. This is something that has been taught for thousands of years all over the world, in all religions, all cultures. Before I really jump into EU with my top five reasons of being grateful I wanted to share a few of my very favorite quotes about gratitude that I think are powerful reminders of the importance of gratitude. And you have probably heard these and if not write them down, hang them up, whatever you want to do. They bring meaning to my life when I think about gratitude in this way and I think they are beautiful reminders. But if you have one that you love I would definitely say hold on to it and remind yourself of it in those moments when you really need it.
So Oprah said, “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” I totally agree with that statement.
Tecumseh is quoted as saying, “When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.” And that’s really one of the main things that I teach you guys is to really be in control of what it is that you actually can control which is always yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. Right. And I feel like that quote from Tecumseh is really encompassing that whole idea.
And this might be my favorite one and it’s by from Eckart Tolle, and he says, “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” And I 100% agree with that statement.
Ok so this is going to be a shorter podcast episode for y’all but it is okay because it is Thanksgiving week and I know you are all very busy and you have got a lot on your plate and you are trying to juggle kids and being with family and not being with family and all of the emotions that come with that and it’s all great. So want to dive into my top five reasons and I really want to paint this picture in your mind about the power of gratitude. So I am going to share with you my top five reasons of why it is important to be grateful and these are my opinions. Okay. These are the reasons that I turn to gratitude in my own life. And I hope that you will find meaning for yourself in some of these reasons but maybe you have your own reasons why you like to turn to gratitude and why you like to find things that you are thankful for. If that is the case then totally at those to the list or make up your own list. Whatever it is. Anything that I say in the podcast are just my thoughts and my opinions and things that I think might help you and whatever works for you would take it and run with it. And if it does not work you do not have to adopt it ever. I am not ever going to be the guru who is like take this and do it and this is how it needs to be done. No of course not. You take what works for you just as I take from my mentors and people who I get inspiration from the things that they teach that work for me. All right so that was a little bit of a tangent. But that is okay. So my top five reasons why it is important to be grateful.
1. Gratitude makes you happier. Being grateful, in my opinion, and recognizing what you’re grateful for helps you to focus on what’s positive in your life. When we are consciously opening ourselves up to positive emotion it is so much easier to create a feeling of happiness for ourselves when we want it most.
2. Gratitude improves your mental wellbeing. So because of our evolutionary biology our brains have evolved to be more negative, but it is in a way trying to protect us because of this. Right. Our brain is always scanning for things that are negative in an effort to keep us alive and in an effort to keep us safe. So again, when we can use gratitude to intentionally find that opposite effect. To intentionally look for the things on the positive side in our lives are overall mental well-being benefits from.
3. Being grateful helps to improve our relationships. Now when I am talking about relationships I am talking about our relationship with ourselves, because I believe that is the most important relationship in our lives is our relationship with our self and our relationships with other people because what gratitude does is it really opens us up to compassion and it enhances our ability to be compassionate with others and to be compassionate with ourselves and the more we can show up with compassion when we direct it toward ourselves and when we direct it toward other people the more full and enriched our relationships will become.
4. Being grateful opens you up to more abundance in your life. Because when you recognize all that you have and you feel that abundance you that allows you to create space for more – more love, more value, more goodness, more openness and your world and your life literally expands. But without that gratitude and without that implements you invite more scarcity into your life which really is the opposite of abundance. And what scarcity does, we wanted to do the opposite, we want it to open up more abundance but what it really does is it is closing the door on expansion. It keeps you feeling small. It keeps you staying small. It keeps you stuck and it keeps you feeling like you and your world is not enough.
5. And number 5. Gratitude helps you realign you with the present. And I truly believe that being present is the key to conscious thinking. As you all know because you have been listening to this podcast for a while. We are on episode number 72 so it has been a while. Right. I have been in your ear for a little bit. You have learned something from me I hope and I hope that one of the things that you have taken with you is that your thoughts create your feelings create your actions which then create your experience. So consciously deciding what you are going to think is in turn going to create the feelings that you want and it is in turn going to help you live a more full, intentional life through your actions. And focusing on what you are grateful for helps you laser in on what is amazing about your life right now and what you want to create for yourself moving forward.
Alright my lovelies, I am so grateful for each of you who listens to this podcast. I truly am. Making this podcast each week is something that I enjoy. It’s one of my favorite things that I get to do for you and I am just so, so thankful to each of you who comes back and listens and takes from this podcast what you will and really applies it to your life in a way that I hope is serving you and helping you move forward. So happy Thanksgiving my friends. I love you. I think you are amazing. I hope you have a truly beautiful week. I will talk to you soon.
If you like what you’re learning on the podcast and you’re ready to create lasting change and results in your life then you need to be working 1:1 with Karin as your divorce coach. This is where we take everything you’re learning in the podcast and 10x it with implementation and weekly coaching where you start to see change in yourself and your life immediately. To find out more about how work exclusively with Karin go to www.karinnelsoncoaching.com . That’s www dot Karin nelson coaching dot com.
Thanks for listening. If this podcast episode agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give it a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure to check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.