It's Always Time to be Grateful

As I’m sitting at my desk, in a job where I am pretty much given free reign to do what I want, where I am trusted with my work and have a considerate and kind boss, an email drops into my inbox that annoys me and I feel fed up, starting to wonder when I’m going to get out of this place.

As I drive through the countryside on the way to dinner with my mum, dad and sister, in a delicious Japanese restaurant in a nice village, I spot a crack in my windscreen and swear under my breath, wondering why these things happen and why I should have to deal with things that aren’t my fault.

As I walk back from my car to my flat that I don’t have to share with anyone and that I’ve decorated just the way I like it, walking with my belly full of delicious Japanese food, I remember that I need to change my bedsheets when I get in and I whine to myself, wishing I didn’t have to do such menial tasks.

Then I reflect on the podcast I’ve just listened to featuring Baroness Newlove, who lost her husband ten years ago in a brutal homicide, just a few years after he’d survived stomach cancer. And then I look to my left and see a homeless man on the street, and I remember the homeless man I talked to a few weeks ago who hadn’t seen or spoken to his daughters in 8 years.

In a second, things are put into perspective and I am so grateful for what I have.

I remember being on my way home from school with my sister. We were both feeling low, going through quite a difficult adjustment period having just moved from Croydon to Kettering. We had left everything we knew behind, our friends and our schools. Our parents were busy and we were often just the two of us, and so we sat and counted our blessings, listing things to be grateful for. It made us both smile.

The thing about gratitude is that it doesn’t change anything in your life. It just changes the way you see things. Your circumstances are exactly the same but the power of your mind and the power of perspective help you to feel completely differently about things.

The other thing about gratitude is that it doesn’t change anything in your life. And therefore when you are going through a time of poor mental health and you’re feeling extremely low, one of the most difficult things to do is change the way you see things. In fact, most mental health disorders come with a hefty serving of chicken-and-egg. You need to change your mindset in order to change your mindset. Things seem impossible and become overwhelming.

I heart it said recently that gratitude has become a trend in the wellness world. I thought it was a bit of a strange comment, really. How can gratitude be a trend? But there are certainly more books on it, people keeping gratitude journals, and gratitude becoming part of meditation. And I think it’s small changes like this that can really help you include gratitude in your every day life. It doesn’t have to be the mammoth task of changing your whole outlook on the world, it’s just an exercise. It might be as simple as counting your blessings.

And actually, mindset is more powerful than you might think, and although this can be very difficult to see I think it’s imperative. I really believe that when you change the way you see things, the things you see change. Gratitude in itself may not have the ability to do anything about your circumstances, but we know that in many situations if we feel positive about something we’re more likely to succeed. The belief (and unfortunately it’s usually blind belief) that when you’re extremely low things can still change for the better, is what might just make it possible to start making the change.

One of the key motivators in recovering from my eating disorder was knowing that I would never let it take my life, and I would never let it last forever. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to do it, I was amongst a swarm of bees and couldn’t see even a hint of a way out. But when I closed my eyes and thought about my future, I just knew that it wouldn’t be like this forever. And so somehow I found a way to wade through it and find my happiness again.

In less serious circumstances like today when I’m frustrated about emails and cracked windscreens and changing bedsheets (I mean, no one likes doing it, do they?!) I’m reminded how fortunate I am to have overcome such a dark time in my life, and I just hope that I can remain grateful forever, knowing that if a cloud does come over me again, gratefulness and its power to change things might just pull me through.