500 Words a Week - Grateful
A common theme I like to write about is how we can at times become lost in thinking about the future or in obsessing over the past. More often than not, this then comes at the expense of the present moment. Our ability to see and appreciate what is going on around us. Our ability to be present and contribute to the moment, rather than just a body whose mind is lost in the future or stuck in the past.
Why I like writing about this, is because it resonates with me. I can find myself stuck in these patterns, over-analysing the past or over-contemplating the future. In most cases, neither of these things tend to lead to feeling good. Or being able to enjoy what’s going on now.
My wife and I had a scare during the week, thankfully everyone is ok. It’s moments like these which put many of our life problems into context. After, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of overwhelming gratitude that everyone is ok, and feeling grateful for our close friends and family. The point is however, that we shouldn’t have to or need to wait for moments like these to feel grateful. It’s something we should remind ourselves of more frequently.
It also reminds us to not take the little things around us for granted. The majority of books around happiness I’ve read, all have a common theme around expectations. When our expectations aren’t met, we feel some form of disappointment. When they are met or surpassed, we feel happy. How often do we then think about the expectations we are setting? How often do we take the little things for granted, always expecting them to be there, when they might not always be?
There’s a great Naval quote; “If you can’t be happy with a coffee, you’ll never be happy with a yacht”. Without possessing some ability to enjoy and be happy with what we have, we will constantly be thinking about the next thing. Maybe achieving the next thing in our work careers or buying some new product we’ve been thinking about. We believe that this will be the answer, this will solve our problems and make us happy. It won’t. A paraphrase from Alex Hormozi, you already have done things or possess things that you once said would make you happy, how long did they make you happy for?
In some positive psychology research, gratitude has been strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Through thinking about gratitude, we usually recognize that the source of it tends to lie outside ourselves, it tends to be focused on the people around us. It allows us to connect with something larger than ourselves.
Next time you’re drinking a coffee, take an extra second to appreciate it. Next time you’re with a loved one, make sure you’re actually there. Next time you find yourself lost in the future or stuck in the past, just remind yourself that all you really have is what’s going on in this moment, right now.
