Being FIT means developing Tenacity: The perseverance to push through any obstacle in your path. But how do you push through barriers when times get rough? The secret is simple: having tenacity means learning to not just FEEL grateful, but to BE grateful.
Gratitude comes the most easily when good things happen around us. A graduation, birth, promotion, party. But what about when life goes badly? Many times our first instinct is to change what's happening around us–we attempt to change the “thing” or “person” that we perceive as causing us harm. The hard truth is that most of the time, we can't. So what can we do when our circumstances seem out of our control? How can we regain our power even when things seem hopeless? Not only will gratefulness help— but it’s essential to creating the life that you want.
I understand that no one “feels” grateful when bad things happen. It’s natural to feel devastated, alone or disappointed when your situation is dire. As human beings, we don’t have total control over our emotions and can’t magically will ourselves to feeling grateful, less depressed, or happy. But there is a big difference between “feeling” grateful and “being” grateful.
Being grateful is not a feeling, but a choice, an understanding that doesn’t shift with the highs and lows of life. Gratitude is powered by intuition, and allows you to pause, zoom out and view your life with a new perspective. When you are able to both recognize your emotions and make the active choice to view things from a new lens, you’ll find that you are no longer overwhelmed by temporary circumstances.
With consistency, gratitude causes our brains to begin a positive cycle. The good news is that it's hard to focus on both positive and negative things at the same time, so how much light you allow into your vision is completely up to you. When we look for things to be grateful
for every day, when we reflect on it inwardly, when we express it sincerely and often — and when we do these things both at home and out in the world — we train our brains to make gratitude our default setting.
I want to know! What are you grateful for?
To learn more about how to practice gratitude, check out the FIT for Life course at www.sherylgrant.com/challenge