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Recently, I wrote an article about advanced gratitude tips to help people get beyond the stereotypical things people say they're grateful for and get out of a gratitude rut. You can read that original article here.
This is a followup article with six additional themes and prompts to help you identify what you're grateful for.
1. Your Plan B
Imagine you've got a running injury. You can't run for a few weeks, which is your usual stress reliever. You're frustrated. Instead, you're able to do some strength-training work. You can choose to feel grateful that your Plan B is available to you.
We often get so overfocused on not being able to do our Plan A that we neglect to pay attention to the fact we're fortunate to have a Plan B accessible to us. Your Plan B may not be your ideal, but sometimes pursuing a Plan B can lead you to unexpected discoveries and personal growth.
2. Have to do versus get to do
We all sometimes get annoyed with aspects of our responsibilities. You can flip this. For example, instead of me thinking, "I have to write an article," I can flip that thought to "I get to write an article." It's an enormous privilege that people want to read my advice and that I have platforms to reach readers. I also worked incredibly hard to gain the knowledge that allows me to be useful to people.
Or, imagine you need to support an employee who is struggling. Instead of thinking, "I have to support Brian," try thinking, "I get to support Brian." If you're in any role in which you get to shape other people (students, employees, kids, anyone you give feedback to), then you have a wonderful opportunity to do that in a way that lifts the other person up, brings out the best in them, and helps them learn how to act competently (which will have implications for other people in the future). And if you have responsibilities, it's typically because you have valuable skills.
3. When you can be imperfect without major consequences
We often beat ourselves for unproductive behaviors, like binge-watching a TV show. You might tell yourself—"Instead of watching TV, I should've been pursuing a project and bettering myself." For example, building an office in your backyard or cooking that new dish you've been wanting to make for ages.
Being harshly self-critical isn't likely to lead to you watching any less TV. Another way to look at it is that life allows us to be imperfect (such as engaging in some numbing responses to stress) and still have opportunities to pursue our goals. Binge-watching all three series of a TV show doesn't take away your opportunity to make that dish or take on that project. You can feel grateful that you can sometimes choose to retreat and relax, and other times choose goal pursuit or to go out of your comfort zone. Life provides enough opportunities to do both.
4. Abundance
When people are feeling fragile and self-protective, they often think a lot about scarcity. Whenever a resource feels scarce to you, try to see the abundance you're not seeing. For example, if you didn't get a job you wanted, or someone you were dating called it off, try thinking about how jobs, other people, and other ways to love are abundant.
Try not to be too specific. For example, you might think that attractive partners who want to date you are scarce, but ways to love aren't. Or a particular job might be scarce, but opportunities for meaningful or challenging work aren't.
5. Skills that help you compensate for weaknesses
We all have strengths and weaknesses. If you're not good at something, it's easy to get hung up on that. When you do, you might overlook how you're using other skills to circumvent those weaknesses and accomplish what's important to you.
Try identifying the skills that help you overcome your weaknesses and cultivate gratitude for those. For example, say you're anxiety-prone and easily overwhelmed. What are the skills that help you cope when you feel overwhelmed? How do those skills reflect your underlying strengths?
Do you struggle to think constructively consistently?
It's not important for you to always think grateful thoughts. In fact, I'd argue that no one particular thinking style is healthy and useful all the time.
What's essential is to flip into a grateful thinking mode when that would help you. You need to detect when you need to disrupt ruminative, anxious, or otherwise negative thinking. Then you need to know how to find prompts that will open you up to other thoughts. You can use prompts like the ones I've included in these articles or try books on different thinking philosophies, like "The Obstacle is the Way" (stoic thinking) or Brene Brown's work about rethinking vulnerability. When one thinking style doesn't help you feel and do better, try others.
Gratitude is a skill that can increase your resilience. By diversifying your gratitude thoughts, you can strengthen your resilience and see opportunities for happiness and fulfillment you previously didn't see.
If you didn't read the original article in this series, you can here.
