Hello Everyone
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate this holiday and had a great week to all!
Last week, I wrote about compassion, a wonderful skill to cultivate that will ultimately help YOU as much as the people around you.
This week we'll talk about gratitude, another character trait with similarities to compassion in that gratitude also helps both you and those around you.
I'll be honest that when I was younger, as part of having anxiety, I also had "victim mentality" -- a situation where you feel like you're the victim in many situations. This is dangerous because it can keep you from realizing that in most situations in life it's up to you to take control of your own destiny. It also gives you more of a negative filter on life.
As I overcame anxiety and took more control of my destiny, I started becoming much more grateful for the opportunities I had in life. Often, your choice of applying a negative or positive filter can profoundly impact your resulting viewpoint on a situation.
For example:
- Negative filter/victim mentality: As a kid, I grew up in a single-parent household and we didn't have much money, sometimes barely being able to afford the necessities.
- Positive filter/gratitude: We DID afford the necessities and had a lot of fun in unconventional ways like making up our own games. My mom taught me the value of hard work in reaching goals even if it's often not easy. This served as a foundation for reaching many goals and later helping many other people reach their goals -- I'm grateful for this incredible life opportunity!
My recent brain surgery gave me so many opportunities to be grateful instead of feel like a victim. But only because I had turned gratitude into a habit. Otherwise this would have been an ideal time for victim mentality. And many years of practicing this habit may have led to a different outcome in this situation?
One specific example stands out as an interaction I'll never forget: I had just been told by a doctor as a COMPLETE SHOCK that I had a brain tumor and needed to be transferred by ambulance to another hospital to their neurosurgery department. At this point, I didn't know if this was cancer, if it was operable, or the answers so many other questions.
On the ambulance ride, the paramedic riding next to me told me his goal was to become a firefighter, but he needed to pass the fitness test and hadn't been able to do that yet. I could tell this was an important goal to him and wanted to help.
I felt grateful for the opportunity to motivate him by sharing the principles of the SparkPeople 10+ fitness minutes program. I think that positive filter and opportunity to help someone else by "being SparkGuy" helped me stay calm during such a life-altering moment in time.
This is the power of gratitude: when you practice it, this trait alters who you are at a fundamental level. I have always used Viktor Frankl as my motivation in situations like this because of his story of surviving a Nazi concentration camp in part by realizing that no matter what happens to you, you always have the power to choose your response.
If it helps you build gratitude into a healthy habit, please use my story as a motivator. Even in a situation where I didn't know whether I'd live or not, I was still able to practice gratitude. Gratitude for the opportunity to help others. Gratitude to many others for helping me including my rock star neurosurgeon who worked on my brain (by chance -- or not?)
And gratitude to NOT be a victim - but rather to be a fighter. A fighter for my family, friends, co-workers, and all of you!
I've told many people that I felt "oddly calm in such a terrifying situation" and this is one reason for that peace. This experience will surely help me continue to improve and practice this habit :).
When I started writing about this topic, I was going to focus on how gratitude can help you be healthy, but I like this direction instead so even changed the title. The quick summary on the health connections is that gratitude and being positive has so many benefits to your health including lower stress, better sleep, and higher happiness levels. These items alone touch almost every area of health including building strong relationships with others. Once again there's a connection between a leadership/character trait and your health :).
Are there any situations in your life where you can change from a negative filter to a positive, more grateful filter?
Are you ready to be a grateful fighter?
What are you thankful and grateful for this year? Let me know on my blog!.
Since my recovery continues to go extraordinarily well, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be back again next week trying my best to coach you to reach your goals! Thanks again for all of your continued positive thoughts and prayers. It really touches me that so many people continue saying they are praying for me. I can feel that strength in opportunities like this writing today.
SparkCheers!
Chris "SparkGuy" Downie
Chris (SparkGuy)
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