Kindness and Gratitude

These days I'm practicing kindness and gratitude, I'm thinking about how I can be kind and grateful, even when life seems to just be against me.  

And with everything going on, all the busyness of our lives, failures, oppression, ignorance, miss information, miss understanding, isolation, state of our health, bills, work pressures, raising kids, divorce/breakups, deaths, losses, opinions, phobias,  and... of course the 'But wait there is more!' we are all facing. 

So lets talk about finding Kindness and Gratitude and how they might help with all of it. 

It is easy to let life's challenges overwhelm you  and I have touched on strategies on how to NOT allow life to overwhelm you in other blog posts. Yet I'm finding Kindness and Gratitude are two tools in our toolbox that we often overlook.

Kindness 

First Kindness is great! being kind costs you nothing, it is an infinite currency you can spend to make the universe a better and more loving place. Another part of kindness, which ties into gratitude is knowing and understanding what you control and what you don't control, and deciding how you are going to respond to all the things you have no control over and the things you do have control over.

For any moment, or difficulty you face, you choose your response. That response could be rage, you could give up, be depressed, you could dig your heels in, you could bury your head and pretend its not happening, you could fight, scream, yell, isolate...many ways to deal with other people, their stuff and baggage.  Yet I am finding the best way to address life's problems is to just be kind and do not expect ANYTHING back in return. In a sense be the change you want to see in the universe. 

A second tool, is talked bout in the book "The Courage to be Disliked" and goes something like this. We all have life tasks, things we own, decisions that only WE can make and for which others should have no say in. AND then there are life tasks that belong to others, things we do not own or should have No say in.  We can use this thinking to find kindness and empathy for others and for ourselves. As a transgender woman transitioning, I have ran into transphobic people, who reacted poorly to my appearance. But stepping back they have no say. It is not their life task to decide my identity, or how I present myself to the universe. It is THEIR life task to figure out why they are transphobic, why they even care and to decide their behavior. And I can use kindness to myself to acknowledge that they have the problem not me. and I can be kind and loving to accepting myself as I am meant to be, by my choice and decisions not theirs. Whats lovely about this strategy is that it can be applied to everything. 

Gratitude 

ok Gratitude, having gratitude can be tougher especially these days. We are all different, come from different backgrounds, means, and privilege. Some people are born into wealth, privilege, and have plenty of everything. And others have far far less.  I have found that for my life I have to step back and NOT focus on all the bad, the negative, the "Why me" or "how come I don't have x" rather the healthy approach is to be thankful for what you have. I am thankful for my health, the money I do have, people that choose to be apart of my life. my Job and being employed, my insurance. I am grateful I can pay my bills and occasionally get a pizza. and I am grateful I live in a Universe of diverse wildlife and wonders. 

One way to get to gratitude is to keep what is called a gratitude journal. The idea is you write about what you are gracious for everyday. whether it is just a hot shower, or you have food, or maybe someone was kind to you.  Do it...  I guarantee focusing on being gracious, will improve your mental health and also comes with a benefit that ties into life tasks and what you can and cannot control.  

 

I think I'll stop here for today. What do you do to be Kind? what do you do to be gracious?