It's All a Matter of Perspective ...

"Happy new year"  ......It just slides off our tongue sooo easily and is very frequently followed by "I hope so" or " it would have to be better than this year" or "this year has been a s**t year". Whether we have had a great or not so great year generally it's a matter of perspective , I usually find. I of course, do acknowledge that some of us have had truly difficult years with horrid experiences or losses and the expected and entirely appropriate emotions to go with them. I really appreciate the need for emotional expression and the need to do this least our trauma comes back to bite us.If the situation isn't truly devastating and sometimes it is , then I try to give myself a bit of a time line to feel sorry for myself. So, my thoughts might be "OK that's disappointing I didn't get that job but I'm going to allow myself till the start of next week to feel sorry for myself and feel this way then l'm going to climb up to that place where I can get on with it "!. For me. sometimes if I just start acting a certain way very often the emotion will catch up. I usually find if i feel yuck , the poor people I talk to about it , the worse i feel. This is exactly where gratitude can kick on in . I can focus on the fact that health and career wise , 2017  hasn't been my finest hour, but, I can cope with the negative thoughts about that by having a practise of gratitude . I say "a practise" because coping mechanisms are a bit like labour breathing , if you don't practise it daily ..when life hots up and gets painful...it will fast go out the window because it is not a "daily practise" and as such we can't simply engage it automatically.

So how can we start being grateful?. I always think globally and gradually work my way back to little old me  and ask myself ...

• What concrete things can I be grateful for that some people in our world don't have and I take for granted?
• What conflict, cultural and religious pressures do others have that I don't and take for granted?
• What is unique to my country , state, government , weather, customs , laws, technology , politics, religion, employment,  culture and freedoms and  environment that I am grateful for?
• Who in my family, friends and work family am i grateful for?
• Do I live with acute or chronic physical disease or pain , if not i'm grateful!
• Do I have all my faculties, senses, am I mobile , can I go out , walk , drive and am I independent? If so show I gratitude.
• Do i live with mental illness, yes, but mostly i'm functional, so I'm grateful.
• Am I so emotional unwell that I live with anxiety , depression, psychosis or suicidaility ? If not, I show gratitude
• Do i have life giving relationships , am i loved instead of suffering physical, sexual, financial, emotional or elder abuse, for this i am grateful?
• Do i have a faith and a faithful community or an interest club that I can be grateful for?
• Do I have entertainment or music or a hobby I am grateful for ?
• Have I had acts of kindness bestowed upon me ?.If so then  for this I am grateful.
• Do i have fur babies or other pets to colour my world, if so I show gratitude.
• Do i have enough.......

Some people like to have a gratitude journal where they record their gratefulness and look back on it when times are hard and they need a reminder of all that they should be grateful for. Of course, the modern and sexy crafty thing to do these days is to make your journal out of recycled materials by gutting an old hard cover novel with a decent size spine , making the pages for it and covering it and personalizing it with recycled materials and your own private art.

Speaking of Art , my images are not showing up on blog , hopefully I can problem solve this soon .

happy new year everyone 

Liz xx