This week as we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States there is a lot of talk about being thankful. I myself talk a lot about the power of gratitude and appreciation. But there are times when things aren’t going quite the way we would like and, despite our best intentions, we just can’t seem to muster up any gratitude and appreciation in the moment.
It’s common to get anxious or even feel ashamed of not feeling grateful. Especially when you know you “should”. You aren’t stupid. You can look around and see that you aren’t destitute. You have food on your table, you have people who love and care about you. You have money in your bank account. But when your “toxic niceness” makes you feel like you can’t say no to going to the family dinner you’d rather not attend… Or the little gremlin in your head (your “inner perfectionist”) keeps reminding you that haven’t gotten the thing you REALLY want yet… Or your “inner critic” reminds you that you didn’t quite meet the goal you set for yourself and you’re not “doing as well” as _________ (fill in the blank with the person you compare yourself with. Who, by the way, is at a completely different stage of business or has different life circumstances than you!) …. You just don’t feel thankful!
You are LOA (law of attraction) savvy enough to know that you want to get to a place of feeling grateful and appreciative for what you have right now. It is a high vibrational state that attracts more of what you desire, but you’re just not there – and you want to feel better.
What do you do?
You have to start where you are. It’s really important to be honest with yourself about what is true for you in any moment. I see this so often in my coaching practice and I used to do this myself: pretending to feel grateful and happy when I just wasn’t feeling it. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job of hiding how I felt. Most of us don’t because we communicate more non-verbally than verbally. You just can’t have an attitude and hide it.
Then you make a Shift.
I created a 5 step S.H.I.F.T, system that shows you how:
Step 1 -The S – stands for “Seeing”. Being aware of where you are and how you are feeling. It’s an important starting point because you can’t change what you can’t see.
Step 2– The H – stands for “Honor”, which is to accept what is, without judgement. It’s the judgement “I shouldn’t feel like this”, “This is not good”, “I should be grateful” that creates the anxiety and stress.
This is where I love to tap: “Even though I’m NOT feeling very grateful right now, I choose to love and accept myself anyway and I am open to changing how I feel”. “Even though, I feel so damn sh*#%y right now, I honor myself and my feelings”. “Even though I’d like to be feeling grateful and thankful, I honor the fact that I don’t right now and I choose to love and accept myself anyway”.
(EFT – emotional freedom technique or meridian tapping – is one of the powerful tools I use for myself and with my clients as it is highly effective in helping to shift your physical and emotional state very quickly.)
Once you accept where you are and what you are feeling, you go to step 3 – I – is to “Identify” what you would prefer to be feeling, or experiencing, instead. For example: contented, happy, grateful.
Step 4 – F – is to “Focus” on what you would prefer and identify where you have that now.
Step 5 – T – is to “Take action”. One that is aligned with taking you in the direction of where you want to go. It might be to reach out and thank someone that has been kind or helpful to you in the past. It might be to perform a random act of kindness for someone else. It might be to give yourself an “affirmation bath” by whispering sweet nothings in your own ear and reminding yourself how amazing you are.
The result will be a SHIFT in how you’re feeling and before you know it, you’ll genuinely be feeling uplifted and thankful!
Happy Thanksgiving!