Being the Future: creativefacilitating.com Blog

Grateful for Gratitude

December 8th, 2010

This is the season of gratitude. In gratitude to family and friends we make an extra effort to show our appreciation. In gratitude for being given life on this earth we reach out and make donations to groups that are trying to ease life for others who are in difficulty. Gratitude is an opening emotion– it opens the heart and I feel it opening my posture as I experience it.

Gratitude grows out of acceptance. Alan Sieler tells us in “Coaching to the Human Soul: Ontological coaching and Deep Change, volume II” [Newfield Australia, 2007] that “as a mood, Gratitude is not triggered by specific events. Gratitude is an ongoing feeling of gratefulness and appreciation for our life circumstances and how we are able to participate in life”. (p. 306) We often think about gratitude as being directed toward another person or life circumstance. We can also be grateful for ourselves. When we ask what it is about ourselves for which we are grateful, we can only answer with those things which we have accepted in ourselves. To notice is powerful. When we notice we can accept.

Gratitude is one of the emotions of positivity. Barbara Fredrickson in her book, “Positivity” [Crown Publishers, USA, 2009] reports research that reveals the transformative nature of positivity. She states that “gratitude opens your heart and carries the urge to give back– to do something good in return, either for the person who has helped you or for someone else.” She does ask us to guard against what she calls the “evil twin” indebtedness. (p. 41)

One constant source of wonder and gratitude for me is nature: leaves outside my window, bare twigs vibrating in the wintry bluster, frost on the morning grass, the penetrating warmth of sunshine, the smoothness of a stone that has been polished by water and wear, the smell of the air after a rain, the sound of a squirrel moving through the leaves, the warble of a songbird, the taste of a fresh-plucked berry.

With an open heart I can be more present for other people and more available to them. I would like for every day to be a day of gratitude. I have begun asking each morning “What am I grateful for today?” I leave the question hanging there in the air, knowing that as I progress through the day many things will then arise to fill in the answer.

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