Have you ever found yourself completely losing your patience over a minor inconvenience, or feeling a heavy wave of constant annoyance that you just can’t seem to shake? And you ask yourself: ” Why do I get so angry?”
You don’t have to be screaming or slamming doors to be dealing with anger. Annoyance, irritation, frustration, anger, fury and rage all belong to what I call the anger family. They differ in intensity, but they are closely related emotional expressions.
How can we be grateful when life is hard? Or, as we say in South Africa, when we’re gatvol?
For those who aren’t familiar with that wonderfully expressive South African word, gatvol means we’ve had enough. We’re fed up. Life feels like a struggle, things aren’t working out the way we want them to, and then somebody tells us to be grateful.
Really?
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In this video, I explore why gratitude can make such a difference when life is difficult — and how we can find something to be genuinely grateful for without pretending everything is wonderful.
We’ve all heard about the benefits of gratitude. Oprah famously spoke about keeping a gratitude journal and writing down things she was grateful for every day. I’ve attempted that myself, but there’s a problem. When I’m in a bad mood and I write, “I’m so grateful for my bed. I’m so grateful for this. I’m so grateful for that,” the bitchy backchat pops up with, “Yeah, right!”
Then the whole exercise feels like one big fat lie.
So how can we practice gratitude during difficult times without pretending to feel something we don’t?
Why Gratitude Matters When Life Is Hard
In my article Why Befriend the Mirror?, I spoke about the filters through which we experience the world. Our brains receive far more information than we could consciously process, so much of it gets filtered out. What gets through is influenced by what we’ve been focusing on.
When our attention is continually drawn towards everything that is going wrong, we become increasingly likely to notice more things that are going wrong. I certainly don’t want to become better at finding reasons to be miserable!
Life is about duality. Darkness and light are at opposite ends of the scale, and so are many of the experiences and emotions we encounter in life. I explored this further in What Can Politicians Teach Us? – Malema vs Groenewald. The real question isn’t about the politicians. It’s about where we are on the same scale and in which direction we want to move. We can’t always change what is happening around us, but we can influence where we place our attention.
Gratitude doesn’t magically remove the difficult things. It reminds us that the difficult things aren’t all there is.
When I Realised I Believed Life Was Hard
Recently, I had an evening when I was feeling particularly despondent. I couldn’t sleep, and as I lay there thinking about what was going on, I started wondering what beliefs were underneath those feelings.
Eventually, I got out of bed, went to my office and meditated. Two beliefs became very clear:
Life is hard. Life is a struggle.
My immediate thought was, Why would I want to hold onto beliefs like those? Then I asked myself a different question:
How have these beliefs been working for me?
The answer surprised me. Believing that life was hard had encouraged me to appreciate what I had. Struggle had developed my tenacity and encouraged me to become innovative, creative and resourceful.
The problem wasn’t those qualities; it was my belief that struggle was required in order to develop them.
So I acknowledged what those beliefs had given me and asked the Divine for those qualities to continue without requiring life to be hard or a struggle. Then I asked the Divine how I could shift those beliefs.
One very simple thought came into my mind:
Focus on the good.
The Two Wolves Within Us
That thought reminded me of the well-known story of a grandfather sitting around a campfire with his grandchildren. He tells them there are two wolves inside each of us. The light wolf represents kindness, friendliness, appreciation and joy, while the dark wolf represents anger, jealousy and frustration. The wolves are constantly competing for our attention.
One of the grandchildren asks, “Which wolf will win?”
The grandfather replies: “The one you feed.”
I love this visual because it illustrates what happens with our attention. When we dwell on everything that’s wrong, we feed the dark wolf. When we notice something we genuinely appreciate, we feed the white wolf.
That is how I see gratitude. It is a way of feeding the white wolf.
How to Be Grateful When We’re Struggling
I once explained this to some youngsters in a township while teaching them about the wealth mindset. When we’re struggling, being told to write down three things we’re grateful for can easily bring up that same bitchy backchat: “Yeah, right. There’s far more to be miserable about.”
Instead of asking them to make a gratitude list, I encouraged them to look differently at what they already had.
Take the food they were eating. Who bought it? Perhaps they bought it themselves, which meant they had the money to buy it. Perhaps a family member bought it for them. Isn’t it wonderful to have someone willing and able to provide food for us?
The same applied to the roof over their heads. Instead of simply saying, “I’m grateful for the roof over my head,” they could think about what it actually meant to have somewhere to live.
I realised I could apply the same approach myself. I could look at something as ordinary as the clothes I was wearing. Did I like them? Were they comfortable? I could feel my scarf and think, This is so soft. It feels lovely. It keeps me warm.
When we spend time noticing what we actually like about these ordinary things, something happens. We don’t have to tell ourselves to be grateful. The gratitude starts to well up naturally.
It could be food, comfortable clothes, a beautiful sunset, something that made us laugh or a conversation we enjoyed. The important part isn’t saying “I am grateful.” It’s appreciating something until we can actually feel the gratitude.
One Thing Leads to Another
Once we start looking for something good, we begin noticing other things. Our attention shifts, and we may start seeing opportunities we previously overlooked or having ideas about what we could do differently.
The circumstances that made us gatvol may not have disappeared. What has changed is the filter through which we’re looking at them.
There can be a problem here and something wonderful there. There can be disappointment and love, frustration and laughter, uncertainty about tomorrow and something beautiful happening right now.
We aren’t denying the dark wolf. We’re simply feeding it less and less.
Another Way to Feed the White Wolf
Gratitude is one way we can consciously feed the white wolf. Another tool I use is the iThrive web-app.
iThrives combine affirmations and release statements and can play gently in the background while we sleep, work or go about our day.
Feed Your White Wolf
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So if we’re wondering how to be grateful when life is hard, we can forget about creating the perfect gratitude list. We can start with one thing we genuinely like or appreciate and spend a little time noticing why we appreciate it.
That’s how we begin to feed the white wolf.
We don’t have to pretend we’re not gatvol. We can acknowledge exactly how we feel and then gently shift our attention towards something we genuinely appreciate.
And as we spend a little time with that appreciation, we may discover that we don’t have to force ourselves to feel grateful at all.
The gratitude begins to well up naturally.
What about you? When you’re really gatvol, what can you focus on that could begin feeding your white wolf?
Last week I shared how to create the life you want with my 4 Steps to Create the Life You Want. This included the importance of doing what it takes to create the life you want.
At the time, I thought I knew what that meant. I thought it meant doing more marketing, contacting more people and finding ways to overcome my resistance.
Then I had a conversation with a friend and realised I had it all wrong. Perhaps doing what it takes isn’t only about doing more. Perhaps it is about doing what it takes – differently.
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What do you actually want?
The first thing to do differently is to decide what you want. Everything is created twice: first in the mind and then in the physical. If we don’t know what we want, how can we create it?
So, I took out my journal and started writing down what my ideal life would look like. I started with my business because that was where I was feeling the most lack. Then I moved on to my private life: travelling, my home and other things I would love to experience. I now have a much clearer picture of what I want.
And I invite you to do the same. What would the life you want actually look like?
What if we combine goalsetting with prayer?
In my book, Bitter or Better, I Decide, I compare setting a goal with saying a prayer. When we set a goal, we decide what we want and take responsibility for creating it. With prayer, we ask the Creator for what we want, but often expect the Creator to do most of the work.
So why not combine the two? We can decide what we want, ask for Divine assistance and then work together with the Creator to create it.
I like that idea. I know where I want to go, but I don’t necessarily know how I am going to get there. I understand that some of you like to plan everything, but working with the Divine could mean that you get to your goal easier and faster. Just a thought.
Ask — and then what?
The Bible tells us: “Ask, and you shall receive.” Yet we all know that it doesn’t always seem to work that way. We ask and ask and ask some more — and nothing seems to happen.
This is where the work of Gregg Braden fascinated me. Braden explores the meeting point between science and ancient spiritual traditions. The Bible as we know it today developed through centuries of translation, debate and decisions about which early Christian writings would become part of the accepted canon (official religious text).
The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt in 1945 gave us access to 52 ancient texts, preserved in 13 codices (manuscripts), including writings that did not become part of the New Testament.
Braden draws particular attention to an Aramaic interpretation of Jesus’ teaching about asking and receiving. He cites Aramaic scholar and translator Neil Douglas-Klotz, who teaches: “Ask without hidden motive and be surrounded by your answer.”
I find the idea of being “surrounded by your answer” fascinating. Instead of repeatedly asking for something from a place of I don’t have it, we can begin to experience the feeling of already having received it.
That fits beautifully with another biblical teaching: “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
For me, the important words are: Believe that you have received it. If we genuinely believed that what we had asked for was already on its way, would we still be pleading, “Please, please, please give me the money”?
Probably not. We would relax and feel differently. And that is where my understanding of doing what it takes started to change.
Perhaps doing what it takes is feeling what it takes
I had been thinking mainly about action: What can I do? Who can I contact? What marketing can I do? But what if part of doing what it takes is learning to feel as if what I want is already on its way?
Most of us respond to what is happening around us. Something happens, we think about it and those thoughts create feelings. But now we are turning that process around. It is important that we create the feeling before we have the physical evidence.
Fortunately, I have experienced this working extremely well before.
My imaginary swimming pool
Many years ago, I watched the movie The Secret, and the children and I decided we would really like a swimming pool. My husband thought a jacuzzi would be a great idea too. The interesting challenge was: We didn’t have the money for either.
So, we started preparing as though the money was going to come. We designed the pool, decided where it would go and found a contractor.
Then I took it a little further. I started pretending that I already had my swimming pool. I put one chair at one end of my imaginary pool and another at the other end. I climbed onto the chair, “dived” into my pool and swam to the other side. Afterwards, of course, I relaxed in my imaginary jacuzzi with its lovely warm water.
I had great fun. I just hope none of my neighbours were watching me! 😊
Something interesting happened. I was having so much fun with my imaginary swimming pool that I became less concerned about whether I actually got one. I was already experiencing the enjoyment I thought the swimming pool would give me. I became detached from the outcome.
And then the money arrived.
We got our swimming pool and jacuzzi
Around Easter we entered an Easter egg competition and won a substantial amount of money — enough to pay for approximately half of the pool and jacuzzi. Then I was asked to do training for a large corporate company, and I earned enough from that contract to pay for the other half.
We got our swimming pool and jacuzzi.
Unfortunately, I also discovered that the same process can work extremely well in the other direction!
How we create what we don’t want
While doing the corporate training, I started thinking about how much I was being paid compared with the employees. I began feeling guilty. Underneath that guilt were thoughts such as: I’m not worth this much. I don’t deserve this. I’m not good enough.
Shortly afterwards, the contractor who had brought me in told me that the fee was fine for this contract, but next time they would pay me half. And guess what? That amount was much closer to what I had decided I was comfortable receiving.
Oops! I had just demonstrated the process beautifully — in completely the wrong direction.
This was another example of what I call the mirror of life — our external experiences can reveal beliefs we weren’t consciously aware of. You can read more about how this works in my article, Why Befriend the Mirror?
Then I got sloppy
For a while I was very aware of my thoughts and feelings. Then things were going well and … I got sloppy. Slowly I slipped back into some of my old patterns.
I know when I am feeling lack because I get a knot in my stomach. Your body may speak to you differently. Perhaps you carry tension in your shoulders, frown or feel tightness somewhere else. When I am relaxed and trust that things are going to work out, that knot isn’t there. My body gives me a useful clue about what is going on in my thoughts.
Are we addicted to stress and anxiety?
I’ve discovered that we can become so accustomed to stress and anxiety that they start to feel normal.
I catch myself doing this. Everything can be perfectly okay and my body is relaxed. I am not used to that, so it feels a little uncomfortable. So, I go and find something to worry about, even if it is far in the future. 😊 Before I know it, that familiar knot in my stomach is back again.
Can you relate? It is almost as though I am looking for my fix. We talk about adrenaline junkies. I think some of us can become anxiety junkies too.
That was one of the reasons I created and used my Overcome Addictions iThrive on myself. I listened to it every night for 30 days and noticed that the tension in my stomach reduced considerably. It still comes back occasionally, but when it does, I go back and play the Overcome Addictions iThrive again.
If you would like to experience the iThrives for yourself, you can purchase an iThrive subscription and receive a significant discount on the annual subscription only by using the promo code FEELFIRST.
What can you role-play?
This is what I am doing now, and I invite you to join me. Go back to the list you made of what you want and ask yourself: How can I role-play already having this?
Role-playing is another way of acting as if. You act as if what you want is already part of your life and allow yourself to experience the feelings that go with it. You can do it in the privacy of your own home. Nobody has to know. Thank goodness for that, considering my imaginary swimming pool! 😊
Perhaps you want another client. Imagine you’ve just received a notification that somebody has signed up. Get your body involved. Give yourself a high-five and enthusiastically say:
“YES! I’ve got another client!”
Feel the excitement. Celebrate. For those few moments, experience what it would feel like if it had actually happened.
If you want a partner, make space for this person in your home. Lay the table for two. Light a candle. Go on imaginary walks together.
If you want to travel, start packing your suitcase or make your packing list and feel your excitement about your upcoming travel.
Have some fun with it.
So what does “doing what it takes” really mean?
I’m looking at doing what it takes rather differently now. Yes, I can do the marketing, contact people, create videos and write blogs. I can take action.
But I first want to be clear who I want to market to, and I don’t want to do all of that while feeling stressed and worried that what I want isn’t going to happen.
Because then, what am I focusing on — the life I want, or the fact that I don’t have it yet?
So my experiment now is simple: Decide what I want. Ask for Divine assistance. Take the actions that come to me. And practise feeling what it would feel like to already have what I asked for.
To be, as that Aramaic interpretation puts it, “surrounded by my answer.”
And then see what happens.
Perhaps doing what it takes doesn’t always mean doing more. Sometimes it may mean doing things differently and feeling differently while we do them.
So here is my question for you: What do you want to create — and how can you role-play having it already?
